Focus sheet on Tamara

¶ … Tamara

Primary activities: Improving grades; improving athletic performance; increasing healthy behaviors; decreasing unhealthy behaviors; reducing stress

Schedule activities and setting priorities: Tamara will keep a record of tasks on a monthly basis to do every day, labeling them high-priority, medium-priority, and low-priority to avoid getting stressed. This will include exercise and study time as well as formally scheduled activities and also what she eats and drinks every day.

Focusing on goals in a SMART fashion: Set short- and long-term goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely) for every primary activity domain under her set goals.

Delegate responsibilities to self and others: Determine which actionable goals (such as getting to the weight room three times a week and running twice a week) can be accomplished alone. Determine which actionable goals (such as getting to sleep on time and eating healthfully, which requires roommates to cooperate by not disturbing Tamara and agreeing to order out from places with healthier options when they eat together).

Minimize stress and maximize the efficient use of time: Set aside time to engage in deep breathing and meditation every morning. Get up with the alarm so there is plenty of time to plan the day ahead. Go to bed every night at the same hour.

Set time aside for family and friends: It is important to balance social needs with meeting goals. Also, if goals are too rigidly adhered to without acknowledging the need for downtime and personal growth, the entire project of self-improvement can seem too overwhelming.

Comparison of focus sheets

Tamara is a young undergraduate, so personal vs. family goals have more of an emphasis on her focus sheet. Particularly for young people, it is essential that goals are actionable and can be set in concrete terms. Because Tamara is an athlete, many of these goals have a physical as well as a psychological dimension. They involve teaching her good strategies to encourage her to follow through with goals, even though some of her peers may not share them.

In the original focus sheet, the predominant focus was on budgeting time. For most adults, even when intensely motivated, the greatest challenge in meeting goals is balancing time needs of different tasks and priorities because they must juggle a variety of competing schedules along with their own (such as work and school). For teens, quite often the issue is making themselves accountable and not getting diverted by friends. Still, having a written schedule, including scheduled downtime is useful to ensure that people such as Tamara can visualize the tasks ahead of them needed to complete their stated objectives.