Making Changes, with a plan.

When making changes, regardless of what you want to call them, the important thing is to be consistent. Typically to create a new habit it takes doing the new habit consistently for 21 days. So, if your goal is to drink a gallon of water every day, then you have to do it for 21 days before it is established as a new habit.

Unfortunately, it is easier to break a habit than it is to keep a habit. (unless you are speaking of things that are addictive and that is a completely different topic). An example of this is, we have been attending church for years going every service. Then one Sunday one of the kids was sick. The next Sunday I was sick. The following Sunday was REALLY difficult to get up and go to church.

Looking at professional goals you must be realistic. I am in process of prepping my curriculum for the semester, which starts January 14^th. (I might be a procrastinator.) My goals are of course to have an amazing curriculum so that my students learn and add skills to their portfolio. I want them to be able to use what they have learned in their future careers. Being realistic, I must realize that it is my responsibility to present the curriculum and to be available to my students whether they learn new skills are up to them and that does not reflect on who I am as long as I am doing my job.

Let’s take a minute though and think about some SMART goals. SMART goals are deliberate goals that have a plan and thought behind them, not just thrown on the wall in hopes they would get done.

-          Updating the curriculum to enable students to learn and add skills

o   Specific – the course happens to be a web pages course, so I want my students to know how to create a basic website.

o   Measurable – students will have built a website by the end of the course.

o   Achievable – through the curriculum and the tutorials, students that follow along and are interactive should be able to complete the end goal.

o   Realistic – the course is 8 weeks so it will be a lot of work to complete but the motivated student can do it. The assignment is a 3-5 page website. For a basic website, 8 weeks is plenty of time.

o   Timely – being able to create your own website is a skill that can be invaluable. Knowing the basics of web building an individual can customize weblog templates, create their own, or even become a freelance designer. With our digital world, this is a timely skill.

Maybe something a bit generic?

-          Organize my office

o   Specific – make sure everything is where it belongs and has a place of belonging. Go through outdated material and discard. Less is more.

o   Measurable – my office will be less cluttered, and materials will be easily located when needed.

o   Achievable – By setting time aside daily and focusing on the end goal it is completable.

o   Realistic – Need to have a due date set so that the goal does not get brushed off. The goal is realistic as long as it stays a goal.

o   Timely – Having a less cluttered space limits chaos. There is always a place for order.

Not everything has to abide by SMART goals, but I have found having the reason and basic plan to get things done encourages me to complete them. Perhaps this is from my time advocating for my special needs son.

Do you have goals? Resolutions? Intents? For my home office, it is my intentional focus for the month of January. I figure if it is clean and organized then if for some reason somebody else needs to get something I won’t find a mess where there was searching going on. 😊