Each year, I’m setting a list of goals based on the review of the previous year and some reflection where I want to go next. Things like “Write more on my blog”, because it’s a good thinking too, or “do more sports”, because of the long term health benefits. But I don’t really have a very structured system for this, it’s mostly an organically evolving system. For this year I have 15 goals to track (plus a few project based goals) in 5 categories: Self care, Growth, Family, Financial, Better world with not a lot of definition, just an understanding that I want to progress in each of these.
So I was delighted to learn about idea to structure goals recently. Well-being can be thought of as system maintenance. As the idea goes: if you don’t schedule maintaining your equipment, your equipment will schedule maintenance for you. For example: if you don’t eat well enough your long term health might suffer and you will get sick. Or: if you don’t learn more your career might suffer and you will struggle to find new opportunities.
The analogy seems especially helpful, as it also helps categorizing goals according to the four types of maintenance (there are multiple types of maintenance framework, but this is the most helpful to me):
- Corrective: fixing current problems. Hitting my sleep goals, spending time to keep track of things would fit here, like not letting admin work piling up. This would be a type of goal that I frequently feel the pain of, but rarely acknowledge it’s a problem to focus on, so might need to set or reframe goals around to correct current problems.
- Preventative: avoiding future problems. Focusing on physical and mental health goals fall here, and usually an easy category to have goals around.
- Adaptative: to re-adjusting to changes. This is something that gets lost with yearly planning, but shows meta goals like reviewing progress and adjusting targets based on changes is important and should be part personal goal setting.
- Perfective: to work towards a better system. Getting better at certain design practices, or building a better world through teaching would both fall into this category.
Thinking in these types is helpful, as they uncovered efforts that I’ve been already doing, and let me think about my overall goals in a new light - how exactly they contribute to my overall well-being.
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