Setting goals and timelines

Recently I have found that setting goals and timelines for myself and my compositions can lead to my undoing.  For the past three weeks I have had to focus my free time on organizing the 8th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  As a result this blog and Night Sky has taken a back seat.

I was reviewing my notes for Night Sky and I found the initial timeline I had created.  According to that timeline I would be done with this piece by now and beginning to work on the parts.  This is far from reality.  Life and other obligations have gotten in the way of me accomplishing this.  However, I am not too concerned by this as I have a good idea of the shape of the piece.  As long as I can finish the score by mid-June the project as a whole will still be on track.

This just shows me that setting long-range goals is not necessarily a good idea.  I am more successful when I create daily or weekly goals for myself.  I think that these tend to be more realistic and I can remain focused on those goals.  I should probably stick with short-range goals for now.