17
Feb
On Goals – by Ashley
It’s January 2nd here on the farm, and it’s cold and very beautiful. The days are short, and our outside activities are focused on feeding our animals (Daniel) and exercising (me, hah!), so we have plenty of time to work on our plans for the coming months.
Like a lot of you, we spent a few hours yesterday making a list of our goals. (Check out our list of goals here.)
There are two schools of thought regarding making plans: the first is that goals provide us with the criteria we use to measure success; the second is that it is silly to make plans, because things always go wrong, and little is in our control, anyway. (Ever heard the saying, “When you make plans, God laughs”?)
My own philosophy takes the best of both, and even adds to it: I think that good goals have a handful of key elements:
- They’re expressions of our desires–the things we want to do—as well as the things that we know that we need to do
- They also build on our existing skills and accomplishments—they’re not totally random.
- They will create learning opportunities that we need
There’s also a big difference between a goal and a resolution. Goals are forward-looking—resolutions are the opposite. I don’t know about you, but most of my resolutions are to stop doing things that are bad for me, like drinking too much coffee, buying clothes I don’t need, and gossiping. (No shame if you enjoy those things. They feel good! But: everything in moderation.)
Now that we have that sorted out, I’d like to talk a little bit about a few of our goals.
If you watched the video of our goals for the farm for this year, you might be underwhelmed, unless you also enjoy discussions of frost-free hydrants and vegetable garden design. In my opinion, while our goals for sure aren’t exciting, they’ll add a lot of value to our farm and make it easier to operate it. We’re not adding any animals this year—but we are building on our successes from last year, and we’re doing things that will reduce the amount of time we (by “we”, I mean “Daniel”) spend in repetitive, non-value-added activities. Like schlepping water across the farm. (Yes, it’s as awful as it sounds.)
Why the boring goals? Simple: we got smarter, and we analyzed what did work, what didn’t work, and what we need to do to meet our larger goal, which is for the farm operations to be zero-cost. Which means that we don’t bring in hay and that the lambs that we sell pay for the cost (amortized!) of our breeding stock and the infrastructure we have put in place.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that we might fail! We might have another drought and have to bring in hay. We have no idea what the weather will be like next summer, but we’ll do everything we can to prepare appropriately for it so that we have a better chance of success. (The list of initiatives that fail because they didn’t prepare properly is long and illustrious. Everything from the time I chopped jalapeños without gloves to Napoleon’s march to Moscow.)
We’ll give you updates on how well we’re progressing on our goals. Fortunately, they’re not very expensive, and for the most part, we can do them ourselves.
So, now for the fun part: personal goals and resolutions.
I have a few goals for this year, and since the professional goals are a little dry, here are some of my personal goals. Some of them are big and have learning curves.
- Publish three more short novels and start one about my father. Why am I doing this? It’s why I am here. I have been writing for 25 years, and while it isn’t great, it is something. Each of us has a unique gift and purpose. What’s yours?
- Start a podcast about the experience of living! One of my joys in life is having thought-provoking conversations with interesting people. The beauty of being a human is that we can learn something good from everyone we encounter. (Quite a few of you are on my list to join for an episode. Thanks in advance ☺)
- Focus on functional fitness—it takes a lot of strength to shovel snow for three hours–and also get back into distance running and attempt another half-marathon: before we moved to Idaho and I started traveling for work, I ran a ton and loved it. I miss it. Tess indirectly encouraged me to run more, and we live in a place that’s both flat (because no one’s knees like hills) and particularly scenic. Even short jogs around our “neighborhood” are refreshing and relaxing.
- Add energy to every conversation. We form connections from that energy. And when we add good energy to our conversations, it multiplies all day long. Let your light shine!
What are your goals for yourself for the year?