Goals, Priorities and Busyness

With 2009 coming along, its a good time to set some goals. My 2008 goal was to read through a one year Bible with Jenn. Up until about April or so, I was right on track, and somewhere along the way, I lost a lot of ground - we're on June 3rd as of today.

I had events come up like travel with my job, the need to care for Jenn during our pregnancy and a whole host of other things that were not perfectly planned, but those aren't the reason for falling behind. It is plainly obvious reading became a lower priority than watching episodes of The Office and Heros, because I haven't missed a single episode of either of those programs (either watching them live or replayed on the internet). This is certainly not my proudest realization of the year.

I know there have been times when I've rationalized the excuse, "Well, I've been busy."

This is a poor excuse. I'm busy, you're busy, my mother, dentist and everybody is busy.

What are we busy doing? Whatever we prioritize.

The new year is a great chance to reprioritize. There's about 7 months of scheduled material and 6 months until the baby is due. If I over-clock our reading schedule by 16%, we can be done before our child is born. In principle, I think that it's important that if Jenn and I plan to raise our child to be a loving follower of Jesus, reading through the Bible completely before he or she's born would be a good step (among many) to prepare for that responsibility. What I especially like about this goal is that it is extremely measurable. I can measure the accomplishment (yes or no) and percent of plan (Target = 116%). Maybe I'll create some KPI metrics along the way and post them here.

I'm not going to lose sleep if our child comes early and we're not quite through, but this is something that I'm convicted enough about to put in print somewhere. That way I can have people who care about me ask me how I'm doing with it.

Though I don't expect this will happen, if for whatever reason you ask me about this and I tell you I've fallen behind, I need the response of, "What is the plan to catch up?" and not "That's a bummer, but don't beat yourself up too bad about it." Thanks in advance!