Today, I was inspired with an idea to fix this situation. Expectations are either some task to be completed or some behavior to be lived. The ideas are based on "Agile Software Development", of which I'm very familiar as a computer programmer. The idea is to apply those principles to life. I may be a successful computer programmer, but I have serious room to grow in life where I sometimes feel failure.
Here is the structure:
Note: You can choose to not include work to accomplish or not include behavior to establish as habit if you wish. Also, this can be done as an individual or as a family or group.
- Identify (and write down) positive behaviors that are already established habit. These are your strengths. They are often "how" you do things.
- Choose how frequently (such as two weeks) in which to plan, perform, review, and hold a retrospective. This time period is called an iteration (aka sprint).
- Have a backlog of work to accomplish. Each work item (aka story) must be scoped small enough to be doable within a single iteration. It may be helpful to identify epics or initiatives which are categories that they belong to.
- Identify positive behaviors that you want to have as habits. Put those on the same backlog. Again, it may be helpful to identify epics or initiatives which are categories that they belong to.
- Prioritize the backlog enough to know which ones are likely candidates for the next iteration. This should be done initially, and at least once during each iteration.
- Begin having iterations:
- The first day involves planning what you plan to accomplish and what 3 to 5 behaviors you will work on. Identify the "acceptance criteria" to indicate how the behavior will be measured and considered acceptable. This could be daily verbal or nonverbal feedback or self-evaluation. Don't take on more than you think you can accomplish (which will become easier to tell over time, especially if you give some kind of numerical size to each item on the backlog, and notice the total of the sizes completed in past iterations), but try to stretch yourselves so that it requires real effort. Work items to accomplish should be broken down into tasks which should be doable in a day or so. Create a chart to track if behaviors are followed each day.
- Each day, share with each other what you did the day before, what you're committing to finishing that day, and any issues blocking progress.
- Each day, record on the chart whether or not each behavior was followed. The number of days in a row in which a behavior is followed is most significant since it is one of the keys to measuring how effectively the habit is being formed.
- The last day, review what was accomplished, and also have a retrospective discussion where you read your notes from the previous retrospective and then note what went well this iteration, what didn't go so well, and how to improve for the next iteration.
- As new behaviors become habits which no longer need conscious effort, add them to your list of strengths.
- Then, right away, start the next iteration, beginning with planning.
The result will be that (even if not at first) you will begin to succeed at meeting expectations (established during planning). The expectations that you focus on will being to match your capacity, and any excessive external expectations will decrease in relevance and with communication may even converge on your expectations. You will have specific things to focus your valuable time and effort on, and you will learn and grow in a much more healthy way.
