Running after every snap and crack.

There is this great story I once heard about a man who was walking through the Appalachias and came across a clearing. To his surprise there were a number of the scrawniest pigs he had ever seen running around the clearing. They would run from one end to another. Approaching the home he found an old farmer on the porch and asked him what was up with the crazy pigs. The farmer responded that a while back he had lost his voice and when he needed to feed the pigs he would call them by rapping with a stick on a pan or post. Now whenever a twig snapped or something fell the pigs would run to that spot looking for food.
We need to be careful to not be like these pigs. It is too easy to start down a road with a plan or a goal and get distracted. While occasionally that distraction may be good information that we can and should incorporate, we need to weigh the information carefully to make sure that it’s not distracting us from our final goal. I remember listening to a presentation by William Glasser <http://www.wglasser.com/> on his highly successful educational programs. At the end of the presentation he told the audience that what he had presented worked, but that there were dozens of other programs out there that also worked and he urged everyone to pick one and do it.
Sometimes lots of roads lead to Rome and sometimes there is only one path to your goal. Either way, the real trick is to make the plan and stick with it unless you are absolutely sure you need to alter course.

Balancing what’s within your control with what is out of your control, and sharing your goals.

If a goal is a personal goal, you want to make sure that as many of the objectives are totally within your control as possible. For example, saying I’m going to loose 2 lbs this week is not completely within your control. Saying that you are going to walk x number of miles and eat x number of calories probably is. If this is a shared goal with a collaboration or partnership < http://www.collaboration.me.uk/WHAT_DOES_IT_LOOK_LIKE.php> then you need to take into account that not everything is going to be completely within your control. Using the tools at < http://www.collaboration.me.uk/> you will be more successful at shared goals.
Find weight loss information at: http://www.collaboration.me.uk/Weight_Loss.php

The Good is the Greatest Enemy of the Best

Years ago while a graduate student my wife and I bought a small home with a partially unfinished basement. It had been trashed by former student renters and though it was a lot of work, we got a good deal. Wanting to save money, we remodeled the basement and rented out the upstairs of the house to four girls who were also going to school. They made our house payment and though the downstairs apartment was not as nice as the upstairs apartment it served us well and helped us toward the goal of finishing graduate school. We had two small bedrooms, a bathroom, living room and a kitchen. We had one child when we moved in and two more of our four children were born while we lived in that home.
As an undergraduate student I had taken a course from a Dean Sorenson. One of his favorite sayings was, “The Good is the Greatest Enemy of the Best.” What he meant by that is that we are not so much side tracked from doing what is best by doing something really bad, but by doing something good. Let me give you an example. Over the years that we lived in the house I mentioned, without fail, around mid term and finals time the girls would really clean the house. This didn’t matter if they were going to continue to be living there or not, it would be thoroughly cleaned. The reason, I believe, was that they needed to be studying. That was the best thing they could be doing at that point in time, but when they took a break, they couldn’t just waste their time, they had to do something important. Steven Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talks about a similar concept in his comparisons of “urgent” and “important.” http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~tanguay/7intro.htm https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php
While it is important to have a balanced life and take breaks as needed, understanding and acknowledging what you are doing can be an important aspect of accomplishing your goals.