Reasonable Goals

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).

  1. Read and play games.
  2. Eat good food.
  3. 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?