I did not often make goals for the year ahead for much of my pre-homeschooling life. Most of my goals were long-term and for everything else, I lived in the moment. That made my life before children and marriage awfully fun and spontaneous. My now-husband would call me on Thursday night to ask me out for a dinner and movie date on the weekend, or a scuba diving/camping trip up the coast. I could not tell you what I had accomplished the past week, other than working, going to school, and getting one step further towards my long term goals. But I was having a boat-load of fun!
I did not understand the goal setting concept until I began homeschooling. It all began with reading a book on how to homeschool, from an administrative point of view. The author talked about mission statements for your homeschool. Now, I have written more than several business plans in my past and so I understood the concept, but never would have thought to apply it to a homeschool. I gave it a try anyway. “What the heck,” I thought. “Who will know what I write anyway except the Hub, and then only if I show him.” Well the process of setting a mission statement led to writing out an educational plan for my kids and investigating their various learning styles and interests and matching those to …. wait for it …. our GOALs for our children’s education.
That was when I really began to understand the utility of setting goals and how to put goals into creating a better life for myself and my family. Up until that point, goals were that sentence I wrote out in the new planner I purchased in January of each year that only got used for a month or two before all my organizational skills petered out and I resumed my happy-go-lucky aimless drift through the rest of the year.
Now I make goals each weekend for the next week while evaluate my performance over the past week. I have goals for homeschooling, goals for cooking and cleaning, personal improvement goals, goals to nurture my marriage, goals for studying the Bible, and many more.
For me, goals are much better than tasks. Setting myself tasks is a process that spurs my enthusiasm and is followed by great progress is keeping up with them for a day or two but at the end of each week I am invariably left disappointed with a long list of untouched tasks. Tasks for my are like folding an immense pile of laundry. I look at it and think, how hard can it be to fold the everything – I really do want to get it all done in one fell swoop. Then I get part way through the pile and a child comes by with a problem I need to help fix, or the Hub walks through the house in his work boots and I now need to wash the floor.
No matter what, life gets in the way of tasks for me. But goals are not specific, they provide me with a direction and a purpose. My goals keep me going. I have short-term goals and long-range goals. And it doesn’t matter to me if they are completely achieved or not. What matters is that I spend the time working towards the goals. That is what makes our home and our homeschool work.
Goals not tasks. Goals help you set your compass.
And so, my goals for the year are simple:
- Focus on my husband and our marriage
- Help my children develop their abilities and enrich their minds
- Expand my blog and surrounding activities
- Write and publish more math and story books
- Read the Bible every day
What are some of your goals this year?
