Do you need a bit of inspiration and help with setting your goals for the year? Not sure where to start or how to word your goals?
I recently stumbled across a great goal setting website called 43 things.
It allows you to list your goals, share your progress and encourage others to do the same.
Better still, people who have achieved the same goal that you are currently after can tell you how they did it and what made a difference to them!
When I’m on 43 things, it’s like I’m on facebook. The only difference is I’m not wasting time looking at random photos and thinking about what to update my status to. Instead, I’m setting goals and getting inspired about my life (which is a way more productive use of my time if you ask me).
The basic idea behind the website is simple: if you write your goals down in a list, then you’re half way there to achieving them.
Sounds too simple? Too good to be true? Well, maybe that’s a little oversimplified but I love the basic idea behind the site.
My only gripe is often we set goals for ourselves and then feel completely overwhelmed by them. The website doesn’t really appear to go into detail about how to maximise your chances of actually achieving the goals written on your list.
‘How will I get from here (where I am now – thesis not finished) to over there (where I want to be – thesis finished)? It seems all too hard!’ is what goes through my mind nearly every day.
But then a hungry jacks whopper will flash before my eyes.
No, I’m not binging on hungry jacks. The whopper is symbolic.
Years ago (when I was feeling overwhelmed by a big project) a friend sat me down and said:
Friend: ‘Jane, how would you normally eat a burger?’
Me: ‘I guess I’d press down the top first…’
Friend: ‘Yeah and what else would you do?’
Me: ‘I’d take a bite…’
Friend: ‘And then what?’
Me: ‘umm…if it tasted good, I’d take another bite’
Friend: ‘You wouldn’t put the whole thing in your mouth at once would you?’
Me: ‘No, that would be stupid…I’d feel sick and bloated..’
My friend went on to tell me that the burger represents my long term goal (the project I am working on) and the bites out of the burger are my short term goals. It’s only through taking one bite at a time that I’d be able to eat the whole burger. The thing is all those little bites add up.
That image of the burger has stayed with me ever since. I now know that if I want to achieve a goal, I need to break it down into all the little action steps. A mind map usually does the trick.
Then of course, I need to take action.
But where do I start?
David Allen in his book ‘How to get things done’ recommends we ask ourselves ‘What’s the next action I can take to move me forward on this project?’
So in a nutshell: Write it down, break it down, ask yourself ‘What’s next?’ and then do it.
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I understand this cringe factor.
In high school, goal setting felt forced. I’d think, “Why are they making me do this?” and “What’s the point?”.
However, once I got to university, I realised that goals are a helpful life strategy.
In this article, I want to share my perspective on goal setting and how this strategy has helped me to get things done.
I’m going to tell you:
• What goals are
• Why you’d want to have them
• How to stick at them
• Why you need to protect your goals from destructive outside forces
Let’s go!
Goals are things you want to do. Perhaps you want to write a book, jog around the block every morning, start a podcast, get a part-time job to save money or learn to play an instrument. These are goals.
• Goals give your life a sense of purpose
• Goals give your life meaning and a reason to get out of bed
• Goals help to focus your mind on what you want/need to do
• Goals help you to create a better, less boring life
As Giovanni Dienstmann explains in his book Mindful Self Discipline:
“We all need to aspire to something and feel that we are going somewhere. Otherwise, there is a sense of boredom in life. Our daily routine feels stale and unengaging. As a result, we seek relief through bad habits, and seek engagement through mindless entertainment, news, social media, games, etc.”
Have you ever set a goal, you felt excited, but then that excitement quickly dissipated, and you gave up on the goal?
Whenever this happens, it’s easy to think, “Goal setting doesn’t work!”.
However, the problem isn’t with goal setting as a strategy.
The problem is that motivation is completely unreliable (it comes and goes). Plus, you were probably never taught how to achieve your goals in the first place.
In other words, you were set up to fail.
There’s a lot of pretty average advice out there about goal setting. I’ve heard dozens of goal setting pep talks, and many can be summed up like this:
“Set a goal, make it SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), break it down, blah, blah, blah.”
Most students tune out when they hear these pep talks. You can feel the energy being sucked out of the room.
This advice doesn’t work for most people. And it’s incomplete.
I’ve found that the following simple ideas can make a big difference in helping you move from inaction to action when it comes to pursuing your goals:
Achieving big long-term goals requires consistently engaging in small behaviours over time. You need to chip away and develop habits to get there.
For instance, after taking a hiatus from writing books (because I felt stuck and overwhelmed by the idea), I finally started writing down my ideas.
By starting small.
I told myself all I had to do was open the Word document and write one sentence. And the sentence didn’t even have to be good! But I had to do this every single day.
If I wanted to write more than one sentence, I could. But one sentence was my absolute minimum. Most days, I wrote at least a paragraph. But when I didn’t feel great, I would show up and write one sentence.
Nine months later, I had a draft manuscript ready to send to my editor.
Many different behaviours can help you achieve your goal. The first step is to brainstorm all the possible behaviours that can help you move closer to it.
One way to do this is with BJ Fogg’s tool, Swarm of Behaviors (also known as Swarm of Bs).
Here’s what you do:
You write your goal/aspiration/outcome (whatever you want to achieve) in the middle of a sheet of paper. Then, you spend a few minutes listing all the behaviours that will help you achieve it.
Dr Fogg stresses:
“You are not making any decisions or commitments in this step. You are exploring your options. The more behaviors you list, the better.”
When I was brainstorming behaviours that could help me to write my next book, I came up with the following list:
1. Use an Internet blocker app and block myself from distracting websites
2. Carry a notepad and pen with me everywhere I go (to capture ideas)
3. Write one sentence every morning
4. Speak my ideas into a voice recorder when I go for a walk
5. Use the Write or Die app
6. Manage my inner critic (when it strikes, say to myself, “It can’t be all bad!”)
7. Give myself a pep talk each day (e.g., “Done is better than perfect!”)
8. Do Julia Cameron’s morning page activity (i.e., free writing)
9. Attend a writing retreat
10. Sign up for the ‘Turbocharge your writing’ course
11. Pick up a mind map, select an idea and use it as a writing prompt
Once you’ve finished brainstorming potential behaviours, go through your list and select just a few behaviours to get the ball rolling (I selected #1, #3, and #6).
It’s well worth spending a couple of minutes making each of these behaviours ‘crispy’ (i.e., specific). For instance, for Behaviour #1, I decided which websites I would block myself from using and at what times.
When we work towards big life goals, the process is never neat or linear. Showing up and doing whatever you need to do (even just writing one sentence) can feel like a daily grind. Mild discomfort usually infuses the whole process.
Accept that’s how it is. It will sometimes feel like a hard slog, but the rewards are worth it.
The long-term rewards of working on your goals far outweigh the superficial rewards of scrolling through social media, watching Netflix, etc.
Even if you don’t achieve what you initially set out to do, chances are you’ll still be better off than you were before. Why? Because you’ll have learnt a bunch of new skills and life lessons.
Be careful who you share your goals with. Some people delight in stamping all over your goals and crushing your hopes and dreams.
For example, when I was 10 years old, I started attending drama classes outside of school. These classes were a lot of fun and quickly became the highlight of my week.
I remember thinking, “When I grow up, I want to run a drama academy to help boost kids’ confidence”.
I felt inspired by this idea. Drama had helped me come out of my shell and I wanted this for other kids who were lacking confidence. So, I decided to be brave and share my plans with my primary school teacher at the time.
I was expecting Mr D to say, “Good for you, Jane!”. But instead, he said with a smirk, “How do you think you’re going to do that?”
And then he started grilling me with questions . . .
“Where will you get the money from to set this up?”
“Who is going to come to your classes?”
“Where do you plan on running these classes?”
On and on Mr D went.
Ugh. “Just stop Mr D!” I wanted to scream.
I was left feeling crushed.
So, take it from me: Be careful who you share your goals with. Because some people get a kick out of squashing stuff (e.g., your dreams).
But nowadays, there’s a more powerful (and often overlooked) force that can mess with your goals: social media
If you’re constantly checking social media and looking at what other people are doing, that’s time and energy you could have spent working towards your goals. But that’s only part of the story . . .
Social media exposes you to a hodgepodge of content: the best bits of people’s lives, advertising, conspiracy theories, and outrage-inducing influencers. All this noise messes with your goals by subtly shifting and changing your worldview, beliefs, attitudes, and what you view as important in life.
In his brilliant book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, ex-Google strategist and now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams shares his struggles with this. He states:
“. . . I felt that the attention-grabby techniques of technology design were playing a nontrivial role. I began to realise that my technologies were enabling habits in my life that led my actions over time to diverge from the identity and values by which I wanted to live. It wasn’t just that my life’s GPS was guiding me into the occasional wrong turn, but rather that it had programmed me a new destination in a far-off place that it did not behoove me to visit. It was a place that valued short-term over long-term rewards, simple over complex pleasures.”
He adds:
“…I found myself spending more and more time trying to come up with clever things to say in my social posts, not because I felt they were things worth saying but because I had come to value these attentional signals for their own sake. Social interaction had become a numbers game for me, and I was focused on “winning” – even though I had no idea what winning looked like. I just knew that the more of these rewarding little social validations I got, the more of them I wanted. I was hooked.
. . . I had lost the higher view of who I really was, or why I wanted to communicate with all these people in the first place.”
When you go on social media, you need to realise that there are thousands of highly intelligent people on the other side of the screen and it’s their job to figure out how to capture and exploit your attention.
In short, the values and goals of these big tech companies are not aligned with your values and goals. Facebook’s first research scientist Jeff Hammerbacher summed it up nicely when he said:
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads . . . and it sucks.”
Take a moment to think of the people who you admire. How would you feel if you saw them spending vast amounts of time distracted and obsessed with social media?
I’ll leave you with this powerful quote from author Adam Gnade:
“Would you respect them [your biggest hero] as much if you saw them hunched over their phone all day like a boring zombie? No, you want them out there in the world doing heroic things, writing that great novel/song/whatever, saving the planet, standing up for the disenfranchised, or whatever else it was that made you love them in the first place. Let’s try to be as good as our heroes.”
Whatever you want in life, work out what you need to do to get there (i.e., the concrete behaviours), and then roll up your sleeves and get started.
It’s around this time of year that many people set big goals for themselves.
“This year is going to be different. I’m going to be more organised. Eat Healthier. Exercise more . . .”
Does this sound familiar?
Up until recently, this was me. I used to be obsessed with setting goals at the beginning of the new year.
In fact, I was part of an international goal setting community of productivity enthusiasts (yes, there’s such a thing). At the beginning of every year, we would meet up online and work in pomodoros (i.e. 25 minute sprints), setting goals and creating plans for the year.
I’ll admit, I loved it.
Here I was hanging out with people that were just as obsessed with effective work habits and productivity as I was! I felt like I had found my people.
But I recently stopped attending the goal setting sessions.
Quite frankly, I’d had enough.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve turned into an unmotivated sloth. It’s not like I went from being a hardcore goal setter to anti-goal setting.
These days I’m just less obsessed about being super productive. I’m still setting goals (just different ones and not as many as before). For instance, this year one of my goals is to do more fun activities, such as drawing, drumming and hiking.
Ironically, what I’ve found is in not trying so hard to power through my to-do list, I’m actually getting more meaningful stuff done. Plus, I’m a bit more relaxed about life, which is a good thing.
In his brilliant book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Oliver Burkeman argues that being too focused on the future can suck the joy out of life.
I saw a lot of myself in Burkeman’s story. To give you a little background, Burkeman is a reformed productivity geek. He used to write a column for a newspaper on productivity hacks. So he has experimented with dozens of time management and productivity techniques.
But interestingly, he found very few of these time management techniques actually worked. And the more he used them, the more stressed out and unhappy he became. The book Four Thousand Weeks is Burkeman’s attempt to try and make sense of things.
Four thousand weeks is the number of weeks you get if you make it to the ripe old age of 80.
The idea behind this book is simple: life is short. So what are you going to do with your 4,000 precious weeks?
Burkeman argues many time management books perpetuate myths and false ideas about time. Here are some of the myths:
If you just work harder and more efficiently, you’ll be able to do it all.
If you manage your time well, you’ll eventually get to a perfect place in the future where you are in control of time.
Burkeman says these ideas set up a rigged game. A game in which you try to do more and more to create a better future for yourself.
In trying to create this golden future where your life runs smoothly, you never feel satisfied in the present and you always feel like you’re running behind schedule. As a result, this stops you from enjoying what you’re doing right now. And when you think about it, that’s all we really have (this present moment).
Four Thousand Weeks is packed full of great insights and practical advice. Here are seven ideas from the book that really resonated with me:
It’s an illusion that you’ll be able to crank through all the things on your to-do list to finally clear the decks. Accept that there will always be more to do and your to-list will continue to grow. If you can be okay with that, life becomes a lot less overwhelming.
Burkeman suggests creating two to-do lists:
1) An open to-do list: containing everything you need to do but you’ll never get through.
2) A closed to-do list: containing a fixed number of entries (no more than 10 tasks).
When you complete a task on your closed list, only then can you add another item from your open list.
Burkeman suggests channelling your energy and attention on a handful of things that really matter to you. Don’t take on too many projects.
If you have lots of projects on the go, it’s too easy to not finish any of them. Why? Whenever one project gets a little uncomfortable or difficult, you switch over to another project.
All this bouncing around from one project to another means you end up with a lot of unfinished projects. Burkeman recommends focusing on one big work project at a time.
Any project that is important to you will bring up some discomfort and/or fear. “What if I’m not able to do it?” is a thought I frequently have whenever I start a new project. Since we don’t like experiencing these uncomfortable feelings, there’s always this urge to distract ourselves with digital technologies.
Burkeman suggests we get familiar with this discomfort. If you are able to tolerate the discomfort and get started on an important piece of work, it’s like a superpower. What you’ll find is you’ll be able to complete more important and meaningful tasks, which will motivate you to keep going.
It’s easy to fantasise about the future. I know I’m not the only person to have imagined running a marathon, publishing a best selling book and/or opening up a plant-based café.
In our minds, it’s so easy to see ourselves doing these things perfectly and with total ease and control. But what we usually find is when we attempt to do these things, reality is often out of sync with the fantasy in our heads.
You go for a run and your leg hurts. And by choosing to go for a run, you’re saying no to many other things you could potentially be doing.
Here’s my take on all of this: if given the choice between living in reality or fantasy land, choose reality every time. Sure, it’s messy. It’s imperfect. But it’s the real deal.
Since you only get one shot at this life, you might as well have a go at that thing you’ve always wanted to do (even if it makes you feel clumsy and awkward).
Not everything we do needs to bring us some financial, material or academic gain in the future. Some activities bring us pure enjoyment in the here and now.
Hiking is a perfect example of this. Burkeman says there’s no real purpose to hiking but you do it because it’s an inherently enjoyable experience.
Burkeman argues that an hour spent on social media is not just one hour wasted. That time bleeds into the rest of your day, impacting the way you feel, how you view the world and what you value.
To capture your attention, social media’s algorithms feed you the most sensational, outrageous and conspiratorial content. If you spend hours of your day on these platforms, there’s no question that this will distort your perception of reality.
What I took from this is if you want to think more clearly, get off social media.
Although Burkeman doesn’t go as far as saying this, he does suggest we make our devices as boring as possible. How do we do this?
By removing social media from them and changing the colour to grey scale. This way our devices appear more like tools than toys. It’s also makes it much harder for us to escape the discomfort (see point 3).
JOMO is the opposite of FOMO (Fear of missing out) – it’s the joy of missing out. Rather than feeling stressed out about not being able to go to every social event, celebrate the fact that you can’t possibly do it all nor would you want to!
The irony is the more social events you go to, the more you realise you’re missing out on. You’ll never win this game of trying to do it all, so don’t even bother trying to play. Burkeman continuously comes back to this powerful idea of choosing a few things you want to do from the menu of life.
I love this idea of treating life like a menu. When you go to a restaurant you don’t feel the pressure to try every dish on offer. You just pick the dish that appeals to you in that moment and then you forget the rest.
I think this is a great approach to life. You can’t do everything but you can do a few things with your 4,000 weeks. So pick the things that interests you the most and then dive right in and enjoy!
Then it’s time to make a few small tweaks to your lifestyle.
Below are 15 scientifically proven strategies that can help you change any behaviour.
Simple changes to your environment can help nudge you towards engaging in particular behaviours. For example, a year ago I set a goal to move more during the day. To achieve this goal, here’s how I modified my workspace:
• I removed my office chair
• I installed a standing desk
• I converted a treadmill to a treadmill desk and placed it in the centre of the room
• I set up a whiteboard to brainstorm on my feet
• I put a yoga mat on the floor and a set of dumbbells under my desk
These little changes forced me to work on my feet. Instead of sitting hunched in a chair, I now move constantly throughout the day.
Half the battle when it comes to adopting a new behaviour is remembering to do it. Enter cues!
Cues are things you see or hear that remind you to engage in a particular behaviour.
Here are some examples of cues:
• An alarm or timer going off
• A message to yourself written on a whiteboard
• An object placed in the middle of a room (e.g. an instrument that you need to practice or gym clothes set out)
• A note written on your hand
• A message on your screensaver
• An implementation intention
Implementation intentions are slightly more sophisticated cues. They involve making plans for when and where you’ll execute an intention (If I do X, then I will do Y).
Here are some examples of implementation intentions:
• “Today at 5pm, after work, I will go for a 20 minute walk.”
• “When I sit down on the bus, I will get out my flashcards and do 5 minutes of revision.”
• “I will meditate for 10 minutes at 7am in my bedroom.”
When a certain situation arises (e.g. you finish work or get on the bus), then you will carry out a particular behaviour (e.g. walk for 20 minutes or revise flashcards). The more you follow through with these plans, the sooner the behaviour will become a habit.
The more times you repeat a behaviour, the more deeply engrained it becomes in your brain. Once a behaviour becomes an engrained habit, it requires very little mental effort to execute.
As Dr Sean Young states in his book Stick with it:
“Brains are like cars. Driving them in manual mode takes a lot of awareness and effort. But brains prefer to be in automatic mode. They do this by storing things that frequently occur so they can be easily accessed. Think of it like your brain storing your username and password for a site you visit often. That way you can login effortlessly, without even thinking, allowing you to concentrate on other things.”
To get to automatic mode, you need to engage in the behaviour over and over again. Early and often is key!
We all have dreams. But often our dreams are so big and overwhelming we fail to do anything to move towards them. So break your dream down into small steps.
Ask yourself:
• What do I need to do today?
• What do I need to do in the next 10 minutes?
• What do I need to do in the next 30 seconds?
Let’s say you have a dream of improving your fitness and wellbeing. Today you’ll need to do some exercise to achieve this goal. The problem is your brain says, “Ugh…exercise .. don’t want to!”. So what do you do?
You could say, “All I need to do is go to the gym and touch the floor”. Of course, once you get to the gym, walk in and touch the floor, you’re there. You might as well keep going.
Mindfulness is about being aware of what’s going on in the present moment (i.e. your thoughts, sensations, feelings and surroundings). If you’re aware that you’re engaging in a bad habit, then you’re in a better position to stop and do something different. In short, you can better self regulate.
How do you become more mindful?
One way is to practise meditation. You can read more about this technique here.
As humans, we are wired to do what’s easy and most convenient. As psychologist Sean Young states:
“People want things to be easy for them to do. They enjoy things that are easy for them to do. And they’ll keep doing things that are easy to do.”
So how do you make a behaviour easy or easier to do?
Here are a few ideas:
• Break it down with a simple plan: list out all the small steps you need to take.
• Re-engineer your environment: decrease the barriers to engagement.
• Make it a habit: repeat the new behaviour over and over again (implementation intentions can help with this).
At the end of the day, week and month, do a quick check in. Ask yourself:
• How did I go today with what I set out to do?
• If things didn’t go to plan, what got in the way?
• What could I do differently tomorrow?
Pausing to reflect for a few minutes is time well spent. It allows you to consider better ways of doing things, so you can course correct and make continual improvements.
Motivational speaker Jim Rohn states:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
In other words, you soak up your friends’ qualities.
Have friends who exercise and eat well? You’re more likely to exercise and eat well. Have friends who take their studies seriously? You’re more likely to take your studies seriously.
If you’re trying to change a particular behaviour, see if there is a community you can join that can support you. Connect with other people who have changed or are trying to change their behaviour. There’s a real sense of comradery when you spend time with other people who are all working towards the same goals as you.
If you’re engaging in the same behaviour day in, day out, at some point your brain will get bored. So we need to explore ways to make the behaviour a bit novel and interesting for our brains. We need to apply Fun theory.
Here are some ideas of how you can perk up your brain:
• Change your environment
• Mix up the order of your routine
• Make it social in some way
• Have some music playing in the background
• Use rewards
One study found people who practised gratitude on a regular basis experienced better psychological wellbeing, a more positive outlook on the future, better sleep and engaged in more physical exercise.
When you feel good and you’re in a good headspace, it’s much easier to make changes in your life. For ideas on how to practise gratitude, click here.
Sometimes we spend too much time in our heads, trying to change our thinking to change our behaviour. But there’s an easier way.
You can create lasting behaviour change by engaging in small behaviours that trick your brain into viewing yourself in a new way.
For instance, instead of thinking about putting on your running shoes, force yourself to put your running shoes on at a certain time each day and go for a short walk. Keep doing this everyday for a few weeks. What will happen is your self image will begin to shift. You’ll start to see yourself as someone who exercises on a regular basis.
When you engage in a new behaviour, take note. Give yourself a gold star, a tick on a whiteboard, record it in an app or in a notebook, etc. This may seem a little childish or pedantic but it allows your brain to see that your making progress. It’s highly motivating for your brain. You’ll want to keep going.
Visualising the perfect life is a strategy that feels nice but research shows it doesn’t work. In contrast, sitting down and imagining all the possible things that could go wrong on your change journey is much more effective. Why?
When you imagine all the things that could go wrong, your brain starts to think and plan about what it can do to avoid these things from occurring.
Rewards can motivate you do things you really don’t want to do. Think about it, lots of people go to jobs they hate with a passion for the reward of money. Rewards work.
But you need to find what rewards and incentives will work for you. When it comes to studying for a test or exam, you could reward yourself in the following simple ways:
• Have a snack
• Do something fun
• Watch a funny video
• Play with your dog
The thing about rewards is they have to come after you’ve done the thing you need to do, not before. Pre-rewards don’t work.
It’s also important to make sure the reward is in alignment with your goals. If you’re trying to be healthier and lose weight, don’t make your reward a block of chocolate or a bucket of deep fried chicken.
So now it’s over to you. What change do you want to make?
Pick a behaviour and one or two of the strategies listed above. Have a play. See how many of these easily actionable tweaks you can incorporate into your daily routine.
And just remember, all behaviour change begins with committing to take the next step. So what’s your next small step?
Dr Jane Genovese delivers interactive sessions on learning to learn, combating procrastination, exam preparation, how to focus in the age of distraction, habit formation and much, much more!
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