Howdy, Pardner!

   This goal setting and working-towards is turning out to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys (or, at least more fun than I thought it was going to be).  I'm loving the direction it provides, and the ability to see the measurable amount of success I'm having.

    Of course, if my goal was to Eat More Chocolate, I'd be finding that a lot of fun and tremendously successful too.

  But, my goals are much more noble and austere than that.  And I've learned they need to be MAB - Measurable by me, Achievable by me, and Beneficial to me.  I can confidently say that my goals fit those requirements. 

   Through a blog linked to a blog linked to a blog (you know how that goes), I came across a gal who had also set some goals for 2010 and was looking for an accountability partner to work with to be sure she would be seeing the reality of meeting those goals. (See her one of her blogs here - http://critter-corner.blogspot.com/)  Yippee yahoo- JUST what I needed!  I glommed onto that faster than a monkey onto a banana (or me onto chocolate). 

   Do you see a recurring monkey/chocolate refrain going here?

  Kristi was willing to take me on as an accountability partner, and I'm so thankful.  I've already learned so much in the few days since we began.  Already we've exchanged yearly goals, and each week are breaking those larger hopes into smaller chunks that we can accomplish in seven days.  I found it very rewarding and refreshing to actually set some goals for myself for the week- I do not believe I have ever done that before.

   For the first time Monday morning, I had items down on paper that I wanted to be sure I paid attention to and finished by Sunday night.  This was more convicting than just ideas rolling around in my head that I hoped I'd remember to do sometime between now and July.  It helped tremendously to have a list- not of groceries, not of bills to pay, but of things that would move ME forward.  How fun is that???!!!

   I'm halfway through my list and still have a few days to go.  As a result of Kristi's wise suggestion (that came from her reading my week's goal list),  I ended up putting two sets of data on an Excel spreadsheet last night - something I didn't even realize needed doing. As I was sitting there working in Excel, another thing I've never done before, I felt quite productive (and it didn't even take all that long).  Having another pair of eyes see my weekly list of "to do's" was so helpful-she took two of my goals that were rather un-measurable (remember MAB from above?) and was able to shoot right back at me a way to make those goals measurable, attainable, and do-able.

   So, here's an idea for you, oh reader of my blog.  Grab yourself an accountability partner to make things happen in 2010 - no monkeying around; you'll be glad you did!