A guest post by Liz Elcoate

In an increasingly frantic world setting clear objectives can bring focus not only to your work but also to your life. Here’s how planning has started to bring clarity and peace to my frazzled brain.

After going freelance as a web and graphic designer over 3 years ago I have enjoyed moderate success. I’ve had regular(ish) work, met some extraordinary people, been to some fun conferences and workshops and started a podcast with my wonderful friend and co-host Sean Johnson. It all looks pretty great from the outside but in truth I’ve been achieving about 20% of the things I want to and am able to do, and this isn’t just in my working life. My mental and physical health aren’t great and I am possibly the most disorganised person in the world. Oh and I’m a Mum and Step-mum too which involves a ton of other commitments. I used to try and combat these perceived ‘failures’ by setting yearly resolutions. This involved being as debauched and badly behaved as possible until the end of the year and beginning the torment of resolutions on January 1st.

But with every New Year’s Eve that passed I become more and more cynical about setting these resolutions, to the degree that this Christmas I just couldn’t be arsed any more. I always feel they have such negative connotations associated to them, they revolve around self-denial which inevitably leads to self-sabotage which in turn leads to self-loathing. Cheerful aren’t I? How can an outcome ever be positive if its roots are in the negative? Par exemple, go on a diet, stop smoking, drink less, work harder, achieve more, blah blah depressing blah. Dante’s Inferno sounds like more fun. Then of course with the self loathing comes the ‘Agh bollocks to this, let the bad behaviour begin!’ mentality. And so we go on… another year has passed.

But whats the alternative? To find what works you have to first realise what isn’t working and where your particular problems lie.

My problem

The freedom of becoming a freelance web designer unleashed in me depths of creativity and ideas that I’d never dared to vent previously. This in itself should be a positive but for me it was quite the opposite. Let me elaborate. When I was employed I had clear defined goals, my ambitions revolved around my role within that company and the time that I was there. The rest of my life was conducted away from work, this left me with no time or thought to give to my personal ideas and projects. It had a beautiful kind of order to it that my Bipolic, Asperger-y mind appreciated.

However when I went freelance the possibilities it opened up for me meant I was awash with ideas and time. But this is not always ideal if you have a creative brain. I would sit at my computer everyday, hideously frustrated, going through the motions, being moderately successful at the things I did but never making a dent in the lengthy list of business ideas I had. I would spend much too much time on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, resulting in me feeling deeply disappointed in myself afterwards. I would start one healthy eating plan/ diet regime only to get distracted by another or more often than not a glass of wine. You see the real problem was that my brain was just a fuzzy, swarmy, mixed up, liquidiser of ideas and plans, it was like I had 100 tabs open at once in my head and I was constantly flicking between them. This did not make for a successful Liz. It made for an angry, depressed, self absorbed twerp.

I read numerous posts and books, listened to a ton of podcasts, discussed ideas at length with people but nothing really worked or lasted. Then one Sunday morning, about 6 weeks ago, I woke up and realised that in order to change anything you have to actually do something. That something needs to have its roots in positive, healthy, achievable goals. So I made a list (my big sister would be proud).

The list

This initial list was entitled Life Objectives. In this list I included anything, and I mean anything, I wanted to achieve in the next year or so. There were 25 in mine altogether and included

1. Get healthy
2. Sleep well
3. Learn to DJ
4. Become more organised
5. Work with small businesses and producers.
6. Bring business idea to fruition.
7. Be a good mum
8. Write a regular blog about living with depression.

This initial list is incredibly vague and it needed to be because it was basically a mind dump. These were all the random things which were important to me. The most important thing about all of the items on this list was that they were positive things, things that would make me happy and that I would look forward to. I spent a good couple of hours working through this list making sure I had included absolutely everything I wanted to do on it, no matter how obscure it was.

Next I put them into Groups. These groups had the following titles and covered all the main areas of my life.

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Personal Development
4. Business

So under Physical I had things such as Get healthy and Sleep better, under Mental I had Grow in confidence, Become more organised. Personal Development included Learn to DJ and Give a talk and Business included Bring business idea to fruition, Work with small businesses and Do a business course.

It was at this point that I realised that there were almost equal amounts in each section, roughly six under each heading, so it was clear to me that I needed to work on all areas of my life.

Even at this early stage I was feeling a lot better as I was getting some clarity and order to my thoughts. I was creating filing cabinets in my mind for my various ideas and remembering what is important to me. It also made me realise that working as a freelancer means that there are no longer differentiations between the various areas of your life. They are all linked and thus all need taking care of and nurturing. For this I began to feel profoundly lucky, it meant that my life would take a little more organising but it also reminded me that part of the reason for freelancing was that I wanted to be in charge of all areas of my life. Not beholden to a boss and up until this point I had been letting the fear of freelancing and the busy-ness of my life control me. At last I felt that I was taking charge of my life and this immediately had a profound affect on my happiness.

Even if I’d done nothing more with my list of Objectives at this point I still had a clear plan and set of ideas of what was important to me and what I needed to do to regain the clarity (assuming I ever actually had it which is doubtful!) and order in my life. I can’t stress enough how much this simple exercise helped me and I would urge other people struggling with their time and commitments, business ideas or personal life to take a few hours out and do this simple exercise.

In my next post I’ll elaborate on how I took my Objectives to the next level. This is still a learning curve for me but so far I am seeing big changes in my life.

Liz is a freelance web & graphic designer,co-host of the freelance web podcast, sometime speaker & full time dilettante. Living in Norfolk with @farmerkit. Mad dog lady