Professional/Writing Goals
1. Revise and Resubmit an article. I asked two other (more advanced) scholars in the field to read my manuscript draft and have received really helpful feedback and suggestions from one and I'll be getting feedback from the other early this coming week. I'm committing to working on additional research and revisions for two hours first thing in the morning (before my prose gets corrupted by students writing essays under duress) during finals week, and then continuing to carve out time for this until it is done.
2. Draft a proposal for my book manuscript. I have been accepted into a professional (and paid!) writing workshop in the middle of the month at my institution. One day is devoted to grant writing, one day to journal articles and conference proposals, and one day to book proposals. I'm hoping that I can use this workshop as a spring board to make significant progress on that. I'd like to have a finished draft by the end of the month.
3. Prep the first two weeks of the new upper level class that I'll be teaching during the spring term. This means finalizing the syllabus, doing some reading, and getting started with lecture writing and activities and assignment planning.
Fitness/Health Goals
1. Maintain my food journal for the entire month of December. As I mentioned the other day, this was an epic fail in November, but I'm going to end the year strong with my food journal.
2. Run 50 miles in December. I didn't quite hit my mileage goal last month, but I will continue rebuilding my base this month and keep adding a little bit on to my longer runs so that by the end of the month I am back up to 6 or 7 miles.
3. Continue working on being present in the moment, expressing gratitude, and staying positive. I am getting better at this, but practice makes perfect. This month I want to spend a few moments each day visualizing doing things right: being in the flow of writing, thinking about the things that have gone right during a race or a training run, a particularly good day of teaching. It also means not getting frantic about things like shopping for Christmas presents for the more challenging people to give gifts to on my list and taking a couple of days completely off from work around the holidays to enjoy being with loved ones and to recharge.
What are your goals for the month of December? If you celebrate Christmas and do gift exchanges, what is your approach to shopping? Who do you find to be the most difficult person to shop for/make a present for on your list?
Those goals sound good! I think that it is such a good idea to set goals for yourself. I kind of cheat, since I love checking things off my list, I always add ones that I KNOW I can get done! And then there are others which I keep moving to the next month. Such is life. I had a good tip once and that is to separate your goals into three categories: Urgent, Important and Trivial, and make sure you work on the Urgent ones first, since oftentimes we find ourselves mired down in the trivial ones! Good luck!
ReplyDeletebest wishes with your goals. if you can master 'being present' in December, you can master it ANY time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your goals! I hope you are successful in meeting each and every one. :)
ReplyDeleteFantastic goals! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI've been so impressed following your monthly goal-setting and evaluation. An immediate goal is to revisit the list I set out back in September and see how I've done, then try to set out another for the next few months. My intention was perhaps to try monthly goal-setting, but it seems that I'm more likely to manage quarterly. For now, I still have 50+ papers to mark, then exams. . . and we have two meetings (faculty and departmental) this week, AArgh! At least my running's on track (ha! no pun intended, and I'm not a track runner)
ReplyDeleteThe writing workshop sounds really great! I hope you report back with any particularly inspiring stuff.
ReplyDeleteMy approach to Christmas shopping is to make a list, check it twice, figure out who's been naughty or nice...wait, no, that's Santa's approach! I do make a list, though, of the people to whom I will give gifts, and that helps me brainstorm ideas. The list is also handy when opening a big box of stuff from Amazon and figuring out who gets what.