The one “real” class that I’m taking this semester is an Entrepreneurship class, which is really kind of a goal-setting and career-planning class — you know, the kind that almost every school offers in the last year or semester before graduation. In some programs, it’s a mandatory class; this one isn’t, but it’s a great class anyway.

This week’s assignment is to outline goals, starting with long-term, and then breaking it down into 5- and 10-year steps. Now, in my opinion, setting goals like this is good for two things. One is, of course, the (stated) intended purpose: to be able to look ahead at where I want to be, and then to figure out how to get there and what the steps are along the way. Break it down into manageable steps that are, in a sense, accomplishments in themselves, as well as being milestones along the way to a larger goal.

The second is having a record to look back at and see how life changes. The best thing about setting goals is being able to watch them shift and fluctuate as life changes, watching priorities and important moments change along with them.

I have quite a few lists of goals kicking around from the various bits and pieces of my life. Somewhere, although I have no idea where, I have a list of goals that I made in grade 9. That one was mostly a “101 things to do before I die” kind of list, as opposed to specific strategies for getting there. That list included things like “visit every continent” and “get a book published.” Really, those goals aren’t all that far-fetched, in the course of a lifetime, and many of them are still things I want to do. Of course, some have long since passed (“be high school valedictorian” — which I missed out on by a very narrow margin), and others have fallen off my list for other reasons, but I’m sure that if I found that list, I’d find some gems on it.

I have another list that I made in my last semester of college. It was the equivalent of this list that I’m working on now (in that it was an assignment for my “Career Path Tutorial” class), and it was a very specific 5-year career plan, including year-by-year goals in categories like skill building, health, ministry, further education and training, budget and lifestyle, job, auditions, etc. It’s a pretty comprehensive list, and there are things on there that actually did happen (like starting a Masters program, although the timing or location weren’t anything like my list suggested), things that were modified (some of my health and fitness goals, for instance), and some that are still on my radar, but nowhere near where I was planning to be (the start-up of my theatre company, which I’d planned out to actually start in my second year or so after graduation).

I graduated from college in 2004, so this 5-year plan took me through the 2008-2009 academic year, and it’s kind of interesting to look at the specificity with which I’d planned out what I wanted to do with my company, in particular. I thought I’d be two or three years into it by now, and instead, I’m looking at a set of goals that still includes that company, but maybe in a different form. Maybe not at all. Who knows. The love for the work is still there, but the logistics are different than they were then.

The thing is, goals like this can’t account for things like falling in love, getting the opportunity to spend a year in New York, deciding that L.A. is the best place to go to school, or realizing that I really kind of love municipal arts advocacy. Goals are really only a template for reality, not a blueprint.

There are other sets of goals kicking around. From the time before I went to New York, I have lists of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive) with specific steps to some of the early research in creating a theatre company. I still like that format for defining goals, and I use it often for the smaller breakdowns of where I’m going, even if it’s not really the right tactic for long-term, big-picture, lifetime goal-setting.

There are lists of goals — some explicitly stated, some implicitly agreed upon — that Colin and I have set for our life together. Financial goals, career goals, artistic goals, family goals, lifestyle goals, ministry goals. Some of those will make it into the list that I’ll hand in for Entrepreneurship; some of the things I’m reflecting on in terms of my career goals in the next few years will impact our mutual goals.

Regardless, this is just another list that will get me to some point, somewhere down the path, and in five years, I’ll look at it and marvel at… what? Well, hopefully, I’ll see some goals that were met in exactly the way I hoped they would (it’ll be fantastic if this applies to our plan for paying off student loans!); some that were prayerfully and thoughtfully abandoned; some that were drastically changed as they grew and matured; and some that were completely replaced as life brought new things along.

Tags: Career, producing, Real Life, School, things I'm working on, work-life balance

• Digg
• Stumble it!
• Reddit

• First of many steps
• Gray
• More than Sunday School