Continuous Quality Improvement 2014

With the bit of self reflection about my competitive attitudes and actions still in mind I had lunch recently with one of my friends, CQ, who is pursuing a MBA degree. As usual our topics ranged from guns to jiu jitsu to corporate espionage to girls to food to school.

Listening to his comments about what he is learning in his MBA and my own self analysis I have decided upon my New Year's Resolutions (NYR). Early.

But they aren't really resolutions in the traditional sense, nor will I set about accomplishing them as I have in the past when I've successfully met my NYR goals. This comes from honest self reflection because the last couple of years I haven't made my NYR. At all.

Let's look at why this is, come let us reason together. A goal should be Measurable, Achievable/Realistic and have a Time component. The past couple years I think I ignored this sage advice in planning my goals. I also didn't take into account who I am as a person currently. My drives, desires, motivations, abilities. As I look at myself over the past few years there is absolutely nothing voluntary that I could say I've done every day for a year. Heck, I'm not even in the same state for a continuous 90 days, let alone doing something every day for 365 days! Often my goals have been one requiring something to be done every dang day. I don't think this is realistic for myself.

Using the business concept of CQI I'm going to tweak 2014's NYR a bit. Continuous. OK, so this means "all the time", but history shows I can't do something all the time. So I'm going to try looking at things on a per week basis. So if I have a goal of every-day-do-whatever what that really means is 6 days out of the week and to be accounted for only once during the week. For an example let's say I have a goal of flossing my teeth every day. (which is an admirable goal for us all) What I am really saying is I have to do it 6 out of the 7 days per week and if I don't have that as the week nears ending then there is going to be a day where I'm flossing my teeth like 4 times that day. This will allow me to make things up as it were, give me flexibility and yet still remain accountable to a time limit.

Quality. It's got to be something good. Worthwhile. Again, back to what do I really want.

Improvement. Can I do better? Can I measure that change?

With all these things in mind, here are my CQI goals for 2014!

-Exercise every day. Exercise defined as a minimum of 20 somethings. 20 laps in the pool. 20 minutes running. 20 pull ups. Just 20 reps, minutes, miles, pounds, yards, whatever. Per earlier, every day means averaged out for 6 days of the week.

-Read something spiritual every day. Not a page, or a verse or a paragraph. Just read. NIV, Torah, Koran, Old Testament, Book of Mormon, New Testament. It doesn't matter what, just something spiritual. Hmmm, maybe I should add a unit of measurement to this..... Ok, I'll say a column or half a page depending on the source's format. Daily of course meaning averaged for 6 days of the week. That's just 3 whole pages a week. Simple right?

-Learn the Russian/Cyrillic alphabet before my class starts on January 27th. This was the big obstacle and reason why I dropped out of my other Russian class. I just like the oral part and I need to buckle down and do the written part to make it happen. If I can get a jump on it before class starts I think that will really help me.

-Practice my pistol skills everyday for 5 minutes. Yep, so if I do 30 minutes one day then I did the whole week's goal. Shooting well is a perishable skill. You have to practice it constantly to stay on top of the game. I may not always enjoy practice or even guns themselves, but I ALWAYS enjoy winning.

There you have it, just 4 goals for 2014 and one of them will be done before the 1st month is over. I have other things I want to do, but I don't think of them as goals, especially in the new format about it having to be something that makes me better. Improves me. Growing my hair longer or shooting in 5 major tournaments are some examples, but they are more just scheduling things, not goals.