Dissecting the Big Picture
The first step is to articulate what it is I'm trying to accomplish. My overarching goal is to find a job as an academic advisor in Oregon. Great, except that if it were that easy, I would have had a job 15 months ago. I know the “What” (get an advising job in Oregon). The next step is the “How,” as in, How can I find a job?
For my situation, there are three areas of focus to reach my goal The first, obviously, is looking for a job (in my case, anything in Oregon for the time being). Second, I need more education to be more competitively qualified. And the third area is taking a look at what I really want out of a job.
Dissecting your “How”
Each one of these areas is now a new goal. Articulating my educational goal, I want to finish my Master's degree by December 2010. Remember, each of these smaller goals is "How" you will achieve your overarching goal.
Now that I have an articulated goal in the Education category, I can break that into smaller “Hows.” How do I get a Master's degree in Academic advising? Well, I need to finish EDCEP 816, take my other three classes, and create a graduate portfolio. How do I finish EDCEP 816? I need to pass the remaining tests. How do I pass the tests? I read the chapters and fill out the study guide.
AHA!
Now we have reached an actual task. Out of my entire Master Plan, I have a bite-size piece I can accomplish. Maybe I can't “get the advising job,” but I can read the chapters in my textbook.
By looking at the big picture and by constantly asking “How,” I can see what I actually need to do. Yes, I want a job, but to get there, I have a thousand little tasks that will lead me to that big goal. It might seem obvious for the Education category, but what are the tasks that need to be accomplished in the Job Hunting or Personal Exploration categories? This technique allows you to find out what those little tasks actually are, or at least identify where it is you're running into walls. Either way, you know what to do next!
Thanks for creating such a clear concept of how to actually accomplish your goals with a Master Plan. Seeing how to make each step happen gives me confidence. The things in the yellow circles seem very do-able, something I could really get a handle on and make happen...and then the rest would naturally follow.
ReplyDelete@Tina
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to get overwhelmed by the big stuff. But the little stuff is easy to accomplish. As long as you can break down the big picture, you can do something small every day to work toward your big goal.
This is similar to the techniques I used to get through college, and what I use to run my household now. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the big monster tasks. If you take it one step at a time, you don't waste the energy of worrying about how to accomplish "everything," and before long you actually have accomplished everything. Excellent insights. Good luck getting to Oregon.
ReplyDeleteI like how you demonstrated how to set and reach a goal. Taking a current goal and showing how you plan to reach it is ingenious.
ReplyDelete@Jimberherd & James
ReplyDeleteI don't usually make pretty diagrams for my Master Plan, but I wanted to show what goes through my head while figuring out how to reach a goal. I normally either write the ideas down on the computer or scribble them out on a piece of scratch paper. I'm glad you like it, though!
I wonder if you might not find that you would enjoy and qualify for a set of jobs more diverse than academic adviser. Is there a business version of that job? Might a government-sponsored job service make use of the same skills? How about being a college counselor at a high school?
ReplyDelete@ Stephen
ReplyDeleteI touch on that in my personal philosophy (http://ownadvice.blogspot.com/p/my-personal-philosophy.html) and I may explore other avenues later. My first goal is to get a job in Oregon. Second, I will start exploring tangential careers. I happen to be studying specifically for a Master's in Academic Advising, but once that's finished, maybe I'll see what else it out there.