Go shift yourself

New year's resolutions are tested as soon as they are made - we wrote it down, told a friend, or set up a reoccurring reminder to write or read or exercise more, or maybe spend more time with the people important to us.

Then we have to put it into action - what's the plan?

Of course, we need our goals to be SMART - there are lots of words you can use for that acronym but I'll use Specific, Motivating, Achievable, and Time-bound - but this isn't an article about the SMART - there are plenty of those out there.

Its the first week of February - and chances are - our New Year's resolutions are beginning to fray. This is about what happens when we 'fail' When those SMART goals run against a dumb, uncaring reality and things don't go exactly to plan - we have a decision - do we continue? Or do we move on?

Or do we Pivot? According to Sartre - allowing past decisions to control our actions is a bad faith denial of our transcendent radical freedom

 Or do we wallow for awhile until we feel like we've adequately chastised ourselves for even trying to create goals in a chaotic uncaring world? Just me?

Objectively we know that we have to shift and re-evaluate plans/resolutions as conflicts come up - re-adjusting is just a part of life and the faster we can adjust - the less life we lose to worry and stress. But being human means we are often less than objective.

Because of that - we need to understand from the outset - as we're setting those SMART goals, that we are going to need to adjust them. Any goal worth having is tough and some 'failure' will occur.

Same with our code, it lives in an ecosystem and so it may not be perfect the first time - or maybe it was perfect for the goals at the time, but those have changed. The company has Pivoted so planning and documenting our code to allow for refactoring and rearchitecting helps reduce rework when that time comes.

For both of code and life it comes down to our activities/processes - daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc. and spending time thinking about what we're working on and where it is taking us - which is often harder to do than just putting our head down and working.

Sometimes we are just trying to do too much or our efforts are going in the wrong direction, so I encourage you - sit down and re-evaluate your Goals - are they still relevant?

Are you happy with where they are taking you? Do you need to re-prioritize?

Be ruthless with this as it steers everything else.

 Then look at which activities and habits have supported them, and which haven't and adjust. If it's not working then ask for help, carefully study the problem without ego, and shift accordingly.

Continuous Improvement can only happen when we are continuously adjusting to our shifting environment and self.