On the first day of Grade 10, I was confident. Confident that after how far I had come in Grade 9, the improving I would do on myself in Grade 10 would be minimal. Of course I would keep working towards my two or three main goals, strive to keep my grades up, but I was sure the heavy lifting was over. Now that I have completed a near half of the school year however, my mindset has shifted. I now realize that achieving your goals doesn’t mean you are done, it just means there are new ones to set. I can constantly improve on myself and my life.
I also now realize that achieving your dreams doesn’t just happen by chance. It happens, like most things in life, through focus, persistence, and following through with plans. With this in mind, I have reflected on all the work I’ve done this year and set three concrete goals that will help me improve as a learner, as well as have created a plan of steps I will take to achieve them.
Goal #1: To be more focused and present
A strong suit of mine is thinking to the future and coming up with new ideas, but the fact that I’m usually in my head can lead to problems in both my personal life and my academics. I notice I have trouble focusing on lectures, and distance myself from being present in group projects when I don’t want to compromise. An example of a time when this impacted me in my work is:
Based around the concept of trigonometry, this project was all about defining precise measurements and creating a model to demonstrate them. Although during this assignment I did improve on my past goal of following criteria better, I did not give my full attention during many of the lessons. This lead to me missing some key ideas, which created errors in my group’s first model draft. I felt if I would have put a greater focus on the Trigonometry aspect, along with been more present with my partner, it could have saved us a lot of work.
I am taking steps to improve upon my focus by:
1. Taking Notes in Class – I notice if I have a task to do, I become a lot more engaged during lectures and readings. This will also be useful for if I forget something, I can review it later.
2. Turn my iPad off at 8:00 pm- Something that personally helps with my focus and staying in the moment is having an hour to clear my head before I go to bed. Not only am I better rested in the morning, but I notice my mind races less.
3. Giving Myself Scheduled Breaks – Relating to the “Managing Impulsivity Habit of Mind” from our PGP course, it’s hard for me to put down what I’m doing and take a break, especially if I’m working on a big project. If I schedule breaks and pay more attention to my energy levels however, I notice my focus and willingness to work improves greatly.
Goal #2: To Better Utilize Time Blocking
A skill that has been constantly pushed on us in our PGP course is something known as time blocking, which is creating a schedule where all tasks are made specific and assigned to a time. It’s a skill that seems quite simple in concept, but many people fail to utilize properly. Although recently my use of time blocking has improved as I now see the value of it, I still have a ways to go, as was seen in our:
This was a project where we were tasked with making a cinematic adaptation of a book we read (in our group’s case The Perks of Being a Wallflower), which included important scenes but didn’t reveal major plot points. I am actually quite proud of the overall project from our group, especially because I believe it is one of my best editing jobs for any video I have made so far. It was also a good learning opportunity in the skill summarizing, which is something I’ve struggled with in the past. The reason that I have this here as an example of needing to improve at time blocking though, is due to some organization issues that came up in production. Due to the fast-paced nature of our story, our group had a lot of shots that we planned to get. Our scheduling was quite lenient however, and we ended up not having enough time to get all of them.
In future tasks such as our upcoming podcast project, I am improving my time blocking to make sure I can get all of the footage I need by:
1. Doing a daily reality check – My main problem with time blocking is not that I don’t do it, but rather that I don’t do it realistically. I tend to schedule myself with way more then I can handle not considering that I need breaks and time to tend to other responsibilities. I’ve recently come up with a solution to this though, and that’s reviewing my time blocks daily to make sure they have not become unrealistic.
2. Making a priority list – Another reason I commonly find myself overbooked is because I forget to prioritize. This may be because I haven’t checked Showbie for due dates in a while, or might happen if I lose sight of the big picture. Either way, I am working towards fixing this by numbering off my daily priorities at the beginning of each day, so even if my time blocks get switched around and I can’t complete everything, I can still finish what matters.
3. Anticipating the Future – I’m someone who doesn’t like to change a plan once it’s been set, but doing so is an inevitable part of life. To avoid getting myself stressed when trying to rework a plan, I am using the “Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations Habit of Mind ” from our PGP course to make a list of the busiest times of the year and prepare myself and my time blocking for potential future instability. If I know it’s a busy time of the year when unexpected turns are bound to happen, I am going to work my time blocking around that. I’m already starting to think about this for Destination Imagination.
Goal #3: To Set SMART Goals
“A goal without a plan is just a wish” states French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and I now understand just how true this statement is. For my entire life, I have set goals that have had no real direction, just a generalized idea that may have some steps attached to them. Thinking back on it now, very few of those goals did I actually achieve, and now I see why. In order to succeed at not only the goals I mentioned in this post, but every other goal in my life, I will need to make them SMART, or:
Specific
Measurable
Active
Reachable
Timed
If I would have learned to set SMART goals sooner, I feel like I could have achieved a lot more in my personal and school life, especially during projects such as our:
Once again, I made quite the lengthy script for this that touched on everything I could think of relating to the topic. I went through draft after draft, trying to figure out which one I liked the most and which one explained my topic the best. I probably did the most revisions I have ever done on a single project when writing this script, and it was exhausting. If I would have set the SMART goal for my script to tell the precise story we had been tasked with doing however, I could have avoided all of this. Almost every time when I’ve had problems with understanding the project criteria, it hasn’t been just because I haven’t read the criteria well enough, but because I haven’t defined my personal criteria, what MY goals are for the project. In order to make sure that I set SMART goals for future assignments so that I don’t overwork myself, I am currently working on:
1. Creating a Purpose Sheet for all my projects – Everything I do, I want to do great at. Although this is a good quality to have, there is a difference between making a good school project and making a million dollar documentary. So, in order to remind myself that the purpose of school projects is to learn, I am creating a purpose sheet where I can outline my SMART goals for each assignment I’m given (based on the learning criteria), and understand that once I meet that I don’t have to keep going.
2. Making my SMART goals an active part of my life – Another problem I’ve had in the past with achieving goals are setting them and then forgetting them. If they are not an active part of my life, I tend to not give them much attention. In order to fix this, I am putting all of my goals, from getting an 86% or higher on my next math test to buying a house one day into my Things app so that I can see them on a daily basis. I also have gotten into the habit of reviewing all of my goals during my weekly review so I can make a plan to work towards them in the upcoming week.
3. Take my time with my goals – I would say the #1 reason that I overwork myself is because I rush into a goal too quickly without considering all the factors. I don’t always take the time to come up with a good plan, and due to impatience will try to complete every task at once. If I set my SMART goal time blocks farther apart however, realizing that some tasks may take a lot of time to complete, I can both open up a lot more personal time and do a better job succeeding at my goals in the long run.
I am constantly looking for more ways to improve as a learner, and am going to keep setting SMART goals to get there. I can’t wait for my next presentation of learning to see how far I’ve come.