PaperBased.net

As the end of 2007 is just around the corner I’ve been spending some time reviewing my goals list and working on some new ones for 2008.

Being a paperbased type of person, I prefer to use a paper and pen to do this (although I do have to admit a love of the site 43Things, both for the community atmosphere and the tonnes of great goal ideas you can browse through).

Over time I have managed to find some really useful worksheets that can be printed to provide some structure to goal setting activities. Here are a few of them:

• The awesome 101 Goals in 1001 Days website has a heap of printable worksheets for brainstorming goals and putting a list  together.
• The Goal Setting Guide on Uncommon Knowledge has a good goal worksheet layout
• LIFT International has some great visually appealing goal and life plan worksheets 
• The Bloomington Public Schools website has a nice simple SMART Goals template
• Here’s another SMART Goals worksheet from Optimus Performance
• And another SMART Goals worksheet from Coachville/ExcellentCoach
• The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox has a very useful Goal Tracker template available
• The IdeaBridge Goal Tracking Template is another useful tool. Their website has a tonne of other great business-orientated templates available as well.
• A Financial Goals worksheet from Utah Sate University. There’s other financial worksheets available too.
• Here’s a Goals Worksheet for Students from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
• For those more into using Mind Maps to plan goals, Eric Blue’s Blog has loads of great resources including a goals mind map template

Recently a friend returned from a trip to Japan with hundreds of holiday snaps of his travels and adventures there. Some of these photos were of the statue of Sadako Sasaki (The Children’s Monument) in Hiroshima’s Peace Park. The statue is of a young girl holding aloft a large golden crane. It is surrounded by thousands of colourful folded paper cranes that are brought and sent to the city each year by children from around the world.

I remembered reading the story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (an historical fiction novell written by Eleanor Coerr in 1977 and based on the collection of letters between Sadako and her classmates) for school and being very touched by the story of this courageous girl. The story revolves around Sadako, a 12 year old girl who is dying of leukaemia as a result of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima when she was only two years old. She hears that if you fold 1000 paper cranes you get to make one wish, so she begins folding with the wish to be made well again.

Sadako’s determination inspired her classmates to start a national campaign to remember her and the hundreds of other children killed in the bombing. Sadako and her paper cranes have since become a symbol of peace.

When reading this book in class we had also learnt how to fold the paper cranes. This was the activity that started my love of paper folding and origami. After seeing my friend’s photos of the paper cranes in the peace park it prompted me to revisit the story and to learn to fold a paper crane again.

If you’d like to read more about the real Sadako you can find her story at the World Peace Project for Children website or the Sadako Sasaki Wikipedia entry. Both sites contain photographs of the peace statue and of the many paper cranes placed around it.

Instructions for folding your own paper crane can be found at the following sites:

• World Peace Project for Children - Folding Paper Cranes
• World Peace Project for Children - Other Paper Crane Instructions
• Animated Origami Crane Instructions (requires Flash)
• Operation Peace Crane