In most things in life, practice makes progress, and becoming an effective goal setter takes work. And so each Sunday, I’m going to declare my Goals For The Week. I’m sure I don’t have to explain the usefulness of being able to set and achieve goals, but I myself was unaware for most of my life how difficult this actually is to do intentionally and meaningfully. It is absolutely a skill that needs to be developed, and somehow I made it to my forties without ever sharpening that particular knife. Sure, I’ve had to craft S.M.A.R.T. goals every year in my Other Life, but despite being arguably one of the actual useful hoops we teachers must jump through, they always end up half-assed and largely forgotten. After all, how hard is it to mildly bullshit one goal, once a year? Setting weekly, personal goals, though- I’m hoping the routine and ritual of Sunday Goal Setting will lead to goal-smashing success 🙂

I will not bore you with the explanation of the S.M.A.R.T. acronym. For me, I think that for short term goals, especially, it’s as simple as:

-the goal must be relevant and meaningful

-the goal must be achievable

-the goal must be specific 

Over the past few years, I’ve sort of made weak attempts at setting goals, probably, I guess. The fact that I can’t quite think of anything I can proudly point to and say, “I planned on doing this, and then I totally fucking did it!!” is probably all that needs to be said. Yikes. So I’m going to add a little public accountability for my weekly goals- posting them here and putting my intentions out to the universe. 

Here we go for this week:

-Write every day

-Go outside for at least 20 minutes every day

-Log every meal every day

-Figure out the virtual teaching mini-unit for every class, and figure out wtf everyone is going to be doing when we’re back in school (upcoming, in-person units)

That’ll do for the first week. That last one is a hefty lift, and a bit daunting in my current state of mind (which is more than a little in denial about the return of my Other Life tomorrow).