We just had tea and biscuits for a mid-day break. then I washed up from breakfast, including the poaching pan, which looked like an explosion of ectoplasm. Then I let the compost caddy slip from my wet fingers. The lid could be more robustly secured…
So after clearing compost from the kitchen floor (in the shape of tea bags, egg shells, avocado skins and slippery veg peel) I am once more sitting down to work.
SMART Plans were, as I recall, my next subject.
They are plans which have a snappy acronym, and are thus better than ordinary plans. SMART, for those of you who haven’t been exposed to fashionable jargon in the last twenty years are plans that are:
Specific
Measurable
Assignable
Realistic
Time Related
They can be other things too, but this has always done for me. All it means is that you have to say what you are going to do, how you will measure it, who will do it, how you will do it and when you will do it by.
I spent a whole week once filling in the plan for a Junior Rugby section – including recruiting, training or obtaining coaches, first aiders, team managers, match officials, safeguarding officers, equipment, and several things I’ve forgotten, though I remember there were twelve things.
Somebody looked it over and said: “You’re mad, you’ll never do it.”
By the end of the year ten of the twelve things had been done and one had nearly been done. If I’d have just gone ahead with a vague plan in mind I would have managed three or four of the easier things.
I’ve just cut out 150 words on the philosophy and meaning of failure. I can sometimes be very pompous and boring and have to guard against it.
I will just say that real failure consists of not trying.
One of my plans for today is to write a number of blog posts covering the entire day. That seems to be working. Cooking breakfast was also on the list, as was catching up with the washing up. I now need to write a SMART Plan for my writing over the next year, sort out some books for the charity shop, do the grocery order for TESCO online and start the outlines for some magazine articles.
Julia is currently on the phone in the front room and the TV is off, so there is no temptation to wander through. She has been busy sorting out one of her clients (which I cannot discuss even though it is interesting), sorting out some office inefficiency (which I probably discuss, but it would be tactless) and generally chatting to people who are bored and still aren’t sure why they aren’t allowed out yet.
This is why.
I’d better get back to work now.
Flowers are from A Bunch of Irises.
The iris photos are quite nice. I like the shadows and light, and muted colors.
Thank you. It was one of my lazier photos – taken as I sat in my armchair. The light just fell right.
Your ‘real failure consists of not trying’ is so sound, and the ‘This is why’ link salutary
Yes, I was shocked by the link.
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It is good to know that these snappy acronyms are sometimes useful. I have never had a SMART plan so that perhaps is where I went wrong.
Apart from a mossy lawn (which I don’t see as a problem anyway) and an insalubrious bird feeder I don’t see where you have gone wrong.
The smelly bird feeder is a recurring subject of conversation with Mrs T.
Yes, we have that sort of conversation…