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.