One month into Q4, also known as fall, I think it’s the perfect time to check in on how my early September plans are faring. This is like the February resolutions check, where you either feel triumphant about how disciplined you’ve been, or red-faced about how little of it stuck. Or likely a bit of both. Here are some questions that I ask myself as I look at my list of both successful plans and…less…successful…
What can I tweak about the goals I’m not living up to
Often my goals don’t work because I’m not realistic about them, but they might work if I gave more time. I’m always doing this by putting my bedtime back, as an example. I’m a natural night owl but I realize that the day is more productive. When I’m on a bad track, my bedtime slips past 11 to 11:30 and then even midnight. When I try to get on a better track, sometimes I’m overly ambitious and try to put bedtime to 10:00. Yes, I’d like that but does it compromise with my natural inclination? In this case, I’d try 10:30 as a more realistic goal. And also add in a routine change whereby I try to wind down at 9:30.
Goal success: As described. I’m trying out 10:30.
Examine what went well for goals I met
They went well because I’m perfect. That is what I’d like to think. But I know that things that work are often because they were the right size of change, or the change mattered to me enough that I knew it had to happen, or because I saw early results. What are the lessons from my successful change that I can apply to the less successful?
Goal success: my best achievements were those where I slotted them in realistically. For instance, I wanted to get back to learning Spanish on my app, but rather than specifying a time amount or number of lessons per day, I made the goal to just log in and do one thing.
What can I put on the back burner
Often when I don’t make my goals it’s because I’m trying to focus too much (a chronic problem for me). By interrogating what’s really important then I can consider goals that might go on the back burner, at least for this quarter, and double down on the couple that are really most important.
Goal success: two projects postponed to late fall. You’ll have to wait to guess which ones.
