Tag Archives: success

Derek Sivers on Goals

I’m a fan of Derek Sivers. I loved his first interview with Tim Ferris. I knew him before that from ‘The first follower‘, and I think this little video about ‘Obvious to you. Amazing to others.‘ is brilliant.

I recently purchased and listened to his book, ‘Hell Yeah or No’ and this chapter really resonated with me: ‘Goals Shape the Present, not the Future‘.

From the chapter:

If it was a great goal, you would have jumped into action already. You wouldn’t wait. Nothing would stop you.
The purpose of goals is not to improve the future.The future doesn’t exist. It’s only in our imagination. All that exists is the present moment and what you do in it.
Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment.

I think this is what I’ve always struggled with when teaching or talking about goals with students… they all focus on the plan ahead, the future, and not on the habits and attitudes needed right now. We don’t teach the ‘Hell Yeah’ part of creating goals that kids really want to do.

We don’t teach them about goals, we teach them about wishful thinking.

Present habits and actions lead us to future outcomes, and these need to be emphasized when we teach goal setting.

The garden

7 years ago we had a community day at Inquiry Hub Secondary when 3 students organized the construction of our school garden. It was a wonderful day filled with food, family, and community support. But mostly it was about students showing pride in their school. Everything was organized by the students and the event was a complete success.


I’ve been thinking a lot about how empty the school feels these days. Students are working from home, and our garden is empty when this is the time it is usually thriving. It made me think about how some students thrive while others don’t.

Joe Truss asked in a Tweet:

The achievement gap is really the gap between ______ and _______.

And I responded:

…between
those that easily thrive
and
those that need to survive.

This has made me think about the inequality of what students deal with, in a metaphorical sense of a garden.

Some students are given every opportunity to grow… they are raised in a home like a garden filled with fertilizer, and they are given all the nutrients to not only sustain themselves, but to thrive.

Some students have a patch of dirt rather than a garden, and the elements support them sometimes, and sometimes the conditions are harsh.

Some students have parents and teachers who are good gardeners that know how to foster health and growth.

Some students have parents and teachers who are frustrated by their lack of growth and unaware as to how to foster healthy development.

Some students grow like weeds, regardless of the conditions and environment.

Many other students depend on those conditions, and can strive or just survive depending on how they are nurtured.

Schools aren’t perfect, but we can do a lot at schools to help give every student an opportunity to grow. We can be the wards of the community garden sustaining every child, and doing what we can to help them thrive.

Students are learning from home, but are schools still nurturing our students in the same way? Are we just giving them sustenance, or are we fostering opportunities to blossom?