🥅 Vocational Goal Setting for Piano Teachers

Setting goals is an important tool for having success in many different areas of our lives, whether that be relational, emotional, or spiritual. When focusing  on our vocational goals, what are we aiming for this year? 

The reason why I decided to start using the Full Focus Planner (see my blog post here) is because of the Best Year Ever course that Michael Hyatt & Company (now called Full Focus) offers. Many topics were covered such as reviewing last years accomplishments and having a positive future outlook. Today I want to tell you about one of Michael Hyatt's most impactful suggestions: the SMARTER goal system. 

What does the acronym SMARTER stand for?

• Specific
• Measurable 
• Actionable
• Risky
• Timebound
• Exciting
• Relevant

For piano teachers, unspecific goals look like this:

1. Practice more
2. Advertise
3. Have more piano students sign up
4. Teach well

This is my process of taking these goals through the SMARTER system. 

Rephrasing these goals to be Specific looks like this:

1. Practice Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 daily
2. Create flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood
3. Have 2 piano students sign up
4. Create detailed lesson plans and long-term overviews for each student

Measurable means that you can track progress. 

1. Practicing will be measured with a habit tracker
2. Creating flyers and distributing them will be measured by the completion of this task. 
3. Having 2 piano students sign up will be measured by the completion of this task. 
4. Creating lesson plans each week will be measured by a habit tracker. 

Actionable goals start with a strong action verb. 

What specific action will I do to achieve this goal? 

1. Practice daily, memorize and perform Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 
2. Design and print 20 flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood
3. Follow up with all leads by text, email and or phone call until at least 2 students sign-up
4. Write detailed lesson plans each week and create a spreadsheet for long-term overviews

Risky goals are goals that are challenging enough to keep us interested. 

• Practice daily, Memorize and Perform Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 
• I have already learned Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, but have had difficulty with Op. 27 No. 2. It is still within my capacity to learn, but presents challenges that I have limited myself to believing I can't surpass. 
• Create flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood and directly to people with a prepared "elevator pitch"
• This requires me to actually talk to people I've never met before and present clear reasoning why my piano lessons are a valuable activity for them or their child
• Have 2 piano students sign up and encourage 45 minute lessons
• Another uncomfortable situation, but sometimes a necessary one. If a student is showing interest and attention, a longer lesson time helps us to do more activities outside of the method book
• Create detailed lesson plans and long-term overviews for each student by helping my students to craft their own goals 
• This takes away some autonomy from me and can sometimes be difficult to encourage a student to create goals for themselves

The next step is to make these goals Timebound. Create a start date and a deadline for both habit and achievement goals. In addition to those, create a frequency and streak goal for habit goals.

• Practice daily, Memorize and Perform Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 starting January 5th, 6 days a week, until March 5th. (Habit Goal) 
• Create flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood and directly to people with a prepared "elevator pitch" starting January 10th, completed by March 31st. (Achievement Goal)
• Have 2 piano students sign up and encourage 45 minute lessons by September 30. (Achievement Goal)
• Create detailed lesson plans and long-term overviews for each student by helping my students to craft their own goals each week and track plans for 20 weeks and overviews for 5 months. (Habit Goal)

Are these goals Exciting to me?  Exciting means inspiring and engaging to the point of being willing to continue even when it gets hard. Internal motivation is what helps us to see goals through to the end.  Asking if a goal is exciting may also be an evaluation of whether or not it would be fun. At this point, it's important to weed out any goal that we've made because we feel expected to achieve that goal by other people (whether real or imagined).  On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most exciting, I have rated my goals below. 

• 6 - Practice daily, Memorize and Perform Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 starting January 5th, 6 days a week, until March 5th. 
• 4 - Create flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood and directly to people with a prepared "elevator pitch" starting January 10th, completed by March 31st.
• 10 - Have 2 piano students sign up and encourage 45 minute lessons by September 30.
• 9 - Create detailed lesson plans and long-term overviews for each student by helping my students to craft their own goals each week and track plans for 20 weeks and overviews for 5 months.

The last step is evaluating if these goals are Relevant to my life overall. I've created 4 possible vocational goals, but there are other domains of my life in which I also wish to set goals, such as parental, relational, financial, and avocational. Michael Hyatt recommends only setting 8 goals per year to cover ALL the domains, and then only assigning 2-3 per quarter. If I think of these goals in the context of my overall life goals for this year, the most relevant is

• Have 2 piano students sign up and encourage 45 minute lessons by September 30.

However...

So that means I need both of these vocational goals during this year. 

• Create flyers and distribute them around my neighborhood and directly to people with a prepared "elevator pitch" starting January 10th, completed by March 31st.
• Have 2 piano students sign up and encourage 45 minute lessons by September 30.

Full Focus calls these related goals complex goals. They will count as one goal. Full Focus recommends limiting your multiple step complex goals to 2 per year. 

I think once I have a 4 student studio, creating the lesson overviews will make more sense since I will need to do those to stay organized. For now, I'm able to keep a lot of it in my memory since I only have 2 students to track. 

As for the last remaining goal, practicing and performing is something I'm always doing.  I may still learn this piece as a major project, but I won't put it on my Annual Goals list. 

And that's the SMARTER annual goal setting process!

What goals are you setting this year? How can you phrase your goals as SMARTER goals? 

Happy New Year!

-Jenny

Source: Full Focus 

This post is not sponsored.