To look for the place where everything goes, everyone’s looking and nobody knows. Is there a way, a map or a sign or is it just dreaming, all in the mind (Peggy Seeger)

Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash

Stretch!

I've done this a few times in my career. 

While making a 10 slide introduction of me and my career for an upcoming meeting, I could appreciate anew the leaps I've taken at various times.

Sometimes they haven't been well timed leaps and they affected my family for the better or for the worse. At the time I had no crystal ball.

A few times (okay, once) I've regretted NOT taking the leap, a few times (okay, once) I've regretted TAKING the leap.

As James Clear says:

"There will never be a perfect time to do something that stretches you.

That’s true whether you are starting a business, having a child, changing careers, or wrestling with any number of challenges. That’s not a license to be reckless and never think things through, but at some point you have to embrace the uncertainty because it is the only path forward.

If you were ready for it, it wouldn't be growth." 

I wonder what the next stretch will bring. 

It's a new dawn people (Grace Slick at Woodstock)

Photo by 30daysreplay (PR & Marketing) on Unsplash

It's a new year! New starts!

Yes, that also means it's goal setting time for Mandy, me, and the rest of the blogoshere!

It can't be avoided - discussion on Facebook on whether to have new year resolutions or not doesn't help and pretty soon we'll be back at school leading students in the art of setting goals for their year.

But before we start on that proud tradition - some cautionary words from Dan Rockwell to reflect upon:

Some limitations of goals-only thinking:  

Goals restrict happiness. Goal-fever puts off happiness until goals are reached (adapted from, “Atomic Habits,” by James Clear)

Goal-driven leaders minimize difficulties and exaggerate opportunities. False optimism results in best-scenario-thinking.

Setting a goal is easy. Choosing the next best step is the challenge.

Goals are outside your control. But behaviors are within your control.

Yes, we should exercise some caution: students can become hugely invested in a big audacious goal - say, a pass rate figure for a year group. The potential pluses are obvious - collegiality and group strength/expectation can raise students up to higher levels of performance/achievement. The potential negatives are less obvious - what about the students who don't buy into the goal or who can't/won't reach the needed levels to meet the goal?

Worth thinking about as we approach goal setting season. 

The secret of success lies in the determination to attain the goal (Hsing Yun)

Photo by Uroš Jovičić on Unsplash

Setting goals was obviously on Hsing Yun's mind at this time of the year. 

I especially like his analogy of a machine: If you force the machine to produce over its capacity, there is a high chance the machine will break down and fail to achieve the desired output. 

Having goals and targets that exceed our capacity is like having no goal at all.

Instead, Hsing Yun says, a goal is set by considering its feasibility, the necessary conditions, what steps need to be taken in what order, and our capacity to achieve it.

In addition, he refers to the famous story of The Tortoise and the Hare.

This year, I have set a goal of having a post going viral. So I will work away at that over my blogs and, like the tortoise, I will keep on crawling/posting every day to give my goal a chance at success.

In the end, I will reach that goal (it might take some time).

My goals beyond (John McLaughlin)

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Holidays always help turn my attention towards what I want to achieve in the new year (which is next week). There's plenty of down time around family get togethers to reflect and ponder.

Resolutions are not my bag, maan, but setting some short term objectives mos def is (my bag). As you all know: Your focus determines your reality (Qui Gon-Jinn).

Clarity is easier for my professional goals. Here they are:

Get into more classrooms - provide better feedback for teachers - improve my appraisal for others and myself.

Personal goals are trickier. Basically, I have no idea...yet.

Dan Rockwell's post is helpful here as he asks good questions.

#1. What do you need to stop doing in 2018? (If you can’t completely stop it, how might you do less of what drains the life out of you?)

#2. What might you do that gives you energy in 2018?

• What did you do in 2017 that lit you up?
• What projects jazzed you up?
• What personal values were in play when your energy went up?

Values of personal enjoyment/ learning and communicating via reading (50 books in 52 weeks) and writing (my blogs) are my answers.

This year, maintaining the reading discipline proved relatively easy compared to being more proactive with the blogs.

To help with that and reduce the vast number of bookmarks (in my education, music and personal folders) I'm going to concentrate more on writing in 2018.

So, maybe less reading (a book a week became fairly all consuming) and more writing will create the much needed balance to the force.

To have a post go viral  is my personal stretch goal, my wildly audacious goal, my goal beyond for 2018. 

It's all an unfinished film (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Here's an excerpt from my latest newsletter article:

As a famous saying goes, ‘Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like an apple’. With the first full week, we suddenly feel like the year has started in earnest. Time is flying by! 

This week, in extended vertical form classes and in the junior school, students have been engaged in establishing their learning goals and personal goals for the year. It is our aim that these goals will be monitored regularly in the extended form class time.  

While I was standing in for Mrs Read in her form class, I also wrote my own goals for these two areas.  

My learning goal is to read at least 50 books this year and my personal goal is do more forward planning with my own writing so that my writing can improve with more frequent editing.

Just like the students, to successfully reach my goals I will need to be quite self-disciplined, avoid some long standing distractions, manage my time well and be reminded of my goal regularly.  

I will need my students in Mrs Read’s vertical form to keep me honest. I aim to keep them honest with their goals as well.

So far so good - starting with books I brought back from our Christmas holiday, it's one book down (Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Pictures of the Gone World).

It's a goal (Winston McCarthy)

The education world loves jargon. Jargon and acronyms. First and second place.

A colleague of mine at Waimea College asked me once what the difference was between an 'objective' and a 'goal'. As an English teacher (and someone with a brilliant mind) he knew the subtleties at play.

What he was alluding to was the unnecessary obfuscation of language that seems to emerge on a daily basis in teaching. I'm sure he'll be spluttering while reading the next sentence.

A new addition (or at least, new to me) is the term 'stretch goals'. 

It seems a 'stretch goal' is:

A goal that cannot be achieved by incremental or small improvements but requires extending oneself to the limit to be actualized.   Stretch goals are used, not to drive short-term action, but to inspire longer term innovation processes aimed at making desirable outcomes, that are currently impossible, achievable at some future time.  While it might be hoped to achieve a stretch goal either in large measure or in full within a defined time frame (usually quite some time into the future) the timing of the achievement of the stretch goal cannot be guaranteed - it can only be striven for.

A “stretch goal” is any goal “which seems to be unobtainable with the existing resources”. The intent behind stretch goals is to force employees to think creatively for solutions to apparently impossible problems. 

Interestingly, I am currently being asked to come up with such goals (three or four) that need to be achieved in a nine month period. No really!

Methinks the term has not quite been understood.