Most of my immediate family recently spent over a week together in a vacation home. My parents, two brother, and their families all descended on a beautiful lakefront home in northern Ontario for games, canoeing, and catching up. This meant 17 people (including 4 under 4 years old), five dogs, dietary restrictions and allergies, different sleep schedules, political opinions, and much much more.
Because I think it’s important to set some objectives to help structure how you think about a major undertaking like this, I gave myself three reasonable goals for the trip (in increasing order of importance).
- Read and play games.
- Eat good food.
- All still speaking at the end of the trip.
Do goals this modest accomplish anything? I say yes – interactions and decisions are all guided by these goals. In the end, you can achieve much more by focusing on a few basic and comprehensive goals.
What are your reasonable goals for your choir? How would your day-to-day rehearsal process change if you always had these goals as part of your decision-making process?