Self-Evaluation

During my time as a business major in college (I graduated with a degree in marketing), a concept that was constantly pounded into my head as a student was bench-marking. Every business textbook and every business professor I had touched on that subject at least once. The idea is that a successful business sets specific, attainable goals to be reached over a certain time frame. Bench-marking is simply a set of controls in place to monitor progress. You have an end result to achieve and your bench-mark tells you how far you have come and how far you have left to go. It was not until after I got out of college that I began seeing the real-life benefit of bench-marking.

Once I finished college, I found that my time was very easily wasted. I could spend hours after work doing absolutely nothing. I would go to bed and have nothing to show for the time that I was not working. I quickly discovered that it was because I did not have any specific direction on which to focus my time. Enter: Goal setting.

Setting personal goals for myself gave me a way to focus my time and energy in a productive way. I set multiple goals for different areas of my life like fitness, my hobbies, and my relationships. Goal setting helps me keep my mind on track when I have free time. It helps me to better myself as a professional. But this post is not about the importance of goal setting. We will deal with that in a later post. This post is about goal evaluation and bench-marking yourself.

The last day of every month is my goal evaluation day. I take a look at my personal goals and reexamine them. I chose a month because I have come to find that in that time frame, I have a pretty good idea of what is working and what is not. Think about how many 30-day exercise programs you have seen over the past year. The reason for the success of those programs is that a person has the ability to completely turn themselves around in 30 days. People get into shape, eat healthy, set goals, and become more friendly in a month's time. The biggest reason that I use a month as my bench-mark time is because when you do something every day for 30 days, it becomes a habit. Try it sometime. Commit to getting up 30 minutes earlier than usual and reading your Bible during that time. I promise that if done every day, your body will begin to wake normally at that particular time. Do you have to use a month? Not at all. Find out what works best for you.

Another reason that I bench-mark is because I can easily figure out my progress and what I want to save for later. What do I mean by that? I have always considered myself a fairly ambitious person. This means that my personality tends to try and tackle multiple things at once. But people who set too many goals often end up hitting none of them and become discouraged as a result. Bench-marking my goals helps me decide if I have too much on my plate and if so, what I need to get rid of. It also allows me to cross off goals that I have accomplished over the month. Let me be the first to tell you, there are very few feelings as rewarding as that one.

The final reason that I perform monthly self-evaluations is, quite honestly, because I get bored. If you were to look through my goals for the past three months, you would see three different formats. I like to be organized. But I also like to keep things in a way that I can easily remember them. For example, a couple of months ago I used bullet points to write down my goals. That worked fine but it was pretty difficult to read for me. The next month, I used a timeline. This was really fun because it let me think long-term and what I was shooting for in my daily tasks. I switched from that one because I did not like seeing things that far in the future that I could do nothing about. Next I gave myself a set of "life rules" to follow and map out my goals. The list goes on and on. The point is, find the format that works best for you. Change it up if you don't like it. Experiment and learn how you best remember your goals. That's really the most important part. If you remember them and keep them at the forefront of your mind, it is much easier to stick to them.

Make sure that you perform self-evaluations frequently. They boost your self-image. They let you know where you have come from and where you are going. They help you remember your goals and keep thinking about them. The best thing about bench-marking yourself is that it forces you to think about what is really important in your life and what is not. Try it out and bet on becoming a better professional because of the effort. Until next time, stay classy.

-Andrew