RW1 My year of being bold

In this bitesize ‘Related Work’, the first of the new year of 2021, I suggest using a theme for the new year and also connecting with your superordinate goals, your why, and to explore learning goals.

Related work:

Höchli, B., Brügger, A., & Messner, C. (2018). How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1879. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01879

Christian Swann, Simon Rosenbaum, Alex Lawrence, Stewart A. Vella, Desmond McEwan & Panteleimon Ekkekakis (2020) Updating goal-setting theory in physical activity promotion: a critical conceptual review, Health Psychology Review, DOI: 10.1080/17437199.2019.1706616

TRANSCRIPT: CAL RelatedWork 1

Jan 2021

(00:05):

Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size Related Work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better.

(00:29):

So welcome to the first related work bite-sized podcast. So you know that every academic paper has some section on related work or literature review section that draws out interesting other research that's relevant to the topic at hand so that we can imagine that the topic of our paper here is about changing academic life to be more sustainable and collaborative and effective. And so in these bite-sized podcasts I want to pick up on a research article or some evidence-based theme complemented by some personal anecdotes, as they make sense that might offer some insights to feed into this agenda of changing academic life. We might call, these are implications for design designing the academic life we want and need both individually and collectively and designing that change at personal levels at collective levels at institutional and structural levels.

(01:31):

So in this first related work, I want to pick up on the fact that it's the new year. And one of the things that we commonly hear about in the new is about making new year resolutions and good luck to you. If you're one of the small percentage of people that can make a resolution and keep it, I'm not, and there are various figures reported in the literature about, um, 10 to 40% of us or so who make new year's resolutions, don't, don't get, don't keep them in the longer term. And I think this gives our perfectionist selves just one more reason to beat up on ourselves when we fall short, because these resolutions often tend to be all or nothing type of goals. So resolutions might make more sense when they're focused and smart, the acronym specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time bound. But I think one of the big lessons for me from 2020 was just how little we can actually control. And we know that the world remains at this time, highly volatile and unpredictable, and so really uncontrollable. So what I'm going to try is having theme for the year and my theme for 2021 is about being the year of being bold

(03:11):

For me, this encapsulates the aspects about being brave, um, vulnerable, stepping up, even when I'm a little bit unsure putting myself out there because I have a tendency to not do that, to always be cautious to over-prepare or to be worried about failing. And so it will really be about being brave. And this is important for me as a theme against the broader backdrop of wanting to make a difference. And I know that sounds all very vague and aspirational, but I think I've mentioned on other podcasts that as I especially get to the pointy end of my career, and we have fixed retirement ages in Austria, I'm asking myself, how can I best use my strengths and experiences and passions to have the biggest impact on, especially on helping to change academic life to make it better.

(04:13):

For me being bold provides a sort of anchor or North star for then for making choices and starting this bite-size related work series is something that has come out of this thing of being bold, because I have no idea how it's going to land. If it will make sense or if it will connect, um, or how it will work. So I guess starting this related work is sort of like my new year resolution in a way, but it's more about achieving the larger purpose. I just mentioned. I think being bold for me will also play out in being bolder about what I say yes and no to, um, it would also be about it trying other new things. And that means giving myself permission that it will be a learning process. So it's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be okay to be doing better.

(05:10):

And this connects to some work in the literature that looks at goal setting and talks about how, uh, the, the focus on, um, just, just having goals like smart goals often don't work on their own and you can actually do better if you combine both what they call, what Höchli, Brügger and Messner call as superordinate, as well as subordinate goals. So in their paper, and I'll put links to these on the, on the podcast webpage, a superordinate goal is a goal that's more abstract. It connects to your why and, or some broader long-term challenge. And then the subordinate goals become the much more specific, concrete, challenging, actionable ways that you might achieve or move towards that broader abstract goal.

(06:12):

So an example might be a superordinate goal might be being the healthiest I can be. And then a subordinate goal might be that I'm going to start exercising and being very specific about what I'm going to do and when and how I'm going to do it. We might think about the theme then in some way as sort of like a superordinate goal. And then what might be some of the specific ways that, that plays out your subordinate goals.

(06:52):

Swann has also done research on goal-setting and, and Swann talks about performance goals and not just being performance goals where we can set the sort of smart criteria. But also, looking at learning goals. And I love the idea of learning goals because they're goals that are about seeing how well I can do sort of goals. Um, so rather than saying, you know, as a goal, I'm going to run five K in less than 20 minutes, a more open goal might be, I'm going to see how much faster I can run the 5k.

(07:38):

I'd also encourage us then to think about the sort of more open goals, more learning goals. Because of all years of all times we need to take the pressure off ourselves. We need to, well, I need to connect to something that's, you know, recognizing what's important and what I care about and, and think about doing the best I can in the circumstances that we have right now. And I love the idea of the superordinate goals that sort of set the broad theme or broad direction. And then just having open learning goals that just says, we'll do what we can and it's okay, whatever we do will be good enough. And we can go through a whole reflection cycle and so on and so on, but take the pressure off ourselves.

(08:25):

So I'll put links to the two papers that I've mentioned on the web page and asking what might be the implications for design, for your academic life. You can think about as your theme for the year, how are you going to take the pressure off yourself? We still might want to encourage and challenge yourself, but give yourself a break right now about doing whatever we can right now in the circumstances.

And just to illustrate that I won't get everything right, when I talked about learning goals, I should have referenced Winters and Latham who first came up or one of the early people who came up with this concept in 1996. And the paper I'm going to share with you though is by Christine Swan and colleagues where they talk about updating goal setting theory and doing a critical conceptual review.

Welcome to 2021 and whatever you’re going to make your year.

(10:11) End

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