You have BIG creative goals, right? You want to achieve them, but maybe you're struggling to make progress?
Well, you're in the right place, because in this video I'm chatting with my friend & productivity expert Monique Malcolm about how to achieve your creative goals within 90 days.
In this video, we'll discuss how to break down a BIG goal into tiny actions and smaller, more manageable chunks so that you can reach your goals faster! We cover:
why to focus on a 90 day timeframe
example of launching a podcast in 90 days
project management for creatives
our thoughts about choosing the right project management and productivity software & tools for your needs
Monique Malcolm is a seasoned productivity expert, writer, and the founder of Take Tiny Action.
She is dedicated to helping people achieve their goals in a sustainable way.
Monique’s approach involves taking small and consistent steps over time, which allows people to achieve their ambitions while maintaining a healthy, balanced, and fulfilling lifestyle. She lives in Florida with her husband and son. When she’s not working, she loves soaking up the sun at the beach or hopping onto her bike for a spin class.
Monique was also a guest on Episode 29 of the Badass Creatives podcast, talking about setting goals and taking action.
Takeaways
Setting 90-day goals can make long-term planning more manageable and allow for consistent progress.
Big projects can be broken down into 90-day segments to make them more achievable.
Examples of projects that can be completed in 90 days include writing a book, launching a podcast, or starting a new business venture.
Managing projects and tasks as a multi-passionate creative requires finding a system that works best for your individual needs and preferences.
The hierarchy of goals, projects, tasks, and tiny actions can help in effectively planning and executing projects.
Choosing the right productivity software depends on how you process information and prefer to organize tasks.
Avoid overcomplicating productivity by focusing on taking action and avoiding excessive tweaking of productivity tools.
To work with Monique and learn more about her approach to productivity, visit her website at TakeTinyAction.com.
Video Transcript:
Mallory
Hello Monique! Thanks for joining me and talking all about how to achieve your creative goals within 90 days!
Monique Malcolm
90 days, 90 days. That is my number.
Mallory
Yeah! So why focus on a 90 day timeframe? Why is 90 days such a helpful number for achieving creative goals, and breaking it down into something that feels actionable and doable?
Monique Malcolm
Well, I like to think about 90 day goals because planning for the entire year is really hard.
I know that in the past you've probably heard people say like, "What is your 10-year plan? What's your five-year plan? What is your three-year plan?"
I'm going to be honest. I can't tell you what my plan is sometimes by the end of the week. So how am I going to plan a goal that is supposed to be five years out? And then, today, the person I am right now has to figure out that plan? It's a lot.
90 days for most people is more manageable, especially since we tend to operate on quarters. People understand quarters and how that all works. So it's a really good time to be consistent, see some progress, and then make adjustment if you don't really see any progress.
I think anything longer than that is probably too long for most people. Anything shorter than that, it's probably not enough time to really have like data and progress to measure against, to see like is the thing you're doing really working?
Mallory
So what's an example of like a really big project that you could break down to 90 days?
For example, I know that you wrote a book, right? Don't Let Fear Have All The Fun: and other advice for making bold moves even if you're afraid
And I know I've written a couple of books. They're tiny little things that I've written. But writing a book, no matter whether it's tiny or like the great American novel is a huge project, right? So did you write this in 90 days or did you break this down into like, mini projects that were 90 days each?
Monique Malcolm
Oh, so that is a spicy question. So technically, it took longer than 90 days to write that book. But I also spent a lot of time procrastinating with writer's block. So if I had to be honest, I think I wrote the majority of that book probably in the last six weeks because I was just running out of time. I really needed to get it done. So I think that I could make the argument that it was done in 90 days over the course of like,
I think it was eight months that I wrote it, which is kind of terrible. I spent a lot of time procrastinating. But I have heard people say that like, they could write a book in 90 days. And I honestly think for my next book, I don't know, I feel like 90 days might still be too tight for me, but I think I definitely could get it done in five to six months, just because I understand the process now and I would be better about it, even though writing.
Second, third, fourth books, it still sucks. But I would be, I kind of know how to manage that. But going back to your original question about like a project that can be done in 90 days, you could do a book in 90 days. If you say wanted to write like a 40,000 word book and you committed to like for two hours or an hour and a half every day, I'm just gonna write. I think that's totally possible to get that done.
If I could think about a project that people would do in 90 days, I think like, realistic, you could launch a podcast and like, you could launch the podcast. It's not gonna take you 90 days, but you could like have a 90 day project for your podcast where you planned it, you launched it, and you started getting data. And that would be realistic for 90 days.
Mallory
Yeah, and well, because that's something you're super experienced with, right? Like you've had a couple of different podcasts.
So launching, you mentioned like launching the podcast would be 90 days. So then would there maybe be like a second podcast project that's like another 90 days after that initial launch? Like, how do you kind of like use 90 days more than once?
Monique Malcolm
Yeah, so for something like a podcast, I wouldn't even, I teach people how to launch a podcast in 30 days. It just kind of depends on how quickly you want to go. I think 30 to 60 days is realistic for a lot of people and like their time constraints. That if you took 60 days, that last 30 days would be like getting out there and then gathering some data.
So figuring out like, how do you want to promote this show and how you want to... get more downloads and stuff and kind of tracking that over that first 30 days. But if you wanted to, let's say 90 days later, continue on with that podcast process, then I think a lot of things could be repeated.
So in that 90 days, like the second round of 90 days, you're going to be one focused on tracking data over 90 days because you want to know like, what am I doing that's working?
So you might want to pick one marketing platform to use and go all in on that and try to test some different things out, whether it's I want this to be on Instagram or I want to share snippets on TikTok or I want to write threads that are related to my show. You would do that over a 90-day period.
That doesn't mean that you have to do it every day, but you would decide how often am I going to be posting these snippets from my show in this platform and then tracking that. As far as the content creation, well, great. Are you a weekly show? Yay.
Do you want to try to batch all your, all 12 episodes for that quarter in maybe a week or two? Maybe you want to have one content week at the beginning of every month where you do all your shows for the month and then you kind of let that go. You get to determine the timeline for that. But if I had a podcast project that I was like trying to track every 90 days, like the thing that I was doing, that would be how I would break it down. Like when do I want the shows to get done? And um, whatever data that I want to track. So whether it's downloads or how I'm marketing, getting guests, that kind of thing.
Mallory
Yeah, so say that you're, well, I know we both are like super like multi-passionate creative people, right? And especially if we are working by ourselves, don't have like a big team, right?
Can you talk about how you manage projects and like how you might recommend that people like us try to like self-manage projects like this, especially over the course of like a little bit of a longer period, like 90 days and kind of keep track of all of those moving parts?
Monique Malcolm
Yes, so I have this hierarchy in my mind of like how goals translate into projects.
So a lot of times when people think about goals, I feel like there's a lot of focus on the setting of the goals. So like, I'm gonna do this thing and it's gonna be actionable. I'm gonna get it done by X date and that's great, but that doesn't actually help you get that thing done. It just gives you like a container for like when it needs to fit into.
For a goal, you set your goal, and then you turn that goal into a project or maybe several projects. It's gonna depend on what the goal is.
So if we're going back to the podcast example, the goal of launching a podcast within 90 days, great, that's the goal. There's a bunch of projects in that. You need to plan out your show basics. So what is the podcast gonna be about? That could be one project. So just figuring out.
What am I going to talk about? How often am I going to be publishing? Am I going to have guests? What is the vibe of my show? That's a project.
Then you might have creating your podcast branding. So that could be a different project. You need to think about cover art. Do you want to have intro music? Do you want to, like, how do you want to have templates that you use that are branded for social media so that when they show up, people know, like, this is my, this is so-and-so's podcast. That could be a separate project.
If you have guests, coming up with a process for booking guests and making sure that that's seamless, that could be a project. Actually recording the audio, that's a project.
So you go from goals to your projects, and then from your projects, you go down one more level to tasks.
So what are the tasks within that project?
So again, if your project at this moment was like coming up with podcast branding. So the task might be getting photos done if you wanna be on the cover of your show. You're gonna have a project for like actually designing the square.
Your task might be designing templates for sharing on social media. These are all tasks. But a lot of people stop there at the task.
I think those are still too large.
I go down one more level to the “tiny actions” because those are like the individual pieces in that task.
So an example I love to give to people when it comes to podcasting is, when somebody tells me I'm going to record a podcast, I always ask them, what do you mean? Do you mean that you have already planned out the episode, it's been outlined, everything's ready to go, and you're gonna hit record?
And you're just going to literally only record and be done? Or does recording that podcast mean you need to outline the points that you want to do? You need to write your script. You need to, I don't know, come up with pictures for your episode. Do you need to then sit down and record, and then you're going to edit it, and then you're going to upload it? Because those are two different things. And one of those... is a task and the other one is a tiny action.
The tiny action is saying, I'm gonna record the podcast and it's literally only you sitting down to record the podcast. That's the tiny action.
The other thing was a task list of things that you wanted to do.
And this is why people get frustrated and feel like they don't have enough time because they're not really clear on, did I need to do a task, like a series of things, or did I just have like one solo action that I need to take in this moment? So...
That's the hierarchy for me. It's like, what if the overall goal, turning that goal into a project or a series of projects if I need them, breaking that project down into tasks.
So what things do I need to do to move this project forward? And then from those tasks, breaking them down into even smaller steps that I can check off, you know, outlining the podcast show, writing my script, recording the episode, editing, those are all smaller actions. So that's how I look at it.
Mallory
Yeah. So, okay. Speaking of spicy topics, so, because I know whenever the topic of like tasks and project management and all this stuff comes up, people, especially multi-passionate creatives, especially like… I know you have ADHD, for example, right? And I, some of the people I work with also have ADHD. And I know for those of us that are, you know, have a lot of big ideas, there's always this question of...
What software should I use to manage all my tasks, right? Like what's the best productivity software?
Monique Malcolm
I don't have a definitive answer to that because I believe that you should answer that question by thinking about how do you need to process information.
I have used pretty much every project management software under the sun.
I think that you should think about how does your brain process information?
So for me, I'm very visual and I need to plan in a certain way and then I need to put it into a digital format and I need it to look a certain way for it to be useful to me. Otherwise, it's just gonna be a list of stuff in the digital cloud that I'm not gonna use.
So I like to plan on paper first. It sounds redundant. People are like, you're wasting so much time. But I literally cannot plan directly into my computer. My brain won't let me do it.
I have to write things by hand to process on paper. So I have a lot of post-it notes of different sizes so that I can break down ideas. So I have post-it notes of a specific size that I like to use for planning projects and getting out all those tasks.
Usually once I get the tasks, I don't necessarily mind taking tiny actions and putting those directly into the computer, because a lot of times I usually know what that is.
But the big ideas of like how things need to move, dates and stuff, I like to do that all on paper and then put it in the computer and then kind of move things around if I need to.
But as far as project management systems go, you have a lot of options. Are you a person who likes things to look, to live and list? If you do, pretty much every project management to-do list app has a list view. I love things to be in the Kanban view because I like to see processes flow through.
So if I'm doing like podcasting stuff, I like to have a Kanban board. You have these columns and you move that task through the board. So I like to see it go from like idea to planned to outlined to record, to edit. I like to see that flow. And especially if I'm doing multiple episodes at one time that might be in various stages or I might have somebody helping me with things.
It's really helpful for me to look at the computer and be like, okay, great, this is an edit right now. It needs to go over to upload and then that will be done.
But that might not be how you plan.
So the most important question that you need to ask yourself is outside of like, what is the best software to use? You need to ask yourself, how do I need to receive and process this information?
Is it enough that you just see it as a list? Then great.
If you're a person who just likes to have like a list with giant tasks and you just know to do the tiny actions, that's great.
I like to see not only my task. I love to see the sub tasks. I love to check off those things. It that makes me feel like I'm progressing.
Some people can just have a task that says like record episode with Mallory and like they know what to do and they'll do it. I'm not that person. I needed to be like: “Record episode with Mallory.” So what parts of this am I responsible for? Okay, so I need to come up with some topics. I need to have some questions. Like I need that checklist of things to keep myself on track.
Mallory
For a lot of those tasks and tiny actions, I tend to prefer a list view and have like subtasks and sort of like list it out.
And I use a lot of digital tools because I like to add visual things like emojis to kind of cue my brain quickly about like what the thing is related to. And so that I can capture those ideas on my phone, right? Cause I'm like constantly coming up with ideas. So I need a way to capture them so that they're not like rattling around in my brain.
But like you were saying about the Kanban and like those like column views, I actually do a sort of analog paper version of that for my YouTube videos.
I have a big poster on my bulletin board over here and I use Post-its for like, so there's a Post-it for each individual video topic and I kind of move them where it's like, okay, I'm scripting this one, this is the next one I wanna record, I'm recording this one, I'm editing this one, and then this one is like post-production stuff, right? So yeah, it's figuring out what works best for you.
Monique Malcolm
And you hit the nail on the head with saying things will change over time.
That's another reason why I don't like to give people a blanket answer of you should do this. I'll tell people what I use.
At this moment, I'm using a combination of Post-it notes, ClickUp, and Notion. And neither of the digital tools am I loving right now.
So I actually am thinking about just going back to paper for the moment, because there's just times during the year where writing things by hand just is faster and it's more effective for me.
And then there's times of the year where maybe there are a lot of moving parts. Like right now, I don't feel like I have so many moving parts that I couldn't just manage it on paper. But there are times where I have deadlines and I have like things that I'm trying to make sure that I stay on top of. I wanna put all of that into a digital system so I can be reminded and I know what's going on.
But like you, I love having an analog Kanban board. I actually have a whiteboard on my closet door. And every so often, I feel like at least once a year, I draw up a Kanban board on there and I just do everything with Post-It notes because I don't know, for whatever reason, like the digital systems, they create a lot of noise.
And I think that's kind of like the quiet secret of productivity people and productivity apps.
And I even see it, I hang out on Reddit sometimes. I feel like there's a lot of quiet snark on Reddit boards and like the Notion forums and the ClickUp forums about how like all these productivity tools are just… we're just tweaking them. We're just tweaking them more and more instead of actually getting in there, planning what we need, using them for what we need.
We just get in there and we just play around with them and tweak them and make more features. And so I feel that. I feel that from time to time, I live in that space. And so when I find myself there, I'm like, all right, well, you need to go back to paper because this is not working.
Mallory
Yeah, because at some point that stuff can just become another form of procrastination and can prevent you from actually achieving those goals, right? You actually have to take the “tiny actions.”
Monique Malcolm
Pretty much, because I mean, at the end of the day, we have all these productivity apps because we have this idea that we could be doing more and we could be more organized and really out of our own way if we had this app to make things easier, to recall the information, to remind us of the thing.
But I feel like there's a scale, right? There's a point where it does that, and then there's a point where it tips, and it's like, it's not doing that.
That's my complaint with Notion. I feel like somebody's gonna be mad in the comments about this. And the thing is, I get it. Notion can be so aesthetic and so beautiful, but man, can you really tip the scale into this was really helpful to this is taking so much time.
Mallory
Yeah. Well, so I know that you work directly with a lot of creatives to help them achieve their goals and help them figure out how to like be productive in a way that works best for them, right?
Can you tell people how they can get in touch with you, how they can work with you, all that good stuff?
Monique Malcolm
Yeah, so if you like my brand of productivity, snark, you can find me on my website at TakeTinyAction.com.
It's super simple to find. It's spelled exactly like it sounds. No weird spellings of punctuation. And you can find more details about me and what I do there.
If you are interested in having somebody that's gonna help you like actually get things done and help you make time and space for that, then I'm your girl because I want to help you do things. And I don't want to have you sitting on endless calls with me talking about what you're going to do. I actually want you to do it.
Mallory
Awesome. Well, I so appreciate you doing this and being here with us, Monique. Thank you so much.
Monique Malcolm
Thank you for having me.
Connect with Monique Malcolm
Website: Take Tiny Action
Monique’s book: Don't Let Fear Have All The Fun: and other advice for making bold moves even if you're afraid
Monique’s YouTube: @TakeTinyAction
