I've always performed better when I had a clear task and I was under some pressure, as it was the case when I had a day job. Being an artist is a very different story: it hasn't always been easy to see what I needed to do, and there's no one waiting on me so I'd tend to procrastinate and put things off.

Some people thrive when they are given time and freedom to do whatever they want. For me, this was a recipe for disaster and for a while, I felt lost.

I needed some clear and specific goals, so I settled on a few that were specific, clear and doable: share 1 image a day, write 1 blog post a day, and make 3 videos a week.

Setting goals like these for your art might seem counterintuitive at first, even potentially harmful - quality would suffer in order to meet such strict deadlines. I've found that to be true a handful of times, but for the most part and almost 2 years later, pushing myself this way has made me a much better -and efficient- photographer, writer and videographer.

As soon as I post today's image, I start thinking about tomorrow's; when my latest video goes live, I already have the next one in mind. Always moving forward and challenging myself to do it better next time.

Along with these periodic, smaller goals, I also work on bigger projects like prints, zines, books and such. These need more flexibility but I try to set deadlines as well, to keep me on track.

When I set these goals for myself, I was trying to build a system that would put me to work. I believe that once a system is in place, results are a matter of time. Perhaps, instead of measuring our progress in photography by the images we make -hard to do if not impossible-, we should review our systems.