Shyam Barr

Blog

 

PREFACE

This blog discusses topics that exist between the fields cognitive psychology and leadership, teaching and learning. Although I make connections between research and personal experience (my attempt at bridging the age-old ‘theory-practice’ gap), I write for a general audience. It is as Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi stated in the preface of his book FLOW:

“To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylised constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic” (p. xi)

To avoid carelessness, I will endeavour to include references to journal articles, books and alike (as commonly expected in academic writing), but not at the expense of accessibility and ease of reading. This will be a delicate balance and one I will endeavour to achieve.

To end, I chose the word ‘discusses’ in the first sentence of this preface, to highlight that although the blog articles themselves are very much a dialogue between myself and what I read, I encourage you to share your comments and questions, so that we may start a more authentic discussion. 

 
 

Goal-setting applied to OUR Relationship - Family Planning Retreat - Feb 2022

I talk a lot about goal-setting in a learning context, but what about in a relationship context??

If you are in a relationship (dating, married, or maybe further along and leading your family...) and you feel like you and your partner might be on different pages and you're keen to achieve greater alignment.. this one's for YOU! 👇🏻

☝🏻NOTE: Self-regulated learning is a process of planning, monitoring, and evaluating. The planning phase involves GOAL-SETTING, as it allows one to measure progress against a target outcome. Goals are not limited to academic domains… so what about relationships?

Reahn Barr and I have been married since Jan 2015 - 7 years! We've spoken about our shared goals throughout our relationship - Sometimes we have been successful with setting & achieving our goals. Other times, we've failed dramatically. At the beginning of 2022, we were feeling particularly desperate to find alignment as we are both taking risks with our careers & have some bigger future aspirations. So… we organised a Family Planning Retreat.

The approach I'm about to share with you is something that YOU TOO can apply to your relationships. 

We took a day off from work, organised a babysitter, and booked a night away - Our aim for our Family Planning Retreat: Create a vision board AND some clear strategies to bring the vision to life (i.e., a FAMILY GOAL!).

Here is how we did it:

(Save this so you can refer back to it later!)

The VISION

1. Individually, we spent 15 minutes listing all the activities/experiences that bring each of us joy - What makes us happy? What sparks joy?

2. Individually, we read out our list while the other one listened.

3. Together, we synthesised the information by grouping similar activities across our lists on poster paper. We also discussed any individual activity that was particularly important and required the support of the other person. If important and required support, it was also listed on the shared poster paper.

4. We renamed the groups of activities under the main heading “A life with…”. For example, at the top of the page was “A life with” and then we had each of our groups listed (e.g., “unique experiences”, “present relationships”, “calm and inspiring spaces” etc.). Essentially, we were answering the question “How do we want the rest of our lives to be? What would be a fulfilled life for us right now?”

Once we had our vision clear, we then needed a roadmap/blueprint to help bring about our new vision.

THE ACTIONS (The roadmap/blueprint)

1. First we pondered the question - what do we need to make our vision a reality? We came up with two core components being time & money which we titled “We make better decisions about how WE… 

(1) allocate time and 

(2) earn/save/invest money”. 

TIME was listed as we needed to reallocate time from current activities to those activities that we listed.

MONEY was listed as it supported our desire for unique experiences, travel, volunteering, etc.

2. Under the headings "TIME" & "MONEY", we generated a list of daily, weekly, or monthly actions that would help us better 

(1) Allocate time AND
(2) Earn/save/invest money.
For example, under ‘allocate time’, we wrote “we consciously declutter our work calendars”; “we dedicate time to eating nutritious food and exercise”; “we plan ahead for unique experiences”.

I hope the above process makes sense and helps you with your own relationship journey. Our relationship is a constant work in progress, hence the notion of planning, monitoring, and evaluating (i.e., self-regulated learning) offers a useful framework for our relationship and family goals.

What do you think? Have you ever tried goal-setting in your relationship this way? 

If you found this interesting...

👉🏻Share this with your significant other

👉🏻Send this to someone who would find this process interesting/helpful

Happy planning,

Shy

Shyam Barr