Goals vs Process

Luc Forsyth, independent filmmaker shared insight to independent creatives to achieve joy and quality work.

https://filmschool.lucforsyth.com/

It’s no secret that a freelance creative career is not for the feint of heart. In exchange for being your own boss and the incredible privilege of pursuing subjects that interest you as part of your job, you give up one very big thing: security.

It can be hard to gain momentum in this business, and even when you do there’s no guarantee the pay checks will come in every month when you need them. But if you stick around long enough and build your reputation through hard work and persistent networking, it eventually gets easier to pay the bills doing what you love.

No, the main thing that keeps filmmakers miserable in the long term has nothing to do with money—it’s about their goals.

And I don’t mean they’re setting the wrong goals necessarily, it’s that in chasing them we can lose track of what matters.

Let me explain.

Goal setting can be a useful exercise, and I like to try and plot out both short and long term goals for myself every new year. When you know what you’re trying to accomplish it gets easier to break down the process into manageable steps and actually make progress.

There’s nothing wrong with setting goals, but the problem is when the results of those goals become the primary motivation for action.

You decide that you’ll finally be successful if only you can make X number of dollars every year, or that if only you could land a certain dream client you’d finally feel like the professional you’ve always wanted to be.

The issue is that when you actually achieve these things, a lot of the time they no longer mean anything.

I used to think that if only I could publish a photo on the front page of The New York Times I’d feel like I’d “made it” as a photojournalist. But when I eventually landed one (and then two more in quick succession), I didn’t feel any differently.

As a filmmaker it was DP-ing a show for National Geographic, and then Netflix. But it actually only took me about 3 years to hit both of those targets, and once again, nothing changed. I felt exactly the same as I did before getting those “game changing” credits.

And if you’re tying your sense of self worth to an arbitrary result like I was, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment too.

Winning an award, showing your work at prestigious film festivals, or getting to work with your favourite directors are all nice career milestones, but I promise you they won’t make you happy.

Sure, you’ll bask in the glow of professional praise for a few days, or maybe a week. But soon enough you’ll go right back to being the same filmmaker/photographer/whatever you were before. Nothing real will have changed.

All that’s waiting on the other side of success is more work.

That’s why so many goal-driven creatives end up miserable—they get exactly what they want only to find that it does nothing to feed their soul. There will always be a bigger prize to win or more money to be made, and no matter what you achieve the goal posts will just keep moving further and further because there is no winning this game. 

I’ll just say it again for emphasis: there is no winning this game. 

There is only the work.

That’s why it’s important to focus on the process instead of the result. Set goals as reference points, sure, but if you don’t enjoy the process it’s going to be a long, miserable grind.

That should be good news though, because if you do actually like what you’re doing and aren’t only motivated by external rewards, you’ve already got most of what you need to succeed.

Because real success only comes with time in the game, and if you like what you’re doing then that time isn’t going to feel like work. I mean yes, there’s a lot to get done, no doubt, but if you enjoy the work it’s a far cry from sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours.

There’s a reason so many creatives produce their best work later in life, and to stay motivated for decades, not years, you can’t be doing it for the clout, followers, or praise. It has to come from love of the process.

Again though, that’s good news. It means that you can ignore all the noise and posturing online, and instead focus on just getting a little bit better every day.

Do that for a long enough period of time and the results will come on their own.

So as we think about our new years resolutions in 2025, feel free to set goals—I know I will.

But if you don’t want to end up miserable, it’s not the results you need to commit to.  

It’s the process.