Fifty Focus

On December 31, I'm starting 50 Days of Focus. I know, cheesy, huh? Usually, I do goal setting in two phases each year- one annual goal set at the beginning of the year and a more detailed goal set at the beginning of each semester. Unfortunately, as I think about the spring semester, I start getting overwhelmed, so I thought biting off 50 days at the beginning of the year might be a bit easier to think through. And 50 days takes me to the departure date for our Northern Ireland trip.

The 50 days will focus less on big life goals and more on areas of my life that just need to get a major recalibration. I need to set some new boundaries, re-engage some old disciplines, and re-establish some priorities.

I always teach my small group leaders to set SMART goals- specific, measurable, achievable, require faith, and time-related. The "achievable" and "require faith" establish a healthy tension to encourage us to set goals that stretch us but don't frustrate us to the point of quitting. But I think my goals may have been a bit too SMART for my own good recently-- a little too achievable and not enough faith required. I think I need to change up that acronym and set some Stupid, Mind-blowing, A**-kicking (my apologies to readers Mom and Patti), require more faith than I have right now, and time-related (I'll keep that last one).

I've got three big categories: devotional, physical, and personal.

The devotional category consists of some spiritual disciplines that need to be re-established or re-imagined in my life. Prayers I need to pray, worship that needs to be given, parts of the Bible that need to be read. Some might call this category "spiritual," but I think all the categories relate to my spiritual life. The physical category consists of some changes I need to make in how I live. After two full weeks of Christmas eating, I'm feeling it. The personal category consists of some things that just need to get done around the house, people I need to hang out with more, and some life goals that I just need to do.

I'll spend tomorrow determining what things will fit into these categories for the last day of 2008 and the first 49 days of 2009.