Spring Quarter Expedition Planning
A New Approach to goals
Okay, as promised in an earlier 5 Things post, I happened upon a really neat planning system dreamed up by one of my favorite Formation mentors, Andrew Miner. He calls it the Adventure Planning system. The full blog post overview he wrote about it is here, but here are my TL;DR’s on what it is and how to implement it:
First, life is the adventure. We’re all making our way through it one way or another — and if we want to be intentional about where we’re going and what we’re going to achieve, we need to set off on an expedition!
That’s what goal planning is: an expedition. And when you’re on an expedition through the mountains, what do you see? Peaks and horizons, that’s what. In this system, then, the peaks are measurable goals (write a book) while the horizons are non-measurable goals you simply want to work towards (be a more present parent).
From there he gets more detailed — really, I do recommend checking out his blog post because he’s far more eloquent than I am. In any case, it being the beginning of March (read: my Spring Quarter) I decided to make my first “campsite” and plan out my goals for the next three months. Here’s what I came up with:
Peaks & Horizons (big picture for the rest of the year)
- Peak: Read each book on my TBR list for the year
- Horizon: Continue working on physical fitness — gaining muscle, eating better
- Horizon: Be a better, more present parent to the kids and help them gain life skills and virtues, and learn to love God
- Peak: Publish a novel before 40
- Horizon: Continue writing in my “traveler’s notebook”
- Peak: Organize all photos/video into monthly folders with no extraneous files
Paths to Travel this Quarter
- TBR List:
- Read 3 books/month
- Listen to 1 hr audiobook and/or read for a half hour each day
- Physical Fitness & Health:
- Finish Epic Heat by Holy Week (peak-turned-horizon!)
- Make meal plan for the next day nightly
- Limit alcohol to rest days
- Limit sugar/treats to one with coffee in morning + 1 nice dessert weekly
- Parenting:
- Create Parenting Omnibus
- Create goals for kids with monthly goals to work towards — break it down and BE PATIENT. It will come.
- Book:
- Create a general plot overview with 100 scenes mapped out
- Map out one scene per day and write a nonsense summary of the action in each scene
- Travel Journal:
- Write one post per week, published Fridays — 5 Things is a good fallback template
- Write one summary post monthly
- Photo Clear:
- Clear 1 year/month
- Work approx. 30 minutes/day on clearing
And that’s it! I’m looking forward to seeing where this big life adventure takes me this quarter, the rest of the year, and beyond.
mins
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