Personal Summer Goals

It’s rather interesting how we spend the first part of our lives in traditional school, but the rest of our lives still thinking of the Summer differently. For example, in my part of the United States, offices will have Summer Hours or work from home Fridays. This never happens in the Spring now does it? Spring needs to work on its branding big time!

I always make Personal Summer Goals. Some years they have been things like
– clean out the basement
– lose 15 pounds
– stay sane during bathroom renovations

At the beginning of September, I would look back at the goals and cringe as, I never got down to the basement as it seemed too overwhelming, I was afraid to step on the scale and the bathroom renovations “made me” so crazy I was afraid to step on the scale. So much for those goals!

I know more about goals and goal setting since then. Goal-setting theory by researcher Edwin Locke states “individuals who set specific, difficult goals performed better than those who set general, easy goals. Locke proposed five basic principles of goal-setting: clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback, and task complexity.”

Let’s use my failed attempt to clean out the basement. It did not work because it was too vague, there weren’t any short term deadlines, no one was checking up on me, if you really like me you don’t care about my basement and let’s face it- did I really want to?

Setting a goal is a great way to encourage achievement and stay motivated. However, many of us set goals that are ineffective at pushing us to do our best. When you are helping yourself with a project or trying to improve an aspect of your daily life, think carefully about the goals you set. Ensure that each goal accounts for some or all of the principles above: clarity, challenge, commitment, and feedback.

Now that I know better, here are my Summer 2018 goals
1) Stay organized. I will use my planner each week to reflect my short and long term goals. I will put in my family and personal time, exercise, appointments, coaching calls, writing content time and give myself strict working hours. I will check in with my husband to make sure I am not wandering back into working constantly like I was in the Fall. Each Sunday night from 8-9 I will plan my week out.

2)Promote my upcoming book. I will be on a podcast, guest writing on blogs or doing FB Lives for the November launch. Most of this is already scheduled, but I will be pitching myself 3-4 times a week to various publications, well known fitness publications and doing FB Lives about my book. I will be keeping track of my progress by how my following improves and pre-sales of my book.

3)Enjoy my Summer. This one is a bit harder to measure. How do I rate it? Number of laughs? How often I am invited to social engagements or if I don’t need to take Tylenol every day at 4pm for my usual headache? My working plan and I am open for suggestions is to come from a place of possibility and curiosity to making time to Paddleboard with my daughter on Friday afternoons, and to take my Son surfing in Long Island when he is home from Summer camp. I want to take the dog for long walks in the morning and enjoy lazy long, laugh filled dinners with friends.

Goals are wonderful except for when they came to happiness or enjoyment. How can we rate joy?

I am open to suggestions. In the meantime, I am going to have a good day.

Xo,
Erin