there's a new pandemic

 There's a new pandemic. It's something I've been noticing more and more. As a parent with children in multiple activities. Finding, and coordinating, and leading volunteers is hard. the economy has changed from a group of people who knows eachother doing stuff, into a transactional relationship, I drop my kid off, and these people take care of them, and I pick up later. Yes there are exceptions, people who volunteer. And I am so thankful for those people.  I try to be one of those people as much as I can. 

 What I have also seen more and more of is lack of interest in leading. I'm guilty myself sometimes of this, but sure you can volunteer when an event is happening and pick things up and move things, or stand somewhere. And we need those, but we also need people willing to think about our goals as an organization, and figure out how to achieve those goals the best way possible. People don't want to commit because it takes time. too much time. I challenge you to look at how much time it takes to plan and think about these things? (Or ask another leader) And look at how much time you spend, on YouTube, Facebook, etc. I wonder how much different in time it would be to be a leader and make an impact, vs watching YouTube for 5 hours this week?

 

At work I had a manager once tell me, it's easier to see promotions via being a leader, because no one wants to lead, so it's easier to stand out. 

 

No one wants to be a leader, everyone is checked out, and without personal relationships no one cares about the success of an organization, a mission, or a goal. 

 

I think building personal relationships is a big part of the solution, but in today's day and age, that's a tricky business! 

 

To me this is a real pandemic we don't have a vaccination for, and that makes it even scarier. 

goals are a good thing

Goals give me something to aim for, I hate doing them at work, because so much of what I'm doing is not free form where I can choose what I want to do. So goals there are meh for me. But goals at home give me a direction to aim, I had a goal of going to the gym 52 times this year, meaning I went (on average) 1 day a week. 

Compare this to my last 10 years, and well, I'm not a frequent gym goer, I would hit it hard for a few weeks then die off. But by putting a number to it, I hit my goal, I'm on track to hit 75 visits to the gym this year, yes part of it is a goal to get healthier, but it was also easier to say, well if I just go once this week, I'll hit my goal, so I did. 

 Years back I had a similar goal for reading, gotta read X books, I blew past it, I think my goal was 50 books, and I read 100, I was listening to books and reading books constantly. 

I don't have a clue about all my goals for next year, but I do know that 104 is my goal for the gym next year. 

 

I frequently have ideas for products/things so maybe coming up with a goal there, but there's the rub. A goal like go to gym X times is an easy metric it's like lines of code. So many other things in life don't have a straightforward metric, and as humans we are metric optimizing machines. 

If you told me I would get paid (only) based on lines of code written, and how much I got paid was based on that, and literally nothing else, I would be writing code like a madman. However, that just results in a bloated mess. Finding tangible clear metrics or goals to aim forr can be tricky, so I'll be thinking about that. I have done a mix of health, mental, and emotional goals in the past but they were fuzzy, so this year will take some work! 

 

Do you have goals? Hit me up! blog@onaclovtech.com  tell me about them, maybe I can steal a few :)