Nearly halfway there….

Today, June 16th, is day 168 of 2008. There are 198 days left in the year after today, which means that 2008 is nearly 46% completed. In two weeks, on July 1st, we will be at the official halfway point of the year. Wow! It’s gone fast, hasn’t it?

If you’ll recall (and if you can’t, you can review here), I set several goals at the beginning of the year - they centered around the areas of faith, health, and work/family. Now if all of the goals were to be completed by the end of the year, and completion of the goals happened in a somewhat linear fashion, then within the next two weeks I should be either 50% toward completion of each of my goals, or should have fully completed 50% of the goals I’ve set. Either way, we all know that completion of goals isn’t constant, nor do all of our goals have an end date of December 31st.

Instead of flipping out because I haven’t completed half of my goals, or that I’m not 50% of the way to completing them by now, I need to go through the list of goals I created in the beginning and ask myself a few questions:

1. Am I making progress toward completing the goal by the date I’ve set? How do I know if I’m making progress?
2. If I’m not making progress, or am not progressing at a fast enough pace to reach the goal in an appropriate amount of time, what things are standing in my way of reaching the goal?
3. Can I eliminate those things that are working against me in reaching my goals? If I can’t eliminate them entirely, is there anything I can do to mitigate their influence, or are there other things I can do to help counteract those things that are working against me?
4. If I need to make a change in an area of my life in order to see the results I need to see, do I have a plan with specific steps to take? Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time. You can’t expect to see much positive change unless you’re willing to make changes to your behavior that will result in positive change.
5. Do these goals still make sense to me? Are they important enough to remain goals? We have to be careful, though, how we evaluate the answer to this question. If we haven’t make progress toward a goal the way we should, it may be because it’s something that’s difficult or unpleasant. If that is what’s keeping you from making progress, then you probably need to enlist the help of a friend or mentor to keep you accountable to making progress toward it.
6. Is the goal a SMART goal? In this case, SMART is an acronym for the following:
   • Specific - Does the goal have enough detail to be meaningful?
   • Measurable - Can I put some standard of measurement to it? If I can’t, then how will I know if I’m making progress toward completing it?
   • Attainable - Is the goal too lofty, or not lofty enough? For instance, if you’ve never run before and are 100 pounds overweight, then ‘Run a marathon in two weeks’ is probably not a good goal because it’s not attainable - the ‘in two weeks’ part of the goal is what trips you up. If you change that to ‘in two years’, then it might be more realistic and attainable.
   • Relevant - Does this goal make sense in the overall plan, or for what I intend to accomplish? To illustrate, if your overall is to run a marathon in two years, then having a goal to swim 30 laps in a pool may not be relevant to your overall goal. However, it might make sense if your overall goal was to compete in a triathlon.
   • Time-based - by this, I mean that there needs to be some measure of time associated with the goal, either in terms of frequency or duration. A frequency goal could state ‘do resistance training at least 3 times per week’ - in this, the time is frequency-based. A duration goal has a starting and ending; a goal of this type could be ‘by 12/31/09, run in at least one marathon and compete in one mini-triathlon.’

That’s a lot to digest in one sitting, but I’ll ask you to consider this: take the next two weeks, before the halfway point of the year, and look at the goals you set for yourself. Ask yourself the questions stated above as it relates to each goal, and judge each goal against the SMART criteria. If you need help sorting through them, ask a close friend, or shoot me an email (from my ‘Contact’ page), and I’ll help you out. Again, while it’s important to have goals and make sure we’re accomplishing them, it’s just as important that we are making progress toward them.

So, what are your goals for 2008, and are you halfway there to completing them?