Accidentally in Code

Tag: coaching

  • The Goals Spreadsheet

    The Goals Spreadsheet

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    Credit: Flickr / SaraYeomans

    At the end of the year, my coach had me make a list of 40 goals for 2017. They range from the very professional to the very personal. From the serious to the purely for fun. Of course, I broke them into sections and put them in a spreadsheet. At the start of each month I do a “commitment journal”, where I think about what I hope the next month will bring. As part of that I’ve taken to going through the list and updating it. Marking the completed ones green, the in progress ones orange, and the at risk ones red.

    As of the last update, 10 goals have been marked green. 13 are orange. 6 are red. But to look at it that way misses the point – I’ve been finding it a powerful and interesting exercise to return each month to the things that I found important at the start of the year – even if many of them would not make the list if I wrote it again today. Even if it doesn’t capture many things that I have achieved – because I had no idea they were coming.

    I’ve generally been much more into the process than the goal. I think it’s easy to have some big ideas, but if you can’t break things down and somewhat enjoy what it will take to get there it will never happen. So this is the kind of thing that I would find pointless without someone else being involved in some way. I wouldn’t make the list for myself, I wouldn’t do the monthly journal without someone to send it to. But it’s surprising to me how often I return to it the following month and how much of what I wrote down has actually happened.

    Have I got more done because of these processes? Probably not. But I have a better record of what that looked like, and I feel a better sense of progress – and that’s something.

     

  • On Coaching

    On Coaching

    I’ve been working with a coach for the best part of a year now. I started because I called my friend Camille stressed out of my mind and she said – like a good friend will – you need someone to do this for you. It was one of the most helpful pieces of advice I have ever got and I really appreciated her giving it me.

    There’s a lot of stuff all over the internet about coaching – what it is and what you will get out of it. But here are three things that have really made a big difference to me.

    Context and Continuity

    A lot has changed over the last year – I was living (kinda) in Colombia and leading a 6 person team at a struggling startup. Now I’m living (still kinda – I guess that bit hasn’t changed) in Lisbon and leading a ~25 person team at a company that has been around for over a decade. My coach gets WTHIC, we speak three times a month and before each call I send my “prep”. She has more context on my life than almost anyone else. But she’s not part of it – she doesn’t work at the same company, we don’t move in the same social circle. This is so helpful. Often the thorny problems in our lives have so much backstory and context, and when we seek someone out to talk to we have to explain that. But like any relationship, when you invest in over the long term, it gets easier and easier to talk about things.

    The Best Cate

    Whilst coaching definitely makes me better at my job, the focus is on me holistically. Medium to long term happiness and success depend on every part of my life being sustainable.

    Personal Goals

    At the end of 2016 we did a year review, and I set 40 goals for 2017. I put it in a spreadsheet, and now we’re in Q2… I colour coded it.

    I’m terrible at personal goals, and this is why I rely on processes. My ability to define processes and execute on them is a strength – and a curse. I can blog multiple times a week for years, but can’t contemplate how to do something bigger and more nebulous. Something like… write a book. It’s much harder to define a sustainable process that will achieve that kind of larger project. I know this about myself, so I rarely set goals for myself.

    But when you work with someone else, you get another perspective on how to approach and evaluate things. It’s exciting that I defined goals for the year for once, and cool that I already achieved two of them and made progress on many others. It’s nice that I can see clearly what I important to me that I haven’t made progress on and interesting to see how my ideas of what is important have changed over the past three months.