Last year I wrote a book on goal setting. I am now in the process of editing that book. As I edit, I will post excerpts here on my blog. This is from chapter one:
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How I forgot about goal-setting
I grew up with goals, though I did not realize it at the time.
I grew up in a military family. My dad was in the U. S. Air Force.
The military is a goal-setting organization. The goals may not always be noble, but noble or not, the military sets goals.
I grew up surrounded by goal-setters. Our surroundings affect us.
In the 1980s, my dad was stationed at Camp New Amsterdam Air Force Base near Soest, Holland. For a while, I attended school on the military base, called a D.O.D. (Department of Defense) school.
The D.O.D. school wasn’t performing as well as my parents would have liked, so they pulled me out and placed me in a small private Christian School.
This school was located in an old church building in Soest, Holland.
This school used a specific curriculum. The program, Accelerated Christian Education, (ACE for short), was a self-paced educational system.
The teachers checked our work, but for the most part, we kids were on our own.
We read at our own pace, and we advanced at our own pace.
I don’t remember everything I learned at that school, but I remember this.
Each week, we students set our own goals. We set goals on little weekly goal charts. They looked a bit like this:
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Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
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History |
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Math |
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English |
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Penmanship |
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Geography |
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Reading |
The teachers gave us blank goal charts at the beginning of the week, and we filled them in for the five upcoming weekdays.
If we were going to read 50 pages in our history book during the week, we had to write that goal down.
On Monday, we would read pages 1-10. On Tuesday, we would read pages 11-20. And, so on.
The teachers would come along and check our goal charts from time to time.
I found the entire process annoying.
If we were going to read the book anyway, why take the time to write down the number of pages we were going to read?
Little did I know.
I attended ACE schools for 5 years, or so. The entire time, along with the other students, I set weekly goals.
Sometime between high school and college, I stopped writing down my weekly goals.
I forgot all about those weekly goal charts. I stopped writing down those weekly goals. I wish I had never stopped.
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