Maybe It’s Okay Not to Meet All of Our Goals
It was a gorgeous late October day in Connecticut—unusually warm with temps in the mid 70s. I had worked in a school and was excited to head out to a local rail trail in the afternoon. After my final meeting with teachers, I changed into running clothes and hit the trail. It was about four weeks until the Turkey Trot—the last race of the Dover Race Series, and I was hoping to crush the final run of the season. As you can see in the chart below, I had some goals for the year, and I was on track to meet them all. As you’re also about to see, things didn’t quite go to plan, and I realized that maybe it’s okay not to meet all of our goals.
Getting Hit by a Car: Not Part of the Plan
My plan for the day was a beefy speed set. I was going to run a total of about 7 miles with miles 3-6 being a fartlek-to-music set. This is one of my favorite speed sets. I’ve got a special playlist with high-energy songs. When a new song starts, I run fast for about a minute and then take the rest of the song easy. It’s highly engaging.
I had just finished my second fast run and was relaxing through the rest of the song when I got to a crosswalk. There are several of these on the trail—places where the path crosses residential roads through neighborhoods. A white SUV was heading toward the crosswalk, and as I got there, it slowed way down—almost to a full stop. I thought the driver was letting me go, so I waved and ran through the crosswalk.
I’ve heard that when something scary and dramatic happens, everything seems to slow down. That wasn’t my experience. It happened fast. The car accelerated just as I was in front of it. I realized with a sickening feeling that there wasn’t anything I could do. The front of the car hit my right hip, and I was thrown onto the side of the road. I landed hard on the back of my left shoulder and slid on the side of the road.
I’m both a little embarrassed and proud (more proud than embarrassed–if you’re a runner, you’ll understand) that while writhing on the ground in pain, I reached over with my right hand to pause my Garmin. That’s how I can tell you that I was exactly 2.71 miles down the path when I was hit.
My left shoulder was dislocated—which hurts like crazy in case you were wondering. As I rolled around, it went back into place which was an immediate relief. I lay on my back staring straight up. The driver got out and came over to me—asking if I was alright and apologizing profusely. “I always slow way down. I always look!” she seemed to be convincing herself. “I looked, and I didn’t see you!” She called 911.
After a minute or two, I could tell that my back, neck, and head were all fine, so I slowly got to my feet. Both of my knees and my right elbow were bloody. My right pinky finger was also scraped and bleeding—but not too badly. Relieved that my shoulder was back in its socket, I rolled my arm forward, just to check. My shoulder dislocated again. I gasped in pain and bent in half, and my shoulder went back in place. I decided not to test that again.
By the time the fire truck arrived, I had caught my breath and was starting to feel a huge sense of relief. The driver (we’ll call her Liza) felt horrible, as you can imagine. Not only was her kid in the car, but she was a parent at the school I had just been consulting in! The fire fighters checked me out and took some vitals. A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived. I waved them off. I was pretty sure that a trip to the hospital would entail a long time in the waiting room only to have someone tell me that I’d dislocated my shoulder, which I already knew, and that I should rest and ice. I also wasn’t sure how much a trip to an ER in an out-of-network hospital would cost, but that was something I didn’t need to learn.
The police arrived, and we filled out an accident report. Liza gave me a ride back to my car, and I headed back to my hotel room.
I eventually needed physical therapy (that’s another story) to get my shoulder working properly again, but overall, I was very fortunate. This all could have been much worse.
So What Does This Have to Do With Goals?
As you saw at the beginning of this story, I had five goals for the year. I had already accomplished three. I had run enough of the Dover Race Series Races (six of nine races) to have my points officially tallied and get an official score (and the all-important race jacket!). The half marathon in early June—a gorgeous course in Portland, Maine—was faster than I expected. I had also done well overall during the year of adding strength and flexibility work to my routine.
After the accident, I wasn’t so sure about the goal of 1500 miles in the year. I tried running on a treadmill in a hotel three days after the accident, and after about 15 seconds, I had to stop. Every footfall led to a sharp pain under my armpit. Five days after the accident, I managed 1.2 miles around town. Two days later, I managed 2.2. Each time I ran, the next day I had more shoulder pain, so I worked at keeping it light. It wasn’t pretty, but I was out there.
I told a friend that I wasn’t sure I was going to meet my goal of 1500 miles for the year. “Were you on track before the accident?” she asked. I responded that I was, and she said that meant I’d met my goal. After all, I couldn’t have anticipated being hit by a car. Several other people reassured me with similar trains of thought. It wasn’t like I’d given up on reaching the goal, went their thinking. Something unforeseen was getting in the way.
Someone even tried to convince me that I could still say I’d met my goal of remaining injury-free. “After all,” they reasoned, “you didn’t try to get hit by a car!”
Does this strike you as a bit odd? It did me. I was hit by a car while running and couldn’t run for several days because of it. When I got back out there, I ran like a T-Rex with my hands up near my chest to avoid bouncing my shoulder. I skipped the Turkey Trot race because I was still hurting and didn’t want to risk falling in wet leaves in a crowd. To me, this was pretty clearly not staying injury free.
It made me wonder if some folks feel that reaching goals is about intention not results. My goal was to run 1500 miles in the year. I was either going to do it or not. If I managed 1497 but missed it because of an accident, I didn’t reach the goal. (I did meet this one, by the way, tallying 1504.1 miles for the year.) I dislocated my shoulder when I was hit by a car while running—that’s an injury. I didn’t meet the goal of staying injury free. But, importantly I think, I also didn’t feel badly about not meeting that goal.
Good Goals Are Realistic and Challenging
This has helped me reflect on good goal setting. We’re often encouraged to set SMART goals. These are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Let’s consider the “A” for a moment. It’s an important one. Goals that are impossible to achieve don’t do us much good. We quickly get demotivated if we know we can’t reach our goals.
On the other hand, goals should be challenging enough to be inspirational. In Good to Great, Jim Collins encourages us to take on B-HAGS…big hairy audacious goals. These are goals that will inspire because they are hard, not because they’re easily achievable. However, overly audacious goals might not be realistic. It seems we need to thread the needle between goals that are possible and ones that are hard enough to mean something if we achieve them. This also means that sometimes we won’t reach all of our goals, and that’s okay.
For example, you might want all your students in a class reach competency in all key learning objectives. You’re not looking for all kids to achieve the highest level of mastery—but at least solid competence. You put together compelling units and lively lessons. You offer extra small group help sessions. You identify students who are struggling and have them join you during WIN blocks for extra one-on-one tutoring.
At the end of the semester, several students have indeed achieved a high level of mastery, and almost all others are competent. There are three students who weren’t though. One missed several weeks because of an illness. Another is struggling with several outside-of-school issues and was often so dysregulated that they couldn’t focus. The third was so close but just couldn’t quite get there on one objective—even with extra support. Did you reach your goal? No. But can you feel good about 23 of your 26 students reaching competence? That sounds pretty good to me.
Or let’s say you have a goal of shortening the whole class direct instruction part of class periods. You know that the more you talk, the less kids hear. This is a worthy goal. A friend and colleague of mine once said that whole class instruction is the “most efficient, least effective form of instruction.”
For a week, you set a timer and record how long your whole class direct instruction takes, and the average is 17 minutes. You decide that your goal is to get it under 10. For the next several weeks, your average keeps dropping from 15 to 13 to 11. After this, you just can’t seem to get your average lower than 11 minutes. On those rare days when you keep teaching to 9 minutes, things feel too rushed, and students don’t seem ready to engage in application exercises. You notice, however, than lessons in the 11–12-minute range seem about right. Students stay focused and engaged, and when they move on to practice skills or apply learning, they‘re ready to go. That was the real point of the goal, after all. Though you didn’t technically reach your goal, the intended result was accomplished.
Goals are important. They help focus our attention and pinpoint areas for improvement. They can also motivate and inspire. So try to strike a balance between goals which are hard enough to be inspirational but still possible. And in the end, maybe it’s okay not to meet all of our goals.
To read more reflections about what running can remind us about teaching and learning, click here. You can connect with me on Strava here.
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