Planning for the New Year

Planning for the New Year

This year I am starting my plans for next year a little early. Maybe this means I’m starting to break the habit of waiting until the last minute to do things.

I totally fell on my face for this year. I’m not surprised knowing that I was/am still going through the grieving process. There were some aspects where I accomplished more than what was originally planned, but for the most part, I did not live up to my own expectations. While I did better at keeping track of expenditures, I did not keep up with inventories nor did I keep in contact with the shops where I have product. Sometimes I just struggled with doing it this way or that way and not being able to decide, I didn’t do either.

Now it’s year’s end and time to think about the good that can be achieved in 2013. It’s important to be better at the “business” end of art if I want to be considered a successful artist. Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much about charts. Sometimes I let too much time go by before I make updates. This means that one goal for 2013 is to stay on top of record keeping. I’ve come to the conclusion that I spend too much time thinking and planning and not doing the actual work.

This morning I am looking at inventory charts. In 2011, I had done some in Word while others were in Excel. I tried to make some changes in the Excel program, but never followed through. The beginning of this year, I made a couple of updates then let time slip by. So today, I printed out the Excel forms. I need to look at the hard copy to be able to view the items better by laying them side by side.

I made a decision and also made a few changes. Now I am ready to start adding inventory items to the pages. For this part, I am going to go through my inventory piece by piece and evaluate where I feel each stands for this next year. Is it still in good condition after being dragged around to shows? Do I feel it’s still worthy? Should it be relegated to a Yart Sale bin?

Now the question will be if I can follow through with this with finding time to do new work and everything else that needs to be done (or I choose to do.)

What are some ways that you keep track of things and do your own follow ups?