Maintaining Your Resolve: Tips for Achieving your Goals despite the OPTEMPO
By Brian Fiallo
Many of us start the New Year reflecting on the previous one, thinking about what we would like to achieve in the coming year, and where we fell short during the past year in achieving what we set out to do. It is common to say that we were too busy with our work or other aspects of our lives, that the operations tempo (OPTEMPO) of our units is simply too high to allow for dedication to personal development outside or even within the professional realm. Some of these goals may include achieving a higher score on our service’s fitness test, reading a certain amount of books, advancing our skills in one of our hobbies, or even spending more time with our families. Regardless of the goal, it is easy for people with a strong sense of duty to allow the “in your face” immediate “need to do” tasks of our career to take priority over what we want to do. In order to both accomplish what needs to be done and what we would like to achieve, I offer the following three tools to aid in working towards both.
Establish a Personal Battle Rhythm
The battle rhythm is a military unit’s way of defining its recurring events in a format that synchronizes everybody within the unit to operate around it. Time is blocked for certain meetings to occur, and that time is ideally respected to afford predictability. As a way of ensuring that personal responsibilities are met, some commanders and leaders block time within their schedules to perform these tasks (writing and reviewing awards or evaluations, conducting performance counseling, reviewing concepts for upcoming training, etc.). While there might not seem to be much time left after all that, setting protected time in your calendar to accomplish your own goals is a method for ensuring the goal gets some attention on a regular basis, and the frequency may vary. For example, if your goal is to improve your Army Combat Fitness Score by a certain number of points, you might program a protected extra hour daily of exercise on top of morning physical training. If your goal is to improve on a hobby that takes some time (blacksmithing in my own case), you might say that you are going to dedicate a day one weekend a month or bi-weekly to the hobby. If the goal is to read 100 books this year, bracket 30 minutes to an hour each night to reading before bed. However high or low the frequency, the important thing is that the activity has protected time on your schedule and that you actively respect your schedule.
Establish and Maintain a System of Accountability
Once you have a schedule planned out for yourself, the next important step is to establish a system of accountability. As I discussed in a previous article when I referenced Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, one of the rules of task management is that every task requires an insurance policy. [1] I prefer written methods, such as keeping a journal or using an app oriented on the activity. In the past, when my goal was to lose weight and improve my fitness, I used the app MyFitnessPal to great success. You can use the app Goodreads to keep track of books you have read. There are a number of apps dedicated to refraining from alcohol and other harmful behaviors if that is your goal for the new year. Keeping a journal of workouts completed and the results not only establishes a system of accountability to remind you to do something and enter it but keeps a written track record of your progress throughout. Another system of accountability you can use is an accountability partner or “accountabilibuddy”. If you resolve to make these improvements and perform these activities with someone else, you are much less likely to flake when you risk disappointing someone else instead of just yourself. [2] Regardless of the system you choose, it takes active work to maintain the system once established if it is to be upheld. The act of updating the system is another activity to add to your personal battle rhythm as a check on yourself.
Set Achievable Intermediate Goals
The last tool I will discuss is the process of setting achievable intermediate goals. Lofty goals are good, they keep us oriented towards greatness as opposed to dull mediocrity, but nobody becomes an Olympic track star or chess Grandmaster overnight. In order to stay focused on the goal and motivate ourselves along the way, we need to set achievable intermediate goals that get us closer to our ultimate objectives. Dr. John Kotter established an 8-step model for leading organizational change, and we can use some of the steps for making improvements to ourselves. Step 6 is Generate Short Term Wins, under the logic that “Wins are the molecules of results. They must be recognized, collected, and communicated – early and often – to track progress and energize volunteers to persist”. [3] In this case the volunteers are just ourselves, and to see progress provides the motivation to keep going. In some ways the progress itself can become addictive in a good way and snowball our motivation to achieve even greater progress.
The tools I have discussed work best when used together, although each of them will help in managing personal and professional goals with our daily workloads. It is important to prioritize our efforts to ensure we are accomplishing what needs to be done first (earning our subsistence, providing for, sustaining, and spending time with our families) while still taking time to accomplish what we want for ourselves. Take care of business first as your duty demands, but also make a priority of your own mental and physical wellbeing. In this way we can run the marathon that is life, instead of just always sprinting to the next thing we have to do.
About the Author:
Brian Fiallo is an active-duty Army Major currently serving with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). As an Armor Officer, he has served as a Scout Platoon Leader in 3rd Brigade (Rakkasans), 101st Airborne Division, as a Cavalry Troop Commander in the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, and most recently as a Squadron Executive Officer in 2nd Brigade (Strike), 101st Airborne Division. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2011, earning a B.S. in Military History. He earned his M.A. in Archaeological Studies from Yale University in May 2021. His interests include forensic and conflict archaeology, blacksmithing and metallurgy projects, and exploring the outdoors with his wife, four children, and two dogs.
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not represent those of the United States Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
Citations:
[1] [4] Ken Blanchard. One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/well/live/habits-health.html
[3] https://www.kotterinc.com/methodology/8-steps/