10 Minutes Early - Week One

It's time to re-evaluate my goal to be ten minutes early everywhere I go. I'm hit and miss and though I thought it was SMART, it turns out that it should be smartER.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relavant
Timely
Evaluate
Re-evaluate

EVALUATION:
I didn't realize what ten minutes actually meant when I made the goal. It means an entire attitude shift. The second day in and I was up and ready 30 minutes earlier than usual. So I decided to get a few things done because I had plenty of time. I ended up getting my daughter to school about the same time I usually get her there...half hour late. It's like my time clock is pulling me back to where I was. The next time I took her to school, it was similar, but not as bad. Ten minutes ahead of our usual schedule (read "only 20 minutes late" here).

I don't want to get too down on myself. I mean I have been ten minutes early to a few things. Okay twice. On day one, we were early to church and day five I was early picking up my daughter from school. Twice in a week is better than the previous week. Or month. Or year. See, I'm making progress!

GOAL REVISION:
There are two things that I think I can do to make my goal easier to attain. First, I think going to bed a little earlier will help me with getting out of bed in the morning. And second, I need to shrink my goal down to size. Being ten minutes early to everything is too big for me. I need to revise it to just once per day. Once I've made the goal each day then I can relax and be late to everything else...until the morrow.

My real goal though was to curb the fighting in my car by reducing the "we're going to be late" tension. I add to this stress when I try to get my kids to hurry and get ready and get in the car. So in this regard, we've been doing fantastic. I haven't been stressed and we haven't had any sibling squabbles while I was driving this week. Yes!