I Don't Make New Year's Resolutions. I Set Goals

 

My Biggest Management Challenge.

Perhaps you’re expecting an anecdote or story – from Marriott or Westin or General Mills or wherever --  but mine is a continuous management challenge, one always with me wherever I go. For it is I.

I am my biggest management challenge  – how to manage to achieve the goal of happiness and contentment, of comfort with what and who a Fletch Waller is. So how do I tackle that?

Mission

I start with a mission statement. I thank Scott Okie for turning me onto the benefit of -- in my case, need for -- a personal mission statement. My first, in that angst-ridden year of my retirement, 2005-06, read:

 

To enrich Ann’s and my shared lives,

and

to invest my time, energy and experience in helping not-for-profit

organizations become more effective and productive.

 

I pursued that mission to great happiness with Ann and fifteen fascinating years of work for the likes of Horizon House, Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and Seattle Chamber Music Society Foundation. Now that I have retired again, having left behind officer roles, directorships, and trusteeships , it’s time for a new mission statement to be posted above my desk:

 

To continuously enrich Ann’s and my shared lives,

and

to steadily improve each of my six spheres of being.

 

Spheres of Being?

Lots of sources imagine one’s existence as a nested set of spheres or concentric circles. I poached from them to portray mine as six spheres:

1.     I: the id and ego of me

2.     Spouse: my shared life with Ann – wife, lover, friend, chum, partner, companion, coach & critic

3.     The Clan: the extended family, blood relations, step-relations, in-laws

4.     The Tribe: team members, associates, friends, acquaintances, those linked by common interests and common experiences, and their clans

5.     The World: the unknown “others” whose welfare and behavior affect the milieu within which the first three operate; life in all its forms; the planet we share, Gaia’s realm.

6.     The Spirit: the mystical why of all this

 

So, how can I set out to “steadily improve” each of these?

 

Goals, not resolutions

I eschew New Year’s Resolutions. I set goals. At the beginning of each year, I reflect on and set written goals in each of the six spheres. Some of the goals are big deals, some little. (I’ll get to priority-setting in a moment.) For example:

In #1, Me, among my several goals for this year are:

row at minimum 2x/week and exercise or yoga on off days

finish sculpting The Yin and Yang of Yearning and begin Toby

publish 15 or more posts on Northwest Ruinations

read > 18 books

and so on . . ..

 

You will note the dimensionality, the quantification or definition. I believe in measurement; if it can be measured, it’s real. Not every goal is so quantifiable, but I strive to be specific. More examples:

#2, Spouse:

spend most of April in Puglia and Sicily

have a monthly date-day (lunch, movie, museum, attraction, whatever.)

digitize all slides

and others.

#3, Clan:

Visit Amy in Costa Rica

Support Christopher’s tuition

o   etc.

 

Even in more abstract and distant spheres, e.g.:

#6, World:

Sustain memberships in Nature Conservancy, WWF, NWF

Sustain support for IRC and Amnesty Int’l

Attend >4 World Affairs Council events

and so on

 

In all, among the six spheres, 28 goals for 2022.

But day-to-day?

Well and good on an annual scale, but how do I manage myself day to day, week to week? First, I must counter my urge to procrastinate, one of few skills I have truly mastered. As I am a morning person, a few mornings a week I make a list; the list disciplines my days. This sort of behavior tags me as “anal” I suppose, but that’s not the half of it: I fess up to the satisfaction of adding to the list some unplanned thing just done and then, with guilty pleasure, crossing it off. Haven’t you done that?

 

Once listed, I can establish priorities between current items. I rate each on both Immediacy and Importance, awarding a 1 to 3 score. Some unimportant things must be done right away; some important things can't be tackled right away. The higher the total for each item, the higher its priority. (Yes, I know: anal.)

 ~~~~~~~

Friends occasionally comment on how active I am, with how many things I am involved. I don’t think of myself as such; I know many others who accomplish much more. But if I did not use these simple tools to address my most challenging management case, what a mess of fruitless-ness Fletch would present to the world. My first-sphere ego wouldn’t stand for that.

 

I'm not prescribing: each to his own. Ann just read this and commented that most people would not put up with somebody like me.  But she loves me – she says – and I believe her -- always.    

The Best of '21: Not Great Art but Great Memories

Click on pics to open in larger view

Alone on Rainier, Spring

Welcometo Arches

Couldn't resist: Bordello Museum, 
Bawdyville, Idaho

(Blue) Tetons

Yellowstone Lake

Cohab Canyon, near Fruita, Utah

Kolob Canyon Better than Zion for 
old farts)

Kolob Canyon - end of the line

San Juan Island

Swamp Canyon, of Bryce

Willis Creek, Grand Escalante Staircase.
Enter ye who dare

Yakima Canyon, early spring

Zion shade

Willis Creek slot canyons

Babylon or Arches?

Balance . . . balance!

Arches' double Arches

Bouchard Gardens, Sept.

Lake Valhalla, off Pacific Crest Trail

For me? Oh, you shouldn't have. 
Victoria, BC

The Magic of Music

Friday the 7^th, on Mercer Island: I was supposed to be on the road with Ann heading for Mazama, in The Methow, for a five-day warmup for next month’s skiing in Sun Valley. But no, here we are stuck (thank goodness we are blessed with a warm, secure and comfortable home unlike those poor souls out there in tents), unpacking luggage for things to wear and the portable fridge for breakfast fare, trapped in this Puget Sound basin by huge snowfalls in the passes, land-slides north and south, flooding of the rivers flowing through to the Sound and the relentless, torrential rain. All is shut down; nothing to do but ruminate.

The Magic of Music

Yesterday, my friend Bill R gave to our luncheon speakers’ club a charming talk entitled “The Magic of Music”, a back-in-the-day tale of the Claremont College choir of which he must have been a stand-out member (Bill then a full 6’8”.) The choir had been invited to repeat its Mozart’s Requiem at Saint Andrew’s Abbey, a monastic retreat in the Mojave Desert. The choir sang in the rustic outdoor chapel to the Sunday mass congregants, mainly migrant farm workers from nearby camps and fields, people rarely if ever exposed to full choirs and such music. They sat in stunned wonder, then burst forth their tearful joy and gratitude, often only in Spanish, but clearly communicating to these supposedly worldly, somewhat cynical college kids what their gift had given. In turn, Bill and his mates were awed by the response. The magic of music left lasting impressions on both choir and audience.

 Music has brought magic to Ann’s and my shared lives.

Last night we went to Benaroya Hall to hear the Seattle Symphony do a program of John Adams’ music, conducted by Adams, himself. I knew little of Adams, thinking of him mainly as a minimalist. He long since left minimalism behind, now composing elaborate, challenging, technically demanding works inspired by current contemporary events and themes, e.g., his opera Nixon in China. The first piece last night was a musical interpretation of his hair-raising ride in a 1950’s Ferrari; the third, a full symphony inspired by the sound tracks of film noir and the driving be-bop of Coltrane, Parker, and Johnson.  

The second was our favorite because of its form, a piano concerto, and its soloist, Jeremy Denk. Jeremy we’ve met a few times when he used to appear in the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival. Some years back, Ann and I dining at a New York restaurant, encountered Jeremy who not only recognized us but also dredged up our names from his memory bank.  Oh, to be young and a genius; names never to be misplaced on the end of one’s tongue!

To be married to Ann is to be bathed in music.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

During spring and summer, music spills out into the street from our open windows and doors. It is her constant companion (and because of hearing loss, a high decibel companion for sure) – symphony, chamber, opera, interspersed occasionally with my jazz. In the evenings: piano practice. I love to hear home music practice for it says to me “a happy home.”

I spared you the video of
Piper at full howl.

It’s not just our home. For our 13-yr old grandson, Max, music is all-consuming: trumpet, keyboard, guitar, drumming, and composition. When the family visits, it takes only minutes before Max is improvising on the piano. At home, his accompanist is Piper.

Max got that Harmon
mute Jay Thomas 
recommended

Ann was my tolerant companion to Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra concerts. Now I have an enthusiastic companion to whom I’ve introduced saxophonist and artistic director Mike Brockman, pianist Randy Halberstadt, trumpeter Jay Thomas, and others of its stars. Max plays in the Middle School jazz and marching bands under Music Director and SRJO trombonist David Bentley and his staff. 

  

Tonya and Parker: aspiring
pianists, also.

Ballet and Bernstein

Over the holidays, Max went, out of loyalty to sister Molly’s dancing, to two Nutcrackers; for Grandpa, one is enough.  On Christmas afternoon, Max’s uncle Grant took Tonya and cousin Parker to view Spielberg’s revival of West Side Story. That, in turn, reminded Ann and me of Bernstein’s recording session with glorious Kiri Te Kanawa and Tatiana Troyanos and poor, badgered Jose Carreras. We YouTube’d the video and have spent the last week humming, singing, and whistling those magic Bernstein songs.

 

Music’s magic has brought me great joy.

My first date with Ann was a Summer Festival concert after her picnic-basket-dinner and my wine on the lawn of Lakeside. And who could have predicted that having been, on a lark, a supernumerary in the Met’s annual tour appearances in Minneapolis, that I would really become an opera fan under Ann’s tutelage? Or that violinist, conductor, and PBS star of Now Hear This, Scott Yoo, would become a close and dear friend of ours? The Magic of Music, indeed.