For our monthly staff meeting today, we decided to end with an ice cream party and a movie. This isn’t what we usually do at our staff meetings, although the kids have decided that they want to work for IR so they can have ice cream at meetings.
It was my job to find a movie that had some sort of a business message but wasn’t boring. That was not an easy task, considering that I had less than a week to come up with something, and the budget wouldn’t support the popular movies like Fish! and Give ’em the Pickle. While I was searching, I found out that YouTube, which typically limits movies to 10 minutes, also has a “Rentals” section, where you can pay to rent longer movies for a month.
I found a movie that had good reviews, and cost $10 to rent – Coyote Power. I wouldn’t normally sit down and watch a “motivational speaker” for an hour and 17 minutes, but there was ice cream involved, so I did it. I thought the movie was pretty good, even though most of his points were common sense. I think in the process of scrambling to get everything done we sometimes forget the basic principals of success.
One point that really stuck with me was his discussion on goal setting. He talked about the fact that unrealistic goals don’t get results. If a goal is set too high, it doesn’t have the desired motivational effect. It makes total sense. If my goal is to get my house in order, I get overwhelmed and need to take a nap. If my goal was to organize one room per week, by the end of the summer, my house would be in order! I was so inspired that I cleaned half of my office at work!
The speaker told an interesting story to illustrate his point – about the swallows of San Juan Capistrano. These birds migrate from southern California to Argentina and back each year – 12,000 miles round trip, much of the distance over the ocean. If they set out to fly 6,000 miles that would be way too long, so they break it up into chunks.
According to legend, each swallow carries a small twig in its mouth. When they get tired they drop the twigs into the ocean, and stand on them to rest. Then it’s “twigs up” and time to keep going. Isn’t that amazing?! True or not, it’s a good analogy for eating the elephant one bite at a time.
The speaker recommended setting goals with a duration of 30 days or less, with long-term goals broken up into chunks. He also said to set a personal, a work-related, and a financial goal. So here are my three goals, which I’d like to accomplish within a week because that’s just the way I am:
- Personal: Clean and paint workbench area in basement and begin to organize tools.
- Work: Write one chapter of my book.
- Financial: Send Citibank a letter about an issue I’m having with them (this will have to be a post of its own).
Think I can do it? Twigs up!