Entry 25.1

As most of you know, I don’t really subscribe to norms. I like to be different, think differently, and do things differently than what is mainstream. Which even surprised me sometimes because I used to be very black and white. But as we grow and mature, we change and I am no different in that regard. But this time I am going to be like everyone else and talk about resolutions and change at the beginning of the New Year. Those of you who are consistent readers of my Ponderings are aware, one of my resolutions for my golf game this year is to work on my putting more. But like all resolutions, the possibility of failure is high. Like really high. According to some researchers, only 9% of Americans actually accomplish their New Year’s Resolutions. 23% quit trying at the end of the first week of January and 43% aren’t keeping up with it by the end of January. The trend is so strong that the second Friday of January is called “Quitter’s Day”. Woof. That’s just sad. So, what can we do to make sure that we carry out our goals? O, wait! The PGA gives us the blueprint. They didn’t come up with it. They are just passing the information along. The idea of SMART goals is credited to George T. Doran, who wrote a paper called “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives” in 1981while working as a consultant for the Washington Water Power Company where he was a former Director of Corporate Planning. So rather than just tell you what my resolution is, I am going to break it down to give you an example of how to structure such decisions to best maximize the possibility of carrying out your goal.

First, the goal must be specific. So, when I say my resolution is to work on my putting, I have straight up set myself up for failure right from the get go. But I also haven’t given you all the information. I gave you a gross generalization of what I hope to accomplish. The specific part of my resolution is two headed. Any sport is split into two parts: practice and play. Some people never practice and some people never play. I hope to accomplish both this year. Practice for me really isn’t all that difficult. I can slip time in throughout my day. Typically, this has meant hitting balls out of my bay between lessons. My distance wedges were pretty sharp by the end of the year due to this fact. I spent the first half of the year working on my irons and the second half focused on my wedges. I love hitting the ball far, but wedges have to be the most fun part of the game. For me at least. There are just so many factors that you can play with: distance, trajectory, spin, tempo, curvature, etc. The issue with that is I rarely picked up my putter and walked the 50 yards to the putting green and worked. I’m a decent putter, but no where near as good as I should be. For practice, I am going to use two main methods. First, I am going to use TheStack Putting because it utilizes the principles of gamification. It just makes it more like the actual game and helps it to be fun. I can constantly compete against myself and against Strokes Gained Putting from various levels. For me, I have chosen to compete against the Tour handicap. The Premier mode tells me what putt to hit and then I get to use all my skills: green reading, stroke mechanics, speed control, start line, decision making and mental fortitude. The second method is simple. 25 putts in a row made from 3 feet and move back a foot once I have made 25 putts in a row, 7 times in a row. For play, my goal is going to be 30 putts or less per round on average for any rounds played in December 2025. By now you should be seeing that there are a lot of numbers being thrown around. Which brings us to the second letter of S.M.A.R.T.

Your goal must be measurable. I think this is where a lot of people run into trouble when creating goals. Because just throwing a number down doesn’t mean that the goal is measurable. There’s a lot more to it than that. Figuring out what number you want to use is the simple part. For example, why did I choose 30 putts per round on average? Easy answer, that’s the average of putts per round for a PGA Tour player. It’s very easy to come up with numbers versus Tour players. The PGA Tour website has more statistics on it than my Business Stats book did when I was in school (JK but it has to be close). Now, I don’t suggest most players compare themselves to Tour players. Those guys are on a different scale than the rest of us use. But I am a glutton for punishment and believe that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to as long as I put in the work. Self-belief might be one of the most powerful forces in the universe. I might be toeing the line of all out hubris, but as long as I knowingly toe the line, I think I’ll be ok. Thankfully, I have a wife and coworkers who will slap me if I get too far over the line and bring me back to reality. But remember, I said picking the number was the easy part. The hard part is keeping track of each and every putt that I hit this year in rounds where I keep score. Thankfully, TheStack Putting has a place for me to do that. In fact, you can not only put in how many putts, but the distance of the putt, any break, where you missed, why you missed and more. Now we are talking about measuring. So now my measuring of my practice and play is being recorded in the same place. Bonus! Bigger bonus is the app does the mathematical portion of the statistics for you. Then it spits out information to drive you back up to the specific part of S.M.A.R.T. so you can make the smaller goals inside your main goal more specific.

Goals within goals?! Yes, that is what I believe to be the A in S.M.A.R.T.: attainable or achievable (both work). See most people just make sure that the main goal is something that they can actually do to satisfy this element. I think they are leaving a whole lot on the table. That may just be my hubris talking. When I set goals, I go big. I really thought about using the average number of putts of the leader of that category on Tour, but decided to go with the average. Why you ask? Well, for one, I may strongly believe in my ability to achieve anything, but I’m also not an idiot (well, at least I don’t think I am but I have been wrong before). I don’t get to play and practice nearly as much as I would like. So, I factored that in when choosing between the best player and the average player. I also chose that because it correlates with my goal for my Strokes Gained in TheStack Putting app. When you use the Premier part of the app, it gives you Strokes Gained against a group handicap, in my case the Tour. So, the average Tour player would gain zero strokes putting and voila, both sides of my goal correspond. In play, my goal is the average number of putts per round and in practice, my goal is a 0.00 Strokes Gained Putting against the Tour handicap. But that’s the overarching goal so to make it attainable (or achievable) I need to break it into smaller pieces. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Right now, my Strokes Gained is at -1.40. So I break it up into smaller pieces. I have twelve months to achieve my goal so if I evenly split 1.40, I need to improve by 0.12 strokes each month. As I go along, I readjust that number at the end of each month, so I know whether I am on pace or not. Now I am actively participating in framework of the goal itself constantly and consistently throughout the year. This is why I think having goals within goals is the key. I don’t just set the goal at the beginning of the year and look at it hanging on the wall. I’m involved in the process of achieving it which keeps me grounded and always moving forward. When I play, I want to be lost in the process. I’m just doing the same thing here. I’m getting lost in the process of achieving my goal.

Now, give me your honest answer. Is my goal realistic? Or do you think I’m reaching for the stars? I think my goal is realistic. When I made the decision on whether to be average compared to the Tour statistics or whether I wanted to be equal to the best, I satisfied this requirement in my mind. The best putter on Tour in the Strokes Gained category is at 0.866. If I had chosen that number, I would have to improve by 2.266, not just 1.40. Putts per round? 27.78. I’m sorry, I may believe that I can do anything but add another tally mark in the “Tim’s not an idiot” column. To the person who doesn’t golf, that may sound simple. When you are read on to the program, you know how incredibly difficult it would be. Because while on the practice side of things I am only focused on putting, on the play side, everything has to be taken into account. Greens in regulation and first putt proximity to the hole are two massive factors in how many putts you could end up with in a round. You could hit very few greens and so you have to lean on your short game. Ideally, that means a lot of short one putts. But if you are hitting a lot of greens, your average proximity to the hole on the first putt could be more than 30 feet (well not on Downback, but let’s look at the big picture). 30 feet is right around where the probability of a Tour player making the putt in one stroke is the same as them 3 putting. Is my goal lofty? Yes. It is still within my reach absolutely. Norman Vincent Peale said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Even if on 31 December 2025, I haven’t reached my goal, I know I will have improved. To me that is what matters.

The easy part about New Year’s resolutions is that the time limit is set. I have one year to accomplish my goal. But if I retrace my steps a bit, I have already talked about other time frames. I want to improve by 0.12 Strokes Gained per month. This gives me some wiggle room. I may only get 0.10 strokes one month, lose 0.17 strokes another but have a great month and gain 0.35 strokes. Because I broke it down into more manageable chunks, I have the ability to adjust to make sure at the end, I have improved by the total of 1.40 strokes. Way back under specific goals I said in December 2025, I want my average strokes per round to be 30. Just because it is part of the overall goal doesn’t mean there can’t be more specific time frames set for certain parts of the that goal. I could get to 30 putts per round by June, but if I slack off because I got there early, I may not be able to do it in December. That means my goal was not fully met. So, now I have to work continuously, not just come out of the gate hard achieve my goal early and call it a day.

I have an ongoing goal that has been ongoing for years. It is the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen. I have been practicing this principle long before I knew that there was an actual term for it. I didn’t learn the term “Kaizen” until I was in my last semester at Methodist. At least I don’t remember hearing it before. But I have been on a path of continuous improvement since I was in high school. I decided then that I wanted to be 1% better today than I was yesterday. I have lived by that principle in many facets of my life. I want to be a better husband, father, friend, coworker, coach, player, etc. Just 1% better overall. I can tell you that I haven’t always done it because at the end of the day, those are the days where I don’t know what I accomplished. I feel stale, crusty and wasteful. I hate that feeling. But that’s because I know what it feels like to be alive. Growing. Impactful. Kaizen may have been thought up as a principle in business, but it in reality is a principle in life. This is the eating of the elephant. Little by little, always moving forward. So be S.M.A.R.T. in 2025. Set future you up for success whether in school, golf, work, your health, your personal life or some other facet. Future you will look back and thank you the current you. Remember, it isn’t about being invincible. It’s about being unstoppable.