Goals and Whatnot

Here is where I tell you about the S. M. A. R. T. goals I have for language learning.

Except I'm not.

The truth is, I have soooo many goals right now. There are just so many things I want to accomplish and I feel like I am running out of time to do them!

I have goals for work, goals for health, goals for other projects. It's really too many goals to be putting criteria on.

So here's how I break it down. I need to write S. M. A. R. T. goals every quarter at work. This is just part of the environment we have at our company where everyone is encouraged to grow, so this must be done. I'll remind you what S. M. A. R. T. stands for:

Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Relevant. Time-bound.

This is great. I love having these goals at work. I also need to write goals like these for my kiddos to plan out the direction of their course of speech-language therapy, stick to it, and measure progress.

But when I get home...

I'm really not in the mood to write more standard goals. Here is where I end up. I have loose goals for my health, such as sticking to a healthy diet, exercising at least a couple days of week, and gaining 5-10 pounds by the end of the summer.

OH I TOTALLY FORGOT! I also make 4-5 goals at the start of each year, which are to be accomplished by the end of the year. Some of them are measurable (like make or save a certain amount of money) and some of them are not (like live clutter free), but I am my own judge if I met my goal, and I'll be honest about it.

My goals related to health and side projects are usually related to my yearly goals, but smaller versions and I always have some sort of time frame for meeting them.

Then comes my language goals. I like to set a yearly goal, like be relatively comfortable in my new language in basic conversations, for example. But to be honest, I don't want to set specific goals. This is probably because I don't want to be disappointed if I don't meet them. I like to instead set an "idea" of what my language studies will be like. For example, my "idea" for Arabic is that I want to study it as much as I can in my free time. I honestly don't know how quickly I will pick it up or how much I will enjoy studying, so I don't set a criteria to meet. What happens if I want to abandon the goal? Will I feel like a failure? Possibly. I have read many posts and articles about why measurable goals are beneficial for language-learning, but I just really don't want to do them.

Maybe this is a cop-out of making actual goals and working hard to achieve them. But honestly, I want to keep language-learning as enjoyable as possible. If I want to switch languages partway through the year, I want that to be okay and not feel like I am betraying myself.

Which brings me to my new "idea." I've been kicking around getting to a near-native level of Spanish lately, just kind of meandering with Spanish studies. So starting in July, I'm going full immersion-at-home mode for the rest of the year. I am also going to finish my Advanced Spanish Grammar book. I already informed Luis and he's okay with it (maybe) but still laughs at my Spanish most of the time. But I will continue studying Arabic as usual, just replacing all of my English time at home with Spanish. 

I really miss French and Chinese though. Haven't spoken those in awhile. Anyone else get like that?

Do you like to set goals? Do you set S. M. A. R. T. goals for your hobbies or do you like to keep it low-key? Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time!