It seems almost impossible for people to set clear goals and achieve them.
Years ago my wife and I went to seminar on time management and I read several books on the subject. One of the key principles that they emphasized was understanding what your end goal was and why you wanted to reach it. It is harder than it sounds. Everyone who teaches on planning has some words that are interchangeable but represent concepts you need to understand. The words can be goals, objects, targets, benchmarks. Every guru defines them different.
For simplicity lets call them all goals but have levels. At the top it Goal A. This is your Ultimate Goal. Below it you would have level B goals, B1, B2, B3, etc. Below each of those you would have level C so that you could have goal C1a, C1b and C1c under B1. Under B2 you would have C2a, C2b and C2c. If you have the right kind of personality you can make beautiful charts and graphs that will take all you time and keep you from achieving Goal A. You are officially OCD.
People come up with some great ideas. Everyone likes them. Enthusiasm builds until someone asks, “What does this have to do with reaching Goal A?” I think I mentioned this before, but I had a district official come into my class and ask what my students were doing. In the explanation I mentioned reading comprehension. He lit up with joy. He knew that term. He did not have a clue to what it meant but he remembered hearing it somewhere. He proceeded to tell me that the students should be sitting in groups reading to each other instead of each one working alone out of the book. They should be interacting and feeling good about what they were doing. I concede that would be more fun but my question was “How would that teach them reading comprehension?” We had different Goal A’s. Mine was reading comprehension. His was self-esteem. His was to feel good. Mine was to have something to feel good about.
It is important to know what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. Basics in planning are overlooked. As a result things go from bad to worse. We get distracted by side effects and forget what we were doing in the first place.
To be continued...
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.