If you came over to ours you’d find several things… toys to trip over, flip charts with post-its on, Kanban boards, and a few graphs on the walls. Anything from meal plans, tally charts to idea brainstorms. That’s what happens when two consultants get together!
So, the other day I was teaching my son to create graphs, an obvious after school activity for a 5 year old, no? My graph was about capturing how many ‘plant points’ we can each eat in a week. I read that it’s optimal for your gut to have 30 different plants in your diet each week, so naturally I was curious to see how many we eat on a regular basis. Austin wanted to make his own graph, and the conversation went a bit like this:
Austin: Mummy, what should my graph be about?
Me: Well, what do you want to get better at?
Austin: Making things
Me: That’s quite a broad topic. What kind of things?
Austin: Everything
Me: Mmm, ok. What do you mean by ‘making’?
Austin: You know, just making stuff
As you can see it didn’t go that well. Thankfully there were other topics that he was keen to improve on and we did go with something a bit more tangible.
But it was a good reminder to think about just how important it is to be specific and clear about what you want to achieve. Sure, when you’re in the workplace you tend to think more about setting goals and managing those goals, maybe because you’re being assessed against them. But it also applies when you’re at home and doing every day life things.
So, I got my trusty SMART card out and started explaining to Austin that we need goals that are:
Specific: specific enough that it is clear what we want to happen;
Measureable: easy to measure, so that we can track our progress regularly;
Achievable: achievable in the context of our day and work/school life objectives;
Realistic: is feasible given our current work/school life context (but not being afraid to challenge ourselves!);
Time-bound: has a date by which we want to achieve our goals
Oftentimes we have good intentions to implement small beneficial changes into our daily routines and lives, but they can often fall to the wayside if we’re not formulating them clearly in our minds first. I’ve fallen into the trap of not being clear enough with my goals, many times before.
Here’s an example of one of my latest goals:
Tuesdays is gymnastics day. Which means there’s very little time to get dinner prepared after school. So I assigned myself a goal to get through Tuesdays more easily and without collapsing into a heap on the floor by 8pm.
Specific: make dinner on Tuesdays really simple, yet still nutritious. So, I’ve introduced Slow Cooker Tuesdays. Every Tuesday morning, I prepare a dump and go recipe. Then (provided I remember to turn the slow cooker on – whoops, only happened once I swear!), a healthy meal is ready to go by the time gymnastics has finished.
Measurable: It’s easy to measure, because everyone is either fed or not fed at the end of the day.
Achievable: It’s been pretty achievable whilst I’ve not been working, but will have to reassess this again soon!
Realistic: It seems realistic in the context of my world at the moment to spare 30 minutes in the morning dumping ingredients in, but again this will need reassessing once work picks up.
Time-bound: Because it’s every Tuesday, it has a clear time context to it and keeping a regular day makes it a lot easier to remember.
What kind of goals have you got for yourself this month? Are they SMART enough?
P.s. in case you’re wondering what Austin decided to measure…