Category: Comedy

Since writing down goals worked so well last year, I’m going to do it again. So here are my comedy goals for this coming year.

Side note: I recommend everyone write down their goals (not necessarily comedy) somewhere and not look at them for six months. You’ll be surprised how much of them you’ll have achieved.

Performing:

• Get on stage 450 times this year
• Do at least 8 road gigs
• Perform at 3 different colleges
• Perform at Rutgers University twice
• Bark only 1-2 nights per week while having spots 6-7 nights a week
• Average 4 spots per weekend night
• Get passed at 2 different clubs in NYC
• Practice my full set at home daily
• Enter 5 comedy contests, place in 3 contests and win 1
• Enter 5 comedy festivals, get accepted and perform in 2
• Perform in 15 improv shows
• Perform in 3 sketch shows
• Act in 20 web videos
• Give my motivational speech 20 times (details coming soon!)
• Get booked to 2 commercial / modeling gigs
• Get a TV / Film credit

Producing:

• Produce my own weekly show where the average attendance is 30 people
• Start or join an improv group
• Run a weekly open mic

Writing:

• Write every morning
• Get up to having 45 solid minutes of stand up
• Write 75 blog posts that are not performance critiques
• Write a performance critique of every set within a week of the performance
• Write 52 sketches
• Write a spec script
• Write a pilot for my original sitcom

Learning:

• Take 3 improv classes
• Take 2 film acting classes
• Take a commercial auditions class

Traffic, Marketing and Finances:

• Get my facebook fan page up to 1,000 fans
• Get to 200 RSS subscribers
• Get 2,000 unique visitors a month to the blog
• Earn $8,400 from comedy this year
• Find a 20 hour a week job that pays $40 an hour (doesn’t have to be comedy)
• Have my ebook downloaded 5,000 times (details coming soon!)

Holy crap, I just set 35 goals! I can barely count that high. Last year I had 14 goals and achieved 12 of them. Here’s to achieving the same proportion of goals this year!

At the beginning of the year I posted my goals for stand up in 2009 and then I had a mid year review. Well today is the last day of the year, so let’s compare goals with what actually happened. Go public accountability!

BLACK text is my original goal, and BOLD text is my update.

Performing:

• Get on stage 150 times this year
  I was on stage 271 times this year
• Submit an entry to 2 comedy festivals / comedy contests this year
  I auditioned and competed in two comedy contests. I didn’t make it out of the preliminary round of either one: I came in third place in one and sixth place in the other. I also submitted to two festivals and wasn’t accepted to either.
• Perform at 3 college shows
  I produced and performed in exactly three college shows at Caltech before dropping out. The audience turn out was great for all three shows (between 40 and 70 people each time).
• Do 50 shows in front of a real (people that are not comedians) audience (barking for time counts for this)
  I did 181 shows with real audiences
• Practice 10 minutes of my material outloud each day, without notes
  I have been practicing 6 days a week on average

Producing:

• Start producing a recurring show
  I produced a recurring show at Caltech. It only ran three times because I dropped out and moved back east.

Writing:

• Write 100 blog posts
  I wrote 264 posts this year. However, when I set this goal, I wasn’t planning on doing a performance critique of every set… Not counting performance critiques, I have 44 posts (including this one).
• Write (something, anything) every day
  I started the year writing 3-4 times a week, I’ve written “morning pages” every day since November 11th and plan on continuing to do this daily for forever
• Write one spec script
  I did not write a spec script
• Write 5 short sketches
  I wrote 21 sketches this year. 15 during my three week class and 6 afterwards.

Learning:

• Take an improv class
  I took five improv classes and taught a weekly workshop for two months

Traffic & Marketing:

• Get my facebook fan page up to 150 fans
  I’m currently at 196 fans. Please go here to become my fan on facebook and to help me beat my goal by even more 
• Get 50 RSS Subscribers
  I’m currently at 23 RSS subscribers. You can subscribe here
• Have 200 unique visitors a month to the blog
  I averaged 279 unique visitors per month, with a nice uptrend in the last three months

Overall grade for the year: A-

Holy shit, this whole goal setting thing is amazing. When I wrote these goals at the beginning of the year I didn’t think I’d do five of them.

Turns out I fully achieved 10 of my 14 stated goals, more or less achieved 2 other goals (write everyday and practice every day) and completely missed two goals (RSS subscribers and spec script). I realize that 10 + 2 half credits out of 14 doesn’t make for a 90% but I’m not in school anymore and I achieved the most important goal of performing enough times on stage.

Since this worked so well, my goals for the coming year (which will be posted tomorrow) are going to be WAY more ambitious. Then again, I seriously raised the stakes on my succeeding at comedy this year, so if tomorrow’s goals don’t seem slightly insane, I’m not trying hard enough.