Thom Hogan over at bythom.com has written a very helpful essay called "What's Your Goal?" that I commend to your attention. It takes up where my more fundamental essay "Getting Better: The Crucial Sentence" leaves off.
Thom's piece is very well done and I don't mean to criticize it, but there is one tiny flaw in its logic. At one point he counsels that for goals to be useful, they should be ambitious. As an expert in this sort of thing, I happen to know that this is circular reasoning. Ambitiousness is a predicate of goals in the first place. You must have ambition to feel you need goals, much less get to the point where you can write them down. All goals that are clear enough to write down and not be embarrassed about are already ambitious. It's a small point.
Now I'm going to scratch one of my own goals off the list. It was, "Write a clear, concise, and above all practical essay for photographers about setting goals, or find one somebody else wrote that is as good or better than I could write myself." Then I'm going to take a rest. Achieving one's goals is satisfying, but tiring.
____________________
Mike
Dear Mike,
Regarding your Epson V700:
For more practical info on it's use here is a link to a very thorough review:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm
Regards,
Keith Trumbo
Posted by: Keith Trumbo | Tuesday, 23 October 2007 at 08:24 PM
Forty years ago photography became my escape from a very goal driven career ( I even helped managers and executives define goals and means to achieve them for their organizations). My only "goal" with photography was to enjoy myself and create photographs that I, and maybe others, could enjoy looking at. But these goals were almost subconscious and never articulated or written down. Of course, photography was not my career, so that does make a difference. But for most of us, photography should be a way to be creative, to enjoy the beauty of life, and have a good time.
Posted by: Donovan Rieger | Tuesday, 23 October 2007 at 08:27 PM
"Thom's piece is very well done and I don't mean to criticize it, but there is one tiny flaw in its logic. At one point he counsels that for goals to be useful, they should be ambitious. As an expert in this sort of thing, I happen to know that this is circular reasoning. Ambitiousness is a predicate of goals in the first place."
Why is it that you're so quick to point out what you perceive to be others' flaws? Maybe the flaw is the guy who lives in the glass house who calls himself an expert.
Posted by: Robert Davis | Tuesday, 23 October 2007 at 10:58 PM
Great article on benefits and process of setting goals - it makes a good companion to http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/levels3.shtml, which provides some more specific milestones to reach with these goals.
Posted by: Jan | Tuesday, 23 October 2007 at 11:02 PM
Mike, the word "ambitious" is not a flaw in reasoning. It's a difference in usage between you and Thom Hogan. :-)
For him, as for many others, being "ambitious" _only_ means setting a high or very high goal. Which a dictionary definition kinda supports. But it also supports your usage. Ambition - "a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power b: desire to achieve a particular end."
BTW, I do agree with Donovan Rieger that photography should be a way to be creative and have a good time. However, I also try to follow that old chestnut (hm, is this a pleonasm?), "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." I guess you could call that ambition.
Posted by: erlik | Wednesday, 24 October 2007 at 12:21 AM
"Why is it that you're so quick to point out what you perceive to be others' flaws? Maybe the flaw is the guy who lives in the glass house who calls himself an expert."
It was a joke.
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Wednesday, 24 October 2007 at 12:59 AM
Mmmmh, aren't these just 'SMART objectives'?
Also it can get difficult in the creative space when your overall goal is to create something you haven't done before. For example, what is an inventor going to put down, "invent something that neither myself nor anyone else thought of yet". Kinda superfluous...
Posted by: Dirk | Wednesday, 24 October 2007 at 04:06 AM
Glass house or no, I just loved this little article.
It brought a smile to my face.
Posted by: Stephen Scharf | Thursday, 25 October 2007 at 12:05 AM