Your Acting Career Goals
How to Pick Them and How to Stick to Them
To begin with, choose five, and only five, career-related goals to accomplish for the coming 12 months. Five seems to be the right number; not too many, not too few. Now “career-related” could mean goals that tangentially relate to or affect your career prospects. Is this the year you want to quit smoking? Get back in shape? Find a new day job that has better flexibility?
Picking Your Five Goals
These goals aren’t directly related to your career, per se, but they will definitely have an affect on it. Of course, you’ll want to pick straightforward goals, too. You could get certified as an actor combatant, earn more EMC points for your Actors' Equity card or work at breaking into audio book narration. Whatever you decide, just pick five.
For example, let’s say you’re moving to a new town, Washington D.C., and you pick these five goals.
- Find acting work at theatres in the DC/Baltimore area
- Find a day job in DC
- Research all agents, casting offices and so on in the DC/Baltimore area
- Buy a car!
- Lose ten pounds
Next, take each goal and break it down into smaller sub-goals.
Find acting work at Theatres in the DC/Baltimore area
- Develop a list of theatres where I want to work
- Starting networking with DC actors
- Decide what styles of theatre I want to perform
- Research any general auditions
- Begin work on new audition material
Then take each one of these sub-goals and break them down into smaller and smaller pieces.
Develop a List of Theatres Where I Want to Work
- Professional Equity Theatres and theatres with SPT contracts
- All theatres producing Classical theatres and known works...no musicals or touring
- DC & Baltimore area only
- Find out which theatres have good reputations and which to stay away from
- Research Resident Acting Companies
Putting Your Plans in Action
Eventually, you’ll get down to tasks that can be accomplished in a day. Plan ahead and write out these specific tasks on a big wall calendar. This will allow you to bounce back and forth between your various goals. So when you wake up on any given morning and ask yourself, “What can I do today that will move my career forward?” You can say, “Oh, today I’ll continue my research into theatres that have resident acting companies, I’ll go to the gym, and I’ll call the box office of The Folger Theatre and get on their mailing list.”
Now even if you only manage to only do one of these tasks, know that at the end of the day you have moved your career forward one more step. That one step, added to all the others, will separate you from 99% of the actors out there who are looking for work. One phone call, one email or one hour spent working on a monologue every day, is all it takes to gather the momentum that will propel you forward.
The Year in Review
Then, on a quarterly basis, pick some morning to sit down and look over your list of goals to see how much progress you’re making. Then, at the end of 12 months, sit down one more time and go through the list. Maybe you’ve completed goals 1 and 4, are coming close to completing goals 2 and 5, and goal 3… well, you just couldn’t keep that one on track, but there’s always next year. Now ask myself, “Am I successful? Have I moved forward in my career? Was all the effort and hardship worthwhile and am I creating the destiny I want?” You’ll know the answer.
Picking Career Goals
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