The beginning of the year brings about the novelty of change. We are 37 days into 2023 and it's evaluation time, how are your New Year Resolutions going? Some are crushing it, some have given up but I bet many are somewhere in the middle looking for the best and easiest path to success. If you find yourself somewhere in the middle, here is a guaranteed method to jumpstart moving toward your goals; VERBS.
Now, this is definitely not a lesson in grammar but a verb is your key to taking small daily steps to hit your goal. As we all know, a verb simply defined is an action word. Now your goal most definitely has a verb in there but the object of that verb is HUGE, which translates into feeling overwhelmed. And now we have come full circle to that place in between success and giving up. So what do you do? You stop looking at the mountain and instead look at the rocks, dirt, and sticks right where you stand. What do I mean? You find verbs/actions you can do today that will help you achieve your goal.
Let's say your goal is to increase your team performance by 20% over the next 30 days. Well, that is no small feat and I bet some of you chuckled at the incredulity of the goal in such a short time span. This is a possible goal if you "chunk it into small actions over time" and you will achieve success with very little sweat on your brow. In the article, "37 Universal Verbs to Use for Your ToDo LIsts" by Charlie Gilkey he talks about categorizing your verbs by length. For example, there are verbs you use for quarterly/monthly tasks, weekly tasks, and then daily tasks. So going back to my example goal of increasing team performance, it would look something like the chart below.
Monthly Verb | Weekly Verb | Daily Verb |
Develop strategies to increase team performance | Collaborate with team members and departments to bring greater efficiency to daily operations | Review Team Member performance |
| Conduct Team meetings to report and review progress | Write Performance Improvement Plans |
| Analyze data and update as necessary | Schedule individual team member meetings |
| | Email updates to team members |
So what do you think? Does that look doable? Is it attainable? Let's Try! What is your verb for today, just today?