Quote-A-Day: Day 69

You can't always get what you want, but you should always want what you get. #QuoteADay #Day69 #edchat #edu #learn #lead #AimHigh #ReachHigh

While I'm not a tremendous Rolling Stones fan, I can't help but wholeheartedly agree with the difficulty in always getting what you want.  That being said, we need to fashion our goals in such a way that when we do get something, it is an outcome we truly wanted (if not expected).

This takes some work.

It isn't so much that creating goals is a challenge, but creating goals that are meaningful and that align with your vision and mission can be fairly daunting.  To address this, we need to make sure that the goals we create paint a picture of where we want to be, and the "how do we get there" part of our work is clear with easy to follow steps.

We also must make sure that we separate wants from needs.  Our goals must focus on priorities, and if there is time (or room) for true "wants" then we can build those in.

Finally, we can't forget the importance of evaluation; taking a deep look at what we got, and seeing how it ties in to our wants and needs.  If our evaluation shows that things don't line up, then it is back to the drawing board.

Knowing that we'll never get everything we want means that when we do achieve something, when we do reach a benchmark we've set, we definitely want to feel good about the end result.  After all, if that isn't the case, then why bother having "wants" at all?