Entertainment technology professionals - including sound contractors, recording engineers, and live event technicians - are often driven by creative or artistic goals and dreams, and frequently downplay their financial and personal aspirations.
They assume that someone else is going to handle the business, so they can focus on making the show go on.
From my standpoint, that is too risky. You’re in a better position than anyone else to determine what your goals and objectives should be.
How much do I want to earn? How hard to I want to work? What am I willing to risk to get what I want?
Many technical people have never really addressed these questions.
Having realistic written goals and objectives is your best tool for managing the inherent challenges in balancing your technical work, business, family, and other interests.
Essentials Of Planning
There’s an old expression that goes “What gets measured, gets done.” This is an important business truism.
Having written business goals and objectives are essential for planning, for creative and personal development, and for congruity with your personal values.
You may be thinking, “I have goals in my head. I don’t need to write them down.” It’s good that you have goals.
It’s better to write them down and turn them into a set of actionable objectives with milestones.
Goals and objectives are different from one another, but they work together. Here are the definitions.
Goal: A desired result; often long term. Something good that you aspire to over a long period of time.
Objective: An aspect or subset of a goal that is specific, measurable, and achievable.
For example, many people have a goal to get rich and retire young. That’s a desirable result and likely to be a long-term proposition. Now let’s turn this goal into a set objective.
Objective: Own a $2 million investment portfolio by age 60 and be able to live on the interest or dividends.
This is a clear statement of objective. It is specific ($2 million in investments by age 60), measurable (can be tracked over time) and - for the sake of discussion - achievable.
Using instinctive knowledge to judge the loudness of a system
