What I Learned by NOT Achieving my Summer Goals

"If you never fail, you aren't setting big enough goals." 

- Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser

When I first started taking fitness classes at the Y, I had two goals:  Don't hurt yourself, and don't leave a class early.  After a couple of months, my planner personality kicked in, and I started setting real goals and tracking them on a spreadsheet that hangs on the side of my refrigerator.  For the first four seasons, I pretty much killed them.  This summer, I did not.  I met a few.  I fell just short on others.  And a few aren't even close.  So, this post will be a slightly self indulgent reflection on what I learned from the summer of not meeting all my goals.  Since it is an educator's blog, I'll make connections to setting and meeting (or not meeting) academic goals in the second half.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

In the prior seasons, my goals were no more than 90 days out.  This one started the day after my birthday, and since I wasn't going back to school, I decided to make it end on the last day of August rather than when I reported back to school.  That made the time I was giving myself to reach the goals 105 days.  That sounded good because it gave me plenty of time to get stronger and increase weight and bike speed.  But in reality, it made me less motivated to increase weight because I'd have time to do that later.  And some of my goals are averages.  It turns out that it is really difficult to move an average up after day 70 or so.  Even if I spent all of the final month moving really fast on the bike, it wasn't going to move the average up by more than a minute amount.  Hence, I didn't have a ton of motivation to kill it in the latter parts of the summer.  Long term goals are fine, but the yearbook advisor in me should have known to put some  intermediate milestones in place as I pursued the larger aims.  

For the fall, I am going to set goals two weeks at a time.  I'll track a bunch of numbers.  At the end of two weeks, I'll choose a couple to improve on for the next two weeks.  It could be 5 more miles on the bike or a higher average speed.  It could be adding 5 pounds to my chest weight.  But, instead of a far away end goal, I'll be focusing on improvement in some area.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

It is easy when looking at performance to focus on where we fell short.  That's natural, and may even be healthy as we set our next objective.  But, we should also take time to celebrate the good.  I didn't fail every aspect.  And even on those where I did fail, I made progress, got stronger, became healthier, and spent time with people I love while doing them.  That all has enormous value whether or not I hit my target numbers.  

Keep Moving Forward

Many of my goals are based on averages.  These were the ones that became really difficult to meet if I wasn't already there in August.  Budging an average up is just hard after a high number of days in the same way baseball players with long careers won't see as much movement in their batting average after each game like a rookie will.  But a few of my aims weren't averages.  I aim for a total distance on the bike, so even on my off days when my legs just wouldn't cooperate, I was adding miles to that total.  It may have been 9 miles when I wanted 12, but it was 9 more miles than it would have been if I hadn't come to class that day.

I have a cycle classmate named Wallace.  He is 80 years old.  A few days ago, he said, "Now, you are going to see that I am slack in all classes, not just yours." Oh, no, Wallace.  The last thing you are is slack.  Do you know how many people aren't even here?  That man is strong and healthy at 80 because he keeps going.  He may be a little slower than the person next to him (although, not always, I've seen him outperform people much younger than he is), but he is continuously moving forward.  Wallace is an inspiration, and I hope that I am still on the bike 32 years from now.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

Goals are tricky because they require us to project into the future.  And the truth is that we don't know what the future holds.  We have a decent grip a few days out, but we can't know whether we will get sick or experience an emotional upheaval or injury during the next month.  As a result, we often set unrealistic goals.  It didn't scare me to have a few off days.  That can happen from not eating enough calories before the workout or not getting enough sleep the night before.  But then, I got a summer cold followed by a particularly heavy cycle (perimenopause was the opposite of what I expected, y'all) that turned a couple off days into a couple of off weeks.  Rather than change my goals, I thought I could ramp back up and make up for the off weeks.  To make up for the losses in averages, I would have had to perform farther above average than I am actually capable of.  I would have been much better off resetting the goals instead of insisting on the delusion that I could reach them.  Then, once I got to the place where reaching them was mathematically impossible, I had no motivation to do toe-pushups in the morning or an extra set of crunches in the evening.  

In his book Uprise, Kevin Washburn advises having an A goal (the one you can reach if all circumstances are ideal), a B goal (the one you will be happy with if the weather messes with your run), and a C goal (the one you can find satisfactory even if everything goes wrong).  I sometimes have those for individual classes, but I've never thought to have them for the entire season.  I'm hoping my two week interval system will allow for this as I will only be focused on improvement, and the C goal can be improving by a small amount while still being improvement.

-----------------------------------------------

As promised, there are connections to education.

Setting the Goal Too Far Out Messes With Motivation

At the beginning of the school year, I often asked student what their academic goals were, and I learned that students are very broad in their thinking.  They say they want to make an A for the semester.  The semester that starts in August ends in December.  The young brain is simply not equipped to motivate itself for a goal that far out.  Meanwhile, I have found their practice to be remarkably short sighted, only willing to study for a test if it is less than three days away or work on that which is due tomorrow.  I ran into this with my study skills class when I tried to get them to devote some time to studying for the test they had that Friday while also putting some time into making flashcards for their finals.  They didn't want to do it because it wasn't "next."

Teachers should encourage students to set some intermediate goals for the sake of continuous motivation. It's up to you and them what that looks like. Perhaps, like my workout schedule, they should have something to improve on every week or two.  Perhaps, they should focus on the next thing out and one more thing.  Perhaps there should be a reading or study time schedule that they can mark off to show their progress visually.  But don't rely on willpower to get them to the end of the semester.

Failing in Part is Not Complete Failure

I remember the only time I failed a physics quiz in high school.  I remember the three Cs I made in college classes (Chemistry 201,  Human Anatomy and Physiology, and Ecology).  I can tell you about projects I have tried at school that went very wrong - In fact, I'll be speaking about one of those failures at a conference in October.  The reason I can tell you about those times is that they were rare.  Overall, I was a very successful student.  

When good students fail, it is traumatic.  Unlike students who regularly perform at low levels, they simply don't have the coping skills to deal with failing a quiz or performing worse than usual on a test.  But it is going to happen, and teachers are going to have to support them through it.  It is important to remind them of a few things.  

1. A bump in the road is just that, and they should keep their eyes on the prize and stay on track.  
2. They have a strong record of success and will continue to have one.  This one quiz is the story they'll tell later because it was so rare. 
3. Grades are not their identity. 

Keep Moving Forward

When I tried to get back on track after my few "off weeks," I made the mistake of thinking I could make up for it by really over performing in a way I wasn't actually capable of.  I would have been much better off just getting back to normal, allowing the average to be slightly less.  Students are sometimes like this too.  If they did poorly on one test, they try to aim at 100 on the next one or even ask for extra credit work. A student who has consistently made Bs is not likely to find a 100 realistic, and they set themselves up for disappointment.  They would be better off acknowledging what they have learned from the situation and getting back into a normal routine of studying than they would be trying to make a "New Year's resolution" type effort just after their setback.  I often told students that it was called an average for a reason.

When Circumstances Change, It's Okay for the Goal to Change Too

I have taught many excellent students who had difficulty recovering from concussions, grief, or mono.  While we as teachers work with them the best we can, we also cannot just give a student an A.  We can extend deadlines and reduce load, but to require nothing of them and give a grade for that nothing is not something a person with integrity can do.  The circumstances have changed, and it is okay for the goal to change with it.  

Several years ago, I had a student who had traditionally been a straight A student fall dramatically after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.  This messed with her head.  She said to me, "If I don't make As, who am I."  We had a discussion about making your identity something more permanent and important than a letter at the top of a paper, and I prayed for her to find her worth as an image bearer of her Creator. But I also understood that she was used to a life where it was fairly easy to reach her grade goals, so this felt like academic whiplash.  If I had this to do over, I would follow up the spiritual conversation with a practical plan, asking what might be a realistic grade for her to aim at in her current circumstances now that the ideal was unattainable.  

I have always said that I would rather my students aim high and miss than to aim low and hit their targets, but when that happens, it still feels like failure.  Reacting to our students with empathy gives them a safe place to land, recover from the wounds of failure, and launch again.  That kind of resilience does not get built in those who always achieve success.  It is only built by failing and learning from that failure.

Want to Grow? Do the Harder Thing Now

In his excellent book, Why Don't Students Like School, Daniel Willingham discusses the difference between performance and growth.  A lot of students use study techniques that are ineffective for learning because they seem good at the moment.  As teachers, we all know that cramming is not good for keeping things in long-term memory, but students feel that it is effective because they do well in the short term (even though they know they have forgotten that information a few days later if you press them on it).  Parents have sometimes told me they didn't understand how their student performed poorly on a test because they went over their flashcards many times the night before, and they knew them by the end of the study session.  They don't realize that the student has recognized the material from seeing it a few minutes ago, and that they suffer from the "Illusion of Knowing." 

You can learn more about recognition/familiarity vs. knowing in Willingham's book Outsmart Your Brain.  In it, he uses an analogy from the world of fitness.  He asks the reader to consider a situation where your goal is to do as many pushups as possible.  He suggests that most people would be inclined to do the easiest pushups possible.  After all, you can do them relatively quickly, so it seems like you are reaching your goal, at least from a short-term performance standpoint.  What is not happening, however, is growth.  If you want to get stronger, you have to do the hardest pushups you can accomplish and then slowly make them even harder.  It will feel ineffective because you will end the session with jello arms, but it will help you accomplish your long-term goals in a way the easy thing won't.  You should do the harder thing.

I am in a class called Group Power at the YMCA.  It is a choreographed group weightlifting class, and I love it.  The first night I took it, I was afraid of injury, so I used the lightest weights I could, but for some of the moves, I realized I could do a lot more.  Over the next few weeks, I added more and now have "a normal weight factor" for each muscle group.  The instructor changes up the routine every six weeks or so, giving me the opportunity to experiment.  Right now, we are using an inclined bench.  During the core portion of the routine, we have the option to fight gravity or let it help us.  I thought of Daniel Willingham and chose to do situps and crunches against gravity, knowing it would help in the long run.  That long-run mindset is important because the first week, I looked like a dying cockroach, legs flailing everywhere.  Another member of the class showed me how to grip the bench risers with my feet, which helped a lot.  I still run out of core and leg strength a few reps before the end, but I feel stronger and can feel that I have improved.  Next week, I will talk about ways in which an understanding of cognitive science has helped me in group fitness classes, but the idea of doing the harder thing despite the feeling of ineffectiveness is definitely one of them.  I wouldn't be pushing myself as hard if not for Willingham's analogy.

Two weeks ago, in a parent-teacher conference, a mom came in and said, "My daughter has changed how she studies because of your advice."  I have spent a lot of time explaining effective study methods to my 8th graders.  Some of them neglect the advice, believing that they know what works for them in the face of contrary evidence.  ("No, listening to music doesn't affect my working memory," said one young lady as though she was qualified to know that.)  I want students to understand the reason for the advice we give them, so I have explained the difference between performance and learning.  Some continue with the ineffective strategies that make them comfortable, and some only care about performance (which is hard to change in our current culture).  But those who care about learning adapt, and I know they will find it satisfying at some point if they stick with it through the times when it feels ineffective.  

As teachers, it is easy to send mixed messages.  I know have been guilty of talking to them about keeping a long-term perspective on learning while also communicating with them more about their performance when grading them.  It's a tension I don't know we will ever fully reconcile, but we should be aware of it and try to keep them focused on growth over grades, learning over performance, and the important over the immediate.

Grit Doesn't Always Look the Same

For the past couple of days, I've been reading Fantastic Failures by Luke Reynolds.  The title is a bit of an oversimplification because in very few of these stories did the person actually fail first; they just overcame challenges and obstacles.  I guess a title like Stories of People Who Overcame Obstacles doesn't have the same zip. 

Sorry for the aside.  To be fair, you are reading a blog called "On the Rabbit Trail," so you can't be shocked. 

As I read each of these stories, I realized that we've only been viewing grit from one perspective, in educational circles anyway.  We have been focused on persevering at the same thing over and over until we succeed at it or die trying.  Popular examples include Michael Jordan having been cut from his high school basketball team, the oversimplified belief that Einstein was bad at math (which he was not; he was bad at school and lousy with people, especially authority figures), and J.K. Rowling being turned down by twelve publishers before getting someone to take a chance on Harry.

That is certainly one side, but there are other stories that could make us view grit in a different way. 

Did you know that before she became the most well-known wedding dress designer in history, Vera Wang was a figure skater?  She was good, but she came one place shy of making the Olympic team.  She enjoyed fashion, so she went to work at Vogue and then Ralph Lauren.  She had grit, but rather than applying it toward continuing to skate, she took it in another direction.  (By the way, she is in the figure skating hall of fame for designing the costumes of many Olympic skaters.)

Play-Doh was originally developed as a wall cleaning product.  It works pretty well, actually.  Try it the next time you have pencil marks on a painted or wallpapered wall.  In spite of it working well, it didn't sell well.  Just as the company was about to dissolve, a newspaper article was published that said pre-school teachers were giving it to kids to build craft projects.  Imagine if they had insisted that it remain what they originally wanted it to be rather than seeing the potential of rebranding it as Play-Doh.  They didn't give up, but they didn't dig in their heels either.

Alexi Leoniv is not referenced in this book, but I read Two Sides of the Moon a few years ago, and he has an interesting grit story as well.  Alexi's passion was art, and he had skill.  The problem was that he couldn't afford to go to art school.  Instead, he joined the military and became a pilot and a cosmonaut.  He was the first person to perform a spacewalk.  Art didn't stop being part of his life; in fact, he took crayons with him into space, knowing he would not be able to express what he saw in words.  Because he was willing to apply his grit differently, he got one of the greatest artistic inspiration vistas in history. 

As educators, we encourage our students to persevere.  We want them to keep trying.  If there is something that a student is truly passionate about, we want to see them achieve it.  But we've all seen enough American Idol auditions to know that not everyone who is passionate about singing should pursue it as a career.  We, as teachers, do not know when the right time is for a student to change directions, and we shouldn't pretend that we do.  We can, however, present them with the idea that changing directions isn't the same thing as giving up.  Grit can be applied in another direction.