Setting Some Objections

Yes yes. I know it's objectives. It's just one of those things that wind me up; when people get the slightly wrong word.

Like when they say 'pacific' instead of 'specific'. you know the fellows. The sort who spell dictionery wrong.

Anyway. some months ago, in an attempt to inject a stronger feeling of purpose into my existence, I decided to experiment by setting myself some objectives at the start of every week.

When we are younger and surrounded by young kids and engrossed in all the day to day busyness that a young family involves we rarely have time to pause and think, let alone set objectives for ourselves.

But, as time has progressed, I detected a sense of, or rather I didn't detect, a sense of purpose in my day to day life. Overall, in terms of the bigger things, purpose was still lurking around for me, but a bit in the background and only revealing itself at random times. I've always got the Girls, C, my work and drumming, but sometimes they can be physically absent for differing lengths of time and I became aware of drifiting aimlessly through a week.

So now every Monday morning one of my first things is to set out my objectives for the week. I do this on a mindmap, because my life is largely run by mindmaps of different sorts. And I'm sorry, but I make no apolgies for this but I love mindmaps.

All the books, the self help ones, constantly extoll the virtues of goal setting. I know you've probably read them and I'm not giving you some huge nugget of wisdom or knowledge.

I've set myself targets for my blood sugar. Us diabetics have to do this sort of thing, though I suspect you didn't know I'm one, as I just realised it happened in my last blogging hiatus. Some weeks I've beaten this admirably (even if I say it myself). In other weeks my Sri Lankan genes have risen to the forefront and I've eaten more rice than a white person would consider decent. But whichever it's been I've had the target in my mind and I'm sure it's making a difference.

Every week I set a few drumming related goals; get that set of fills up to 80bpm, get myself ready for that gig on Saturday etc.

Reading, a massive part of my life, features heavily. Finish that book, get halfway through that other one.

And money. In a sort of attempt to consciously and proactively save some wedge I've been target setting. Doing it on a weekly level has been so much more impactful than just saying to myself that I'd like to save x by the end of the month.

I've noticed that when an objective is written down it really does feel more powerful. Even though they are private, the very act of writing or typing them out seems to form a kind of contract for me, one that is more binding than if it's not writtne out.

And in trying to stretch myself I've also made a very conscious effort to not be too anal about needing to achieve every single obejctive every single week. I want to fail. I want to be beaten into submission by a few targets, so I know I'm pushing my own boundaries however close they might be to other people.

So far it's been good. It's given me a nice sense of satisfaction and a definite better feeling of purpose.

I promise to keep you posted.