The World Has Moved On

While I used to start most days with a full agenda, it seems most days start like this in the post-COVID world. But my planner fills up by the end of the day—sometimes by mid-morning. I still have to make sure all this activity is productive and not just frenzied motion.

This post originally appeared on the Hearts Homes and Hands blog on 2020-07-10.

Well-being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.

—Zeno

Our times seem to have turned around. Or as Stephen King’s Gunslinger would say, “The world has moved on.” Many of us have gone from wondering how we can possibly fit everything we need to do today in one day to wondering how we will fill the time. My planner looks remarkably desolate every morning these days. But when I review what I have done at the end of the day, it is full of activities.

Okay, they may not be fun activities. But they are activities—things that needed doing.

They say, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” That appears to be true for my planner as well. It is full of little things that add up to bigger ones. This was the case even in the Before Times, when we used to be able to visit each other whenever we wanted. Then as now, the question becomes, “Do all these little things add up to something meaningful?”

Before:

It was easy to let ourselves become interrupt driven, responding to whatever stimulus demanded our attention in the second.

Now:

It is easy to strive to fill our days with activity, any activity.

Regardless of what it means. This restless flailing, this unbound need to “just do something” is part of what is driving the current surge in COVID-19 sweeping across the country like a tsunami, especially in rural areas like Milam County.

• In Rockland County, New York, a young man wanted to party even though he was already showing symptoms. His party caused at least 18 more people to get sick. According to abc7NY, at least two other parties have been held since then. Some of the young people are facing $2,000-per-day fines for refusing to give contact tracers information to help save lives.
• In Roanoke, Virginia, more than 100 new cases have arisen from a road trip to party at Myrtle Beach. Other outbreaks tied to that house party have cropped up in West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.

Image and Data source: Centers for Disease Control This map shows where in Texas people have died from COVID-19 as of 2020-07-10. The CDC keeps it updated.

Milam County and Texas in general are seeing more new cases and more hospitalizations than ever before. The rise in deaths will probably follow in the next few weeks, even though this part of the surge seems to be spreading mostly in young people.

In young people, the disease manifests differently. It can lead to heart attacks and strokes, which are often not listed as COVID-related deaths. But those young people are still dead, and their friends are still at risk. Remember, a stroke in a young person can lead to a long life of disability and suffering. All from one small decision. A friend of mine went from being a rising-star CPA to a welfare mom after a stroke when she was 27.

So, I’m asking you to think about the decisions you make today. Are you trying to accomplish something that will help yourself and the community. Or are you just filling time with something because it sounds fun?

“Well-being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself,” according to Zeno. The opposite is true, too. Every little decision matters.

Please ask yourself why most of the rest of the world is able to move past the COVID-19 outbreak faster than us and choose wisely.

Annual Goals, 2020 Edition

A well crafted goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2016-07-00.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about goal setting, but this is the time of year when we traditionally review what we’ve accomplished and figure out what we want to do next year. So, I thought it appropriate to review goal setting now. Especially since that’s what I’m doing.

Russell has also written on SMART goals, so I’m not going to rehash that topic. Instead, let’s talk about how we actually pick our annual goals.

1. What do you want to do?

My first step is to make a wish list of everything I want to accomplish in the next year—whether it is personal, financial, operational, or spiritual. This is a stream-of-consciousness exercise. I don’t focus on anything except identification of what I want to do. Grammar, spelling, logic, achievability, timing—everything else is irrelevant for this part of the process.

Here are a few of the many, many items from my wish list:

Flip some houses. Make a horse pasture. Renovate the old church as an event center.

Renovate the Gillis house for the Hearts, Homes, and Hands office. Improve our cash flow. Keep all of our businesses profitable.

Spend more time at the ranch. Spend more time with family. Help people.

2. Clarify and combine objectives.

You’ll notice these wish list items are not very specific, and some of them could be grouped together. So, that’s the next step: clarify and combine my goals. For example: “flip some houses,” improving cash flow, and the two renovation goals could be considered parts of the profitability goal. That goal now becomes, “Improve the profitability of the businesses by 10% year-over-year while maintaining a positive cash flow.”

The horse pasture can be combined with spending more time at the ranch and with family. That goal now becomes, “Spend more time with family by working with the horses at the ranch.” Building the horse pasture is an enabling goal for the annual goal. But “more time” is not very specific. Let’s make that “three Saturdays a month” to leave some time for activities other than horsing around.

Finally, everything in the list falls under “helping people.” So, I’m going to call that an underlaying motivation rather than a goal.

Sometimes one task or goal must be completed before another one can start. For example, we have to move the retention pond (big hole) in the foreground before we can put up the fence that needs to go through it. The silage and hay in the distance have to go elsewhere before the horses can be put in this pasture. The rocks can stay where they are.

3. Create a goal hierarchy.

The goal hierarchy helps you understand which of your goals need to be attained in which order and establish their relative importance to you. For example, we have to renovate the old church before we can use it as an event center, and we have to generate rental income from it to improve cash flow and profitability. Also, the businesses have to be making money to enable me to spend more time with my family.

• Spend three Saturdays each month with family at the ranch.
• Build a horse pasture by the end of the fourth quarter.
• Fence the pasture by the end of the second quarter.
• Build stalls by the end of the third quarter.
• Move the hay.
• Move the horses.
• Improve the profitability of the business by 10% year-over-year while maintaining a positive cash flow.
• Generate income from event center rentals by the end of the first quarter.
• Begin renting the conference room by the end of January.
• Renovate the conference room to a rentable standard by end of the first week in January.
• Begin renting the Sanctuary for bigger meetings by the end of the first quarter.
• Renovate the pulpit area by the end of February.
• Complete ceiling demo downstairs by the end of the first week in January.
• Reduce vacancies and leasing expenses by converting all rentals to two-year leases by the end of the year.

By doing this exercise, I reduced nine random wish-list items to two specific annual goals. You should never have more than three to five annual goals. The more goals you have, the less you can focus on achieving any of them. Focus is the key to success.

4. Remove any remaining ambiguity from the list.

You can have some ambiguity in your goal statements so long as you have clear definitions of what the terms mean. For example, “build a horse pasture” could mean a lot of things. But we have specific plans in place for:

Where the fence should go What kinds of fence material should be used Where in the fence gates need to be placed

Where the horse stalls will be located and how they will be made How to get water to the stalls How to light the stalls

Where and how to store feed.

All that’s left is to figure out where the money comes from.

I’ve recently started to use the Free to Focus planner. I find it a lot more intuitive and “focused” than the Covey system. It is one of the things that have me focused on goals right now.

5. Review the timeline to make sure the dates are attainable.

“Attainable” doesn’t mean “easy.” The timeline should cause a little stress. If it doesn’t, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. In business terms, you’re leaving money on the table.

6. Set a schedule to review and revise your goals.

I review my annual goals at least once a week. The priorities shift as the year goes on, and you have to be flexible. For example, a project going seriously over budget can delay other projects and affect the attainment of goals. That doesn’t mean I rewrite my goals weekly, but keeping the goal line in view means I can understand and communicate how projects relate to and affect each other. (Actually, improving this communication is one of my goals for next year.)

I’ve recently started using the Free to Focus planner. That planner requires me to transfer (by hand) my goals from one quarterly planner to the next. That process also gives me an opportunity to clarify and reprioritize my goals. Writing the goals out by hand reinforces them in my mind in a way that typing them into an online planner does not.

In the end, the way you set and track your goals is as individual a process as what your goals actually are. This process works for me. I hope it helps you, too.