Aspirational Goals, Achievable Tasks
Dear Erin,
Wow - yeah, the summer got away from me and ten weeks went poof without a post. With the start of a new fiscal year for me at work, a start of a new school year in the Leadership program I teach and my own start of a new decade… it’s time to get back on track.
I’m going to stay short and sweet today, sharing what’s on my mind: the achievable. I’m involved in a few projects - and I’m guessing you feel a bit of this too - where we come up with grand plans that are just so wonderful and exciting and fun to think about. So fun that you find yourself googling and learning and maybe even hopping on Amazon because eventually you are absolutely going to NEED some kind of doohickey to make it work. You talk and call and journal and plan and go on a vision quest for this undeniably great thing called the future.
And then the day is over and you haven’t taken the first step. Sure, you’ve plotted the font choice and color scheme and theme for what will be the 11,283rd step…. but you haven’t taken the first step.
I’ve got a bit of that right now. On my own and in team meetings, we are leapfrogging over the basics of building a business project in favor of some amazing idea that’s quite out of reach. Sure - it’s a great goal, and maybe even a realistic goal. But we can’t get there without the basics, and we’ll fail if we try to soon. Example: we’re having trouble pulling together ten people to go to an event, but part of the team is focused instead on building a brand new event for 300.
Ten is achievable. Maybe 30 if we hustle.
300 is aspirational.
Don’t lose sight of 300 - that’s where we want to go. As we pursue our first 10 or 30, build scalable processes that will get us to 300. But let’s not spend time today worrying about whether we are going to feed the 300 continental breakfast or a lunch buffet and if lunch what vendor will we use - it distracts from the real work of building the first 30.
Anyway - same with this blog. I’ve been feeling so guilty about not posting 2-3 times a week over the summer and have been trying to figure out how to make that happen and what coffee shop I’m going to go to 2-3 times a week and whether I should go in the morning for a caffeinated beverage or do my writing instead in the afternoons which probably means decaf but what if I get a small snack in lieu of lunch while I’m there and upset my food routine and IDK is this website is something I should do on my iPad or do I need to bring the Chromebook and anyway I had better not start until I’ve reformatted the image frames because they look to heavy so I can’t start writing until I sort that out…and, well, here we are 10 weeks letter with NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT.
So. I threw together a new image frame. Done is better than good. Re-orientating myself towards the achievable, while not losing sight of the aspirational. Dreams are important…gotta have them; they give life meaning. You also most certainly need the curated to-do lists of actionable, achievable tasks that turn those dreams into reality.
Love,
Mom
