How are you doing?

A mid-year check-in on your creative goals.

This time of year, I consider this: we will blink, and it will be December. That is how fast this year may seem. We will suddenly be in December, reflecting, “Where did the year go?” Well, we are close to midway through the year right now, which is why I think it is a good time to pause and reflect on your creative goals for 2026.

How do you want to feel on September 1st, as it relates to your creative goals? What would love to have accomplished or learned before the summer is over? How do you want to feel on December 31st?

This can align to many areas of your creative life: writing, publishing & sharing, audience growth & engagement, as well as business/revenue goals that relate to your creative work.

These are my concerns of skipping a mid-year check in:

• Life is busy, it’s not hard to forget entirely about mid or long term goals because we are so busy reacting to the external needs of others.

• Focusing so much on daily responsibilities and routines can have us lose sight of our larger creative goals.

• Assuming we will have more time/attention/energy/resources later on. We just happen to be in a busy season now, but are certain that we won’t be so busy in the future.

• Missing out on small incremental growth and progress because we are delaying for the “right time,” which rarely comes.

• Not recognizing and celebrating the progress we have made, and using that motivation to encourage sustained growth.

Today I want to walk you through how to do a mid-year creative check in, to ensure you feel 100% aligned with your creative intentions. I would love if you shared with me in the comments:

1. How are you doing so far this year with your creative goals?

2. How can I help? What topics would you like to see me cover in his newsletter?

Let’s dig in…

Create or Revisit Your Clarity Cards

Clarity Cards are a simple 5-step process to find more time and energy to make writing a priority in your life. I first created this more than 15 years ago, and have taken thousands of writers and artists through the process.

Clarity Cards are the foundation for setting milestones and goals that will truly move your creative work forward. Most writers I speak to struggle to find the time and energy to write amidst so many other responsibilities and distractions. Clarity Cards solves that.

The result of Clarity Cards is to provide you with a clear sense of what to focus on first, and how it will lead you to the milestones and goals that matter most to you. What you will end up with is a pyramid of 10 prioritized cards that will help you feel focused and make clear decisions to find more time and energy to write and share your work.

At the end of the 5-step process, they look like this:

It is 100% free, you can download the entire process in this 10-page PDF:

If you have done Clarity Cards in the past, I suggestion revisit them. I find this process is useful when you do it once a year, or even once a quarter.

You can also view this hourlong workshop where I walk through the Clarity Card process and show examples:

Make Tiny Changes That Lead to Big Growth

So much of this work is about challenging our own assumptions and being brave enough to prioritize goals that others may not yet see the value in. These may be aspirations that you will not receive immediate validation on.

When someone you love (or even mildly like) asks for something, it’s easy to justify their request as a priority. You are fulfilling their need, perhaps feeling a deeper sense of connection to them, and living up to your own values.

For example: “Jen asked for help with the bake sale, and even though I have three other volunteering projects, two young kids, a full-time job, am helping my parents move, and am prepping for my own knee surgery, I may be seen as a self-involved person if I didn’t help with the bake sale. But, I’m the kind of person I want my friends to be able to count on. I’m saying yes to helping with the bake sale, and I’ll just work on my novel when things calm down. Now, where is that recipe for cupcakes?”

I imagine we have all been here at many times in our lives. Where we put our creative goals to the side because — someone, somewhere — could use assistance with something. To turn them down would fill us with guilt, so we set put their mildest calls for help ahead of our biggest creative goals.

A mid-year check-in and Clarity Cards are meant to help you consider how you will end this year with a sense of deep fulfillment. Will some of those cards include important responsibilities and aspect of who you are outside of your creative work? Definitely! But could one card include your writing or creative goals? Possibly, if you want.

Clarity Cards aren’t just meant to be a feel-good exercise, they are meant to be a tool that helps you define your intentions for the week, organize your calendar, and consider where you put your time and energy.

Are there very simple changes you can make to your routine? Or new habits to start? For instance, perhaps you want to start writing again after a long break, and you remember how years ago, you had a wonderful writing practice of 45 minutes per day. But now, you are overwhelmed by life and time is short. Consider if it is possible to develop a three minute writing practice to start. Not as an end goal, but as a way to get some words down on paper, and to fill your mind with ideas that your writing explores. Over a couple of weeks, could you possibly double that to six minutes?

Recently, author, poet, and essayist Nancy Reddy reflected on her own experiences using Clarity Cards":

“What I like about Dan’s exercise is that it asks you really commit in a visual way to what your top priorities are, instead of just listing all the things you want to work on. The exercise of figuring out what item is at the top of my pyramid truly was clarifying… My most recent round showed me that some of the things I’ve been worrying about and putting work into . . . do not really matter to me that much.”

Her posts are also worth checking out.

A Personal Check-In

As I considered all of this for myself, I’m reflecting on some intentions I have for this year:

1. I want to be writing more. While I do write and publish a 1,500-2,500 word essay each week, I also want to revisit the next book (or two) that I’m working on and re-establish my writing routine for them.

2. I’ve written previously (here and here) about my goal of watching more movies this year. I just finished my 125th film so far in 2026. The routine I have set has brought more relaxation and joy to my life, so I’m just noting that this process is working as intended. Somehow, watching nearly a movie a day has become a consistent part of my life, and I love it.

3. A year ago, I made a radical shift to my health routines, changing what I eat and when, and upping my workout from once a week to six days a week. On the one-year anniversary of this, I did an assessment of progress and goals, and made adjustments to my meal plan, and doubled my daily workout to around 60 minutes a day, most days. I have never felt healthier, and I’m grateful for that.

4. Our older son is 15, and we are increasingly aware that we have another two years of him living at home full-time. I have been considering experiences we want to have as a family, before he goes to college. That said, so many friends with older kids have expressed to me how wonderful the years are once they go to college and beyond. So I’m not freaking out about this, just trying to be mindful of how special this time is.

Please share with me in the comments:

1. How are you doing so far this year with your creative goals?

2. How can I help? What topics would you like to see me cover in his newsletter?

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If you want to explore working with me, there are two ways I collaborate with writers and creators:

• One-on-one consulting

• My Creative Shift Mastermind

Recent videos available to my paid Substack subscribers:

• Your 2026 social media strategy: Time for a refresh (10 minutes)

• You are the best advocate for your writing: Show people what you’ve got, with passion and joy (10 minutes)

• How to develop a literacy of your ideal readers: Knowing what engages your ideal readers may be easier than you think (14 minutes)

As always, thank you so much for being here with me.

-Dan

Kids of the Week: he started Tae Kwon Do lessons!

Deciding if this is the next song he wants to learn to play: