When I first set out to make The Cabin way back when, I almost didn’t think that I could do something so audacious as making a film. But then I figured: why not go for it?
Here are a couple of tips and tricks to help you achieve your very own big goals.
- Reverse Engineering
What do I want to accomplish and in what time frame?
Continually cut your time frame in half and establish project milestones to expedite the process. For example, if you need to get something done in a year, figure out what you need to get done in a window of 6 months, in 3 months, in 1.5 months, in 3 weeks, in 10 days, in 5 days, in 2.5 days, even in 1 day.
Make sure you take action. You can organize all you want, but if you don’t take real action, you will never get anything done in the end.
-The Sticky Method
I learned this technique from acting business coach Dallas Travers. The Sticky Method is a brainstorming session combined with planning strategizing that I find especially useful with marketing projects.
First, brainstorm all of your ideas. Don’t limit yourself. For any idea, write the gist of it on a sticky note. As a personal example, when I was doing the marketing for The Cabin, I put FB posts, tweets, thank yous to people, my playlist for the film, photo inspirations, interviews and more.
Then imagine there is a calendar on your wall and arrange the stickies on a grid. Voila! There is your marketing campaign.
Here is the one for The Cabin.
The great thing about doing this all on stickies is that you can easily move them around (which I did a lot for The Cabin), add more of them, take away some. And it’s all right there in your workspace, taking up enough of your visual field that you can’t ignore these plans for the future.