One of the great things about the internet is that it knows no national boundaries nor time zones. People are on the internet on their schedule, when they feel like, no matter the time of day (or night) where they live. I have a constant struggle between my night owl persona and my early-riser persona. Actually, I don’t really struggle with either, other than telling myself I need to get to bed at night. My real struggle happens in the middle of the daylight hours when I would rather just lounge about and sleep. When I was working a job in the regular workforce this made things difficult. Fortunately, I was in software development where the idea of a normal 8-5 schedule was considered odd. It really wasn’t until I had kids who were in school that I started to follow the rules of a normal day.
The benefit of having odd hours that I’m on the internet is that on websites and in apps where interaction is possible, there are a lot of folks from outside the U.S. who are available to interact with when I’m on. Because of this, I’ve struck up some friendships with quite a lot of UK folks, and a decent group from Australia. Of course, the Aussies always piss me off because they’re a day ahead…
What’s fascinating to me is that these folks have shown me a perspective of life that’s decidedly un-American. It’s a way of looking at the world, and life in general, in a totally different way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denouncing my American citizenship to move abroad. I’m not abandoning my country. Nothing quite so dramatic as that, but rather, I’m enthralled by the differing views that these folks have. At the core, we all want what’s best for our kids. We want to be in control of what happens to our families, and we all seem to love our sports…whether cricket, rugby, Australian Rules Football, American football, baseball. or soccer/football. I’m learning on a daily basis that folks are folks. And that’s pretty cool.
This interaction with folks across the globe has also opened my eyes to thinking bigger in my goals. It’s caused me to look at the horizons that I’d inadvertently set for myself. It’s forced me to realize that I’ve sold myself short. That my goals simply aren’t big enough. I’ve also been exposed to some new ways of thinking about how to set goals themselves.
I’ve always tried to make my goals measurable, but haven’t really had a system for setting my goals outside of that. I recently read a post by my UK buddy Papa Tont about goal setting that really hit home. He uses an acronym for goal setting: SMART. The idea is that your goals need to be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relavent
- Timed
After reviewing my successes and struggles from January I came to realize that I was lacking in one or more of the SMART components to my goals. I’m working on honing my goals for February and beyond, and I’m applying the SMART structure to as many as I can. I’m even using a combination of Todoist (more on that in another post) and Coach.me to convert some of the goals into habits.
I’m looking at setting a larger number of short-term goals that can be achieved within the span of a month. I realize that 4 weeks is a pretty arbitrary timeframe, but the idea is for me to regularly assess where I stand with the goals and then make the necessary adjustments to achieve them. Actually, I’m re-imagining my yearly goals and then setting smaller goals within the framework of the larger ones. I’d like to get to the point where I can set weekly and daily goals…but I need to be sure that I don’t drive myself nuts when I don’t meet those goals. Hence I’m focusing on the monthly goals within the framework of the annual goals for February/March.
I’m also being much more intentional about the measurements that I’m using for my goals. Rather than saying “I want to lose weight”, I’ve set a goal to lose 2.2 pounds a week. The actual goal is set as “weigh 168 lbs on 02/22/15” so that it meets the measurable and timed criteria. I’m also tying this into another goal for my fitness in general. That is, my yearly goal (or maybe it should be called a focus) is to be more fit. To that end, I’m worked out 5 out of every 7 day last month. I didn’t really concentrate on what the workouts were, but rather just needed to prove to myself that I could be a regular participant in exercise. This month I’m working on increasing the intensity of the workouts, mixing other forms of workouts in with my stationary cycling. So the two fitness goals are “workout 5 out of every 7 days for 30-60 minutes” and “vary the mixture of workouts to include treadmill fast-walking, abs workouts, and weight program”. I realize the second one doesn’t meet all the SMART criteria, so I’m striving to adjust it to make more sense without writing War and Peace to describe it.
So that’s my plan for the last two weeks of February. I’m moving forwards, albeit slowly, while setting myself up for even greater success in March and beyond. How about you, what are you doing related to your goals to move forwards while being SMART? What systems and tools are you using to set and track your goals?
Thank you so much for the mention and good for you for setting some SMART goals. Remember to make them SMARTER by constantly Evaluating your progress and Rewarding yourself for hitting your mini or final goals. Good luck with them, all the best