5 Reasons to Set a Knitting Goal
Happy New Year!! I hope all of your celebrations last night were fun, safe and included time with friends and family.
Photo Credit: gideonc – not waving – drowning! via Compfight cc
Our celebration was rather quiet (which is also nice), since we were up early yesterday to drive up to the mountains so I could teach skiing. You all knew I am also a downhill ski instructor, right?! Regardless, Arlis and I have been spending quite a bit of time discussing goals for the upcoming year. And this got me to thinking about setting goals for your knitting. It might sound a little crazy, but hear me out.
1. Setting a Goal is Setting an Intention
The whole process of goal setting, if nothing else, is about being intentional about the topic. Knitting, for most folks reading this blog, is a hobby. Often, hobbies get pushed to the side when life gets crazy. But rarely is that a good answer.
However, by setting a knitting goal, you are giving it a level of priority in your life. Whether it is a “big” goal or a “small” goal isn’t nearly as important as giving it enough priority to think about it with consideration and purpose.
2. Improving Your Skills will Increase Your Enjoyment
The idea of a goal is to push yourself to achieve something more than you would normally accomplish. This push is almost always seen as a form of improvement. Almost universally, as our skills increase our enjoyment of the activity also increases.
Whether the goal is around learning new techniques, working through your stash or finishing up some previously unfinished projects, new skills and insights will be the result leading to even more enjoyment of our favorite hobby.
3. A Good Goal Helps Us Measure Progress
Although knitting is a hobby and hobbies don’t require us to set goals, seeing progress is very satisfying. This can be particularly important when the rest of your world feels like a continuous grind with very little changing day to day.
By setting (and then reaching) goals and sub-goals we gain a sense of accomplishment. And while many times the rest of the world may be out of our control, our world of yarn and needles is very much in our hands!
4. Hobby-based Goals Can Build Community
One of the important elements of good goal setting is building in accountability. Although an accountability group can sound scary, it is just a fancy phrase for a small group of people supporting each other to achieve a shared or similar goal. In our world, we might call it our knitting group!
If you think all this sounds silly, ultimately a KAL (knit-along) is a specific goal shared by a group of knitters. KALs are popular not only for the project that is the result, but also for the camaraderie that is shared between the participants supporting and encouraging one another.
5. It Will Add a Little Fun to Your “Task” List
Most of us who set goals also make use of a task list to help us track all the steps required to make it to the final destination. By adding a knitting goal, at least one of the tasks on your list will be something that you can look forward to doing.
Besides, it has been shown again and again that time away from your “normal” daily activities will actually increase your productivity. Heaven knows, the world could use a little more creativity, so you might as well do your part.
