target-setting – Open Thinkering

Calling myself into the office: June 2010

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

This series, published on the first Monday each month, is aimed at personal improvement through the public sharing of goals and targets. In this post I look back at whether I achieved the last month’s goals and come up with some targets for the coming month. 🙂

Looking back…

How well have I done at achieving the targets I set at the start of May 2010?

I’ve finished the draft of my first journal article provisionally entitled Seven types of ambiguity and digital literacy. My thesis supervisor just needs to give me some feedback.
I’ve bitten my nails less and haven’t done so at all whilst driving. However, I don’t even realise I’m doing it whilst studying and reading. Must. Try. Harder.
I’ve written a blog post even on the day I didn’t write a blog post this month!
I had a laser eye surgery consultation at Optimax a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately, my cornea is too thin for LASIK surgery so would have to undergo LASEK. This involves a several days in a darkened room, a week off work and potentially several months of pain. No thank you!
I was supposed to lose a stone this month, tipping the scales at 14 stones. I’ve lost about 3 pounds, which isn’t impressive at all. I’m a bit too fond of the cakes my wife makes and haven’t really done enough exercise.

Any goals I don’t achieve get rolled on to the next month in addition to five new targets. Which means I’ve got the following rolled-over:

Not to bite my nails at all.
To lose one stone in weight (i.e. to get down to 13 stones)

Looking forward…

My targets for June 2010 are:

Cover one of (or the majority of) my study walls in whiteboard paint or some other kind of large whiteboard solution (I need to mindmap my thesis spatially rather than digitally)
Run at total of at least 30 miles.
Purchase a tent and go camping for the first time in years.
Move my Ed.D. thesis past 30,000 words (I’m currently on about 24,000)
Figure out the crazy aerial splitter thing in the loft so that I can project the World Cup in our cinema room.

Are you doing something similar? Share it in the comments below!

Image CC BY-NC-SA Leonard John Matthews

Calling myself into the office: May 2010

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

In #uppingyourgame: an educator’s guide to productivity I mention an idea originally by Dan Pink in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. It’s a fairly simple idea, but involves a journey that I want to share publicly. Why? It will motivate me even more and make explicit the process involved in case others want to do likewise! 🙂

The idea is that of ‘calling yourself into the office’ once a month for a review meeting. Just as you would do at a performance management review, you should be testing yourself against a set of goals or targets that were set at the previous meeting. As this is the first of these monthly posts I’m planning to share this one is just target-setting. The next of these will include a review and then further target-setting.

I’m going to set myself 5 targets for this month:

To write and send off my first academic journal article, applying Empson’s seven types of ambiguity to the issue of digital literac(ies).
Not to bite my nails at all (it’s not particularly a nervous thing – I only do this whilst I’m reading or driving for some reason…)
To continue to publish a blog post here every day without fail.
Book a laser eye surgery appointment (I’m sick to death of wearing contact lenses and glasses!)
To lose one stone in weight (I’m currently 14 stones, which my Wii Fit thinks is too much – I’m 6’1″)

I think all that’s eminently do-able!

Anyone want to join me in this public journey of self-improvement? :-p