People Magazine has never named me the sexiest man alive, even when I was younger. 1 I’m only mildly disappointed by their oversight. It hasn’t had a substantial impact on my life to this point. I’m sure I could improve, but I’m not focused on it.
Every aspect of our work and personal life can be substantially improved. We can improve supervision, report writing, training, scheduling, data collection, and every other aspect of our work. No child’s program is perfect; we can improve assessment, teaching procedures, organization of materials, and every aspect of a child’s program. We can all improve our diets, exercise, sleep, relationships, and finances.
Poogi (The Process of On-Going Improvement) does NOT mean improving everything all the time. That’s a sure way to have poor results. You simply cannot focus on everything. The good news is that you don’t have to. First, you have to select a reasonable goal that isn’t completely out of reach, which is sometimes a problem in applied behavior analysis. Second, only try to improve one or two areas at a time. That’s plenty.
Often, an improvement in one or two areas can lead to huge improvements in many areas. For example, if you improve problem behaviors, often language, social skills, academics, and self-help improve too. If we improve supervision, often employee morale, turnover, and client results also improve.
Of course, if you have a long enough time horizon most goals become possible. Does People Magazine have an over-80 category?
1 The ethical code of the BACB (8.01) requires that BCBA’s ensure that they do not make public false statements. Therefore, on this blog, I attempt to make sure that all statements are thoroughly fact-checked. In this case, due to time constraints I did not check People Magazine to ensure the accuracy of this statement.