Setting Realistic Goals

Posted January 10, 1999 at 1:49 am No Comments

The end of winter break is kind of a drag sometimes.  Forcing myself back into the daily grind isn’t so bad; what gets to me is the disappointment of the typical post-break assessment, a mental process that I go through after every vacation.   “Winter break has ended,” I find myself thinking, “and what do I have to show for it?”  The key to avoiding depression lies in realizing that although I may not have accomplished my original goals, I found and satisfied new goals of equal importance.  For example:

As you can see, a little bit of creative spin goes a long way toward transforming three weeks of laziness into a highly productive winter break.  Naturally, it would have been better to have started out my break with the goals in the right-hand column, but it’s not easy to have that much foresight.  This semester, I’ve tried to modify my objectives so as to avoid the necessity of future goal reassessment:

Original Goal For New Semester	Modified Goal
study statistics	update monzy.com
French homework	meet chicks
write packet sniffer	drink coffee
sleep	update monzy.com
Pittsburgh Marathon	jello shots