Should you have a knitting goal in 2024?

Back in 2010, Adrienne Martini released a book called Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously.

In it she documented her journey to complete the Mary Tudor Jacket designed by Alice Starmore. The goal was to knit the project within a year, all while working and raising two kids.

Why?

Because, as Martini puts it, “my life had become about nothing more than routine maintenance that kept our general level of chaos at a minimum but didn’t have many (or any) creative challenges.”

So what better way to get the creative juices flowing? Knit a complicated sweater with all-over fair isle details from an out of print pattern book using discontinued yarn designed by a controversial fiber artist.

Obviously.

So how was Martini going to achieve such an audacious goal?

Setting Knitting Goals

A study at the Dominican University of California found there are five elements to achieving your goals:

1. Choose a Measurable and Time Sensitive goal
2. Write down the goal
3. Create a plan to achieve the goal
4. Share that plan with a supportive friend
5. Give regular updates to friend

Let’s break these down a bit further and see how they relate to the Sweater Quest.

Choose a Measurable and Time Sensitive Goal

A *good* goal is something that can be measured.

Saying, I want to be a better knitter this year or I’d like to get in shape isn’t as helpful as saying I want to knit my first 2-color brioche project or lose 15 lbs.

By tying the goal to a measurable outcome we can work toward a specific result. This is crucial to part two of our framework.

But why make the goal time sensitive?

The answer is Parkinson’s Law.

Originally written as part of a satirical essay for The Economist, Cyril Northcote Parkinson proposed that a task will expand to fill the time alloted to complete it.

You’ve probably experienced this in your own life.

Say you need to find a postcard and mail it by the end of the day. You take an hour looking through shops finding the *perfect* postcard. Then continue shopping for a few hours. Next you spend another couple hours at a coffee shop figuring out what to write. Finally on your way home, 8 hours later, you rush to the post office to get a stamp before it closes and mail off your postcard.

But..

If you only had 30 minutes to send a postcard you could easily do all of those tasks in that time.

Humans are pretty great at working toward a deadline but we’re terrible at allocating time when a deadline does not exist.

Giving yourself a clear end date for reaching your goal will help you actually get it done.

Write Down Your Goal

This might seem trivial, but your brain thinks about things differently when you write them down.

One reason journaling is so effective is it takes the ideas and thoughts floating around in your head and organizes them. You might even say that you don’t *really* understand what you think until you write it down.

Writing a goal down makes that “invisible thing visible.”

But you can also take that note and place it somewhere to remind yourself of your goal on a regular basis.

Make A Plan

In our Sweater Knitting Bootcamp we break down the process of knitting a sweater into daily tasks. You literally get a plan that tells you how many inches to knit step-by-step.

Why?

Because it’s hard to conceptualize what it takes to knit a sweater in 6 weeks. Or 90 days. Or a year.

But if you know “I only have to knit 10 rows today,” that’s much easier to do.

Creating a plan helps you take BIG GOALS and break them down into little tasks.

Tell A Supportive Friend (or Mentor)

Some productivity gurus might say that it’s important to make your goals public.

I don’t believe that is always the best idea. You open yourself up to needless criticism if you change plans or don’t complete your goal.

However, sharing your plan with a trusted, supportive friend can be key to your success.

Making a commitment to someone else increases your motivation to make good on that commitment.

And a 2020 study showed that sharing a goal with someone further along in life improved your chances of success.

Give Regular Updates

If there’s one way to skyrocket your growth, in many areas of your life, it’s to have someone you can be accountable to.

For some it is your best friend, or your spouse, or a therapist, or even a knitting group.

What you want is to meet regularly (ideally weekly) and commit to giving progress updates on your goal.

This sets in your mind that you *need* to make progress because you don’t want to come to your meeting empty handed. Even if you don’t make progress that week, your accountability partner can help troubleshoot why you stalled.

Achieving big goals is hard enough. It’s much easier when you have a friend to lean on.

Completing The Sweater Quest

Adrienne Martini used some version of this goal setting framework to complete her sweater.

1. She set out a specific measurable goal (knit the Mary Tudor jacket) and gave herself a deadline to complete it (one year).
2. She literally wrote a book about her experiences.
3. She outlined a plan to achieve her goal.
4. She shared this plan with her friends and family.
5. She worked with other knitters to help her along the way.

And the result?

She did it.

Was it easy?

Not at all.

Which is what makes the book interesting. The ups and downs of tackling such a major project is like riding a rollercoaster.

But the satisfaction of having achieved something so daunting has given her a new confidence.

And you better believe she is an absolutely Fearless Knitter now.

What’s Your Knitting Goal?

So what do you want to achieve this year {{ subscriber.first_name | strip | default: “fellow knitter” }}?

Maybe you want to master a new skill this year, or explore a regional knitting style.

Perhaps you want to knit your first pair of socks or a sweater.

Or maybe you want to take on a year long project like a temperature blanket.

Whatever it is use the 5 steps in this newsletter to help ensure you succeed in accomplishing it this year!

And if you need a welcoming group of supportive knitters to help along the way, consider joining the Yarnist Society.

Yesterday I announced a campaign to fund the next 4 months of the Yarnist newsletter.

We’ve already reached more than 10% of our goal!

If you’d like to show your support for our work, we’ve got some great gifts to say thank you.

PLUS, I’m going to give away a LIFETIME Yarnist+ membership to one lucky person.

Of course this is entirely optional, but if you are able to contribute it’s greatly appreciated!