​Get 2019 off to the right start​ now – creative career advice for the new year

2019 is here to help you build on your achievements or – if necessary – start your life all over again. And Mandy News is here to ensure you're kicking the year off the best way possible.

4th January 2018
/ By Matthew Whitehouse

Motivational advice for 2018 PIXABAY

Let's see what you can do to get this year off to the right start.

Get organised!
Getting your day and week in order is of upmost importance to ensure you are at your most productive. Be it a physical diary or any of the multitude of organisational apps out there, getting some kind of structure to your day will really help you get your year off to a good start – and the rest.

While they may seem rather antiquated in this day and age, a diary is a simple, straight forward tool to make sure you know what you're doing and when and if you actually use it, it really will help. However, if the idea of using something that doesn't sync with your tech is just too much to bear, maybe consider Things – the iOS app that's designed to keep your life in order.

It's a to-do list app designed to help you get the most out of your day. It syncs with Siri and Apple Reminders to give you a simple breakdown of your day and what needs to be done within a clean, simple interface. It comes in desktop, iPad and iPhone flavours and is about as fully featured as you could hope a productivity app gets.

Set yourself some goals
It's so easy for a day to pass by, then a week, then a month, then a year – before you know it you haven't ticked off anything and you've wasted another year.

Do you have a script you're writing? A song you want to make? Maybe you want to get into theatre, or dance? Well set yourself some goals. Don't just think about it. If you're writing, give yourself a deadline – sometimes entering a competition is a good way of ensuring you get something done. Even if you know you're not going to win, that you're not ready yet, you can still enter. Just making that deadline will feel like an achievement.

Setting yourself some goal and focusing on a point you want to get to will drive you to your next success. It won't always work, but it will help having those goals. Write your goals out with pen and paper and look back at them, amending them as you go along  – there's a certain satisfaction in drawing a physical line through something that pressing delete on a phone just can't match.

Get inspired
Give yourself time to get inspired – Ferris Bueller famously said “life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” As much as it's important to make a start on whatever it is you've got milling around in that brain of yours, it's equally important to feed it things from time to time as well.

That album you didn't get round to, that documentary you missed, that film – it's out on Blu-ray now – that book you never finished. Listening to a certain song can completely change your whole perspective on something and maybe the end of that book will give you the drive you needed to start your own! Don't deny yourself these opportunities by breathing in all the creative goodness that is out there.

Get rid of bad habits
This is obvious, but every year you say you're going to give up smoking, right? You're going to hold off on drinking every night, right? You're going to stop relying on paying people to bring you hot food and actually start making your own, right? You're going to get up and go for a run or go to the gym, right? You're going to wake up at the same time every day and stop staying up too late, right? It might seem like a tough step, but getting these things sorted will help you in all aspects of life, not just your creative side. Stamp out those bad habits

Got some ideas of your own? Let us know what helps you in the comments below.

Let's make 2019 your year.

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