Jason Ishibashi

Goals: gettin’em done 7

Goals: gettin’em done

A friend recently posted her 2011 Summer Goals and even managed to accomplish one the very first weekend. Impressive right?

While she is without question ahead of the game, (have YOU updated your goals recently?) the question now is: “How do I avoid ending summer with a list of unaccomplished goals?”

Tip 1: Make S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Your goals should be specific so that you can create a plan to accomplish them. Let’s look at the the goal take more photos. What does this entail? A better goal would be, replace five photos in my portfolio. This goal is also measurable and attainable. Having a stretch goal (difficult to attain) is great, but to prevent yourself from burning out or feeling like Sisyphus you need goals that you can finish, and you need to be able to figure out exactly what you need to do to finish them.

You goals should be relevant. Taking an amazing landscape photo does not help you very much if your portfolio focuses on, say, wedding photography. The five great photos you’re looking to take this summer should help your portfolio tell the story of who you are as a photographer. Finally, your goals need a time-frame. When are you going to accomplish your goal?

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting works for any field, not just photography. How would you improve upon the goal blog more or learn Spanish? Have you set your summer goals yet?

Tip 2: Go Social

Tell your friends. I guarantee this will make far more interesting conversation rather than what you did at work/school today. You can help each other stay motivated and keep each other on task. You will find it much more difficult to put tasks off when others expect to hear about your difficulties and accomplishments along the way.

Looking to blog more? Talk about how you set your goals, how things are going along the way, how you feel, how you distract yourself, how to handle the difficult aspects, or anything else that comes up along the way. You’ll find that you want to write about these things making the task of blogging much easier. You’ll probably also find that people will actually read about these stories.

Fill your Twitter with little tidbits. You can reference longer blog posts, or just keep your friends up to date on how things are going. People who don’t talk about SOMETHING do not last very long in my feed. They are not interesting to read.

Tip 3: Just Start

Habits are hard to break. Once you are used to doing something, you keep doing it because it feels natural. Don’t worry about the best way to get involved, just get involved. Do it today. Do it now.

Let me know:

What are your summer goals?
Are they SMART?
Tell me about them along the way!

1 June 2011 ·

Because We’ve Always Done It This Way… 6

Because We’ve Always Done It This Way…

The following is an excerpt from an article written by James Bennett. It is a joke that should be in the preface of every LEAN book written. Read why we do things the way we’ve ALWAYS done things.

There’s an old joke, so old that I don’t even know for certain where it originated, that’s often used to explain why big corporations do things the way they do. It involves some monkeys, a cage, a banana and a fire hose.

You build a nice big room-sized cage, and in one end of it you put five monkeys. In the other end you put the banana. Then you stand by with the fire hose. Sooner or later one of the monkeys is going to go after the banana, and when it does you turn on the fire hose and spray the other monkeys with it. Replace the banana if needed, then repeat the process. Monkeys are pretty smart, so they’ll figure this out pretty quickly: “If anybody goes for the banana, the rest of us get the hose.” Soon they’ll attack any member of their group who tries to go to the banana.

Once this happens, you take one monkey out of the cage and bring in a new one. The new monkey will come in, try to make friends, then probably go for the banana. And the other monkeys, knowing what this means, will attack him to stop you from using the hose on them. Eventually the new monkey will get the message, and will even start joining in on the attack if somebody else goes for the banana. Once this happens, take another of the original monkeys out of the cage and bring in another new monkey.

After repeating this a few times, there will come a moment when none of the monkeys in the cage have ever been sprayed by the fire hose; in fact, they’ll never even have seen the hose. But they’ll attack any monkey who goes to get the banana. If the monkeys could speak English, and if you could ask them why they attack anyone who goes for the banana, their answer would almost certainly be: “Well, I don’t really know, but that’s how we’ve always done things around here.”

This is a startlingly good analogy for the way lots of corporations do things: once a particular process is entrenched (and especially after a couple rounds of employee turnover), there’s nobody left who remembers why the company does things this way. There’s nobody who stops to think about whether this is still a good way to do things, or whether it was even a good idea way back at the beginning. The process continues through nothing more than inertia, and anyone who suggests a change is likely to end up viciously attacked by monkeys.

10 February 2011 ·

Future/Starting Writers Grab Some Inspiration

Check out some good ole’ fashioned motivation and inspiration from the BandCrab:

Just live it, breathe it, love it. Start a zine. Start a blog. Start a riot. Just start young, and never grow jaded. Because this is the best job in the whole world.

For further reading, check out the referenced, informative cache of advice from rock critics in a four-part series at www.popmatters.com.

via Band Crab (http://bandcrab.com/blog/?p=257)

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8 June 2010 ·