New Year's Resolutions

I wrote this on January 28th, so it was already late, then I forgot to post it!  Ahh!!!

Due to a few extra happenings in December, I realized during our honeymoon that I hadn’t made any resolutions for 2015 yet.  This, my friends, was an issue.  I made goals last year and for the first time in as long as I can remember I actually hit most of them, 6 out of 8 to be specific.  75% is a passing grade in my book!  Some of them were “shoot for the moon” type goals, and I even hit a couple of those thanks to God’s help.

So, I listened to the same podcast I listened to in late 2013, got my pen and paper out and went to town.  I quickly realized I had too many goals written.  That’s one of the keys to actually hitting your goals; not having an abundance of them.  As I said, last year I had 8 goals total.  When I had finished brainstorming I had 18, way too many to keep track of.

All 18 were good mind you, but if you have 18 goals you really don’t have any.  It’s too many to keep track of.  Many business leaders have different categories to help you think of goals.  One of the guys I listen to frequently suggested 7 categories so I went with that to help me focus.  7 seems like a lot of categories but some goals easily overlap different ones.

The seven categories this particular guy suggests are spiritual, financial, social, family, career, physical and intellectual.  As I said before, you can make several goals that overlap categories so you don’t end up with I don’t know, like 18 or so when you’re finished.  After narrowing the list, I still have a ton.  I decided to prioritize and have 5 goals on the front of the card and the rest on the back.  I carry the card in my wallet to remind me to stay focused.

A lot of people also suggest making SMART goals.  SMART usually refers to specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.  Sometimes people use different words for the acronym but those are the usual words associated with it.  The reason for using SMART goals is because if goals don’t have at least a few of those than they will never happen.

For instance, you can make a goal or resolution to lose weight.  It’ll never happen or at the very least has a much lesser chance of happening.  If you say you want to lose 20 pounds by June 1^st, then you have a higher chance of success.  If you check in with someone regularly you have an even greater chance of succeeding.  Even if you just record your weight on a regular basis it would increase your chances. 

Something I learned in my time in Yangon was the importance of measuring things.  It was in regards to business plans of course but it makes sense in many different areas.  I will add a caveat that many people are trying to measure students’ progress which sometimes makes sense until we started measuring 5 year olds on a weekly basis for ‘data-driven instruction.’  Even in the higher grades a lot of the measurement tools we use are woefully inadequate and do nothing to advance the overall goal of educating our students well.  Some people think we just need to make better tests but making the same tests that every teacher uses across the nation hardly seems logical.