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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Barb Rankin, I broke down and joined the Fitbit craze this past December, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson about achieving goals, by taking one step at a time.
Fun Fact:
As I noted in the intro, I’ve joined the ranks of the literally millions of people who have purchased and are using a Fitbit tracker, which is a wearable, wireless device used in the health and fitness industry. There are several Fitbit models, and they can track the steps you’ve walked daily, your net calories consumed, your activity intensity, your heart rate, your weight loss, and more or fewer health metrics, depending on the version you own. This company was formed in 2007, is located in California, and between 2010 and 2014, its revenue from the sale of this popular device grew from $5 million dollars to $745 million. Isn’t that amazing! As of early 2016, it is estimated that about 40 million of these devices have been sold. I don’t know what their company goals were, but I think a lot of us who own a Fitbit certainly helped them achieve their goals, with every step we take.
What I Learned Yesterday:
More than 25 years ago, I lived in the suburbs of Baltimore, and the area around my neighborhood was poised for growth. My home was near a large undeveloped forested area that was teeming with wildlife, and while I knew some portion of it was going to be developed, I wanted it to be in a planned and orderly manner that would provide a reasonable balance between people and nature. I attended a county council meeting where input was being solicited from the impacted areas, and during the Q&A session, I voiced my recommendations and concerns. When the meeting ended, one of the councilmen from another district approached me and said I’d represented my neighborhood fairly, and he encouraged my continued participation. Then a second person stopped to chat, and he told me he had many of the same concerns, and was involved in our area’s improvement association. His background was in environmental planning, engineering, and computer science. He was well spoken, serious, passionate about making a difference, and I was immediately impressed. We exchanged contact information and a few weeks later, he called to invite me to a meeting to explore his possible run for our district’s county council, where he felt he could make a difference for our community.
It was a great meeting with many fellow community members. He outlined his broad plans and ideas, and solicited input from the attendees. He was adamant that everyone had an opportunity to speak and share ideas. He said he would run for public office, and his brother was going to be his campaign manager. At the end of the evening, he said he needed a finance manager for his campaign and since he knew of my accounting and finance background, he asked if I would do that for him. I agreed.
I didn’t have any experience in political campaigning and had no idea what to expect, so I had to learn quickly. Our goal was to unseat a 20-year incumbent whom we felt wasn’t serving the interests of our community. We needed a slogan, a platform, plans to meet the constituency, campaign materials – and money. And we had less than 6 months until the election.
To meet our goal, we immediately conducted a number of strategy sessions to define what we needed. We made lists of current supporters and the neighborhoods we had to reach. We created our campaign message and determined the type and design of campaign materials we would use. We choose colors. We had to pay for this, so we then turned to raising money. We planned targeted fundraisers for the high dollar contributors and we planned low cost bull roasts to meet the people who lived in the district.
Finally, we found volunteers to go door to door with our message – every evening after work and every Saturday. We mapped out our district and devised a timeline that would enable us to hit all key areas before the election.
We often talk about goals at the beginning of the year when we set them, and at the end of the year when we measure ourselves against them, but it’s important to track your progress as you go. Why? Because you can gauge how you are doing to meet your goals, and modify them if you need to make a mid-course correction. We know that we need “SMART” goals – ones that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. We have a better chance of success if we take each goal, break it down into steps or tasks, and determine how we are going to accomplish each one. Then we execute our plan – and measure our progress at the key milestones we have established – each step.
For example, a number of years ago, a friend and I needed to get in shape for our respective hiking trips. We had to be able to hike at least 10 miles per day, up and down hills, and over uneven terrain. If you haven’t hiked in a while, you need build up your endurance and stamina over time if you want to go the distance (and I’m not talking to the youngsters who have plenty of pep and vigor!). We began hiking several months ahead of time, and increased our distance gradually. Since some of that hiking time was in the summer, we met at 5am, just after sunrise, since it could already be 90 degrees (remember folks – Phoenix is H-O-T in the summer!). But we persevered and we literally achieved our goal, one step at a time. I can tell you that there were a few Saturday mornings when I really didn’t want get up at 4am to go hiking for 4 to 5 hours, and neither did my friend. But we held each other accountable – the buddy system – and we’d pull ourselves up and take the next step.
In the same way, we took that campaign one planned step at a time.
I will never forget the Tuesday night after the polls closed and the results began coming in. The candidate and I sat in his home office and added up the votes as his brother called in results from the precincts. And the moment that we realized that mathematically – it was over. He won – and we won. It was a remarkable achievement.
Here’s what I learned.
You can’t achieve your goal if you don’t start it. Many things we want to accomplish in life take time and effort, and you might face roadblocks and get discouraged along the way. But pull yourself up – take that next step, and then the one after that – and you will be back on the path to achieving your goals – one step at a time.
I’m Barb Rankin and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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