2021: Let’s talk about Goals, Habits, Motivation
What do they mean and how you can achieve them.
It’s the beginning of the New Year and tradition will tell you that at this time, we reflect on both past and future and we look into what we want out of this new year.
We do this by outlining our goals and habits that will move us to what we want in achieving a prosperous and successful year towards our ultimate goal whether in our career and life.
This is an encouraged time of when we need to be honest with ourselves what we truly want and what we don’t (spring-clean time!).
As I use this time to reflect on my own goals and habits, I used last month (December) to prepare for this time (beginning of the year) by researching what I could into the subject, to better understand and be as effective as possible and adopt into my own life.
Rather than bore you with too much clutter, I’ve thrown down the crucial points, in byte-size take-aways that I’ve found that stood out to me from leading thinkers.
SUCCESS
Everyone, including you (and me), wants to be successful. Heck, it seems natural to strive for.
Success in both business and in life means different things to different people, and it should mean different things. People are unique individuals, so everyone’s definition should be unique. Ultimately, whether or not you feel successful depends on how you define (your) success — and on the trade-offs, you are willing not just to accept but embrace as you pursue that definition of success.
What I have come to understand is that success isn’t an end result. Success is a process. A process. Success is repeatable and predictable — doing the right things, the right way, over and over and over.
When you consistently do the right things, success is predictable; success is inevitable.
Success is the product of daily repeatable right habits.
HABITS
We know the basic premise about habits. They can be hard to break — and hard to create. But we are unknowingly acquiring new ones all the time. The choice we face is whether or not we want to form habits that get us to what we want in life.
Establishing great habits takes time and effort. Success and achievement are habits. A habit is a routine or behaviour that is performed regularly — and, in many cases, automatically.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
As I have learnt from James Clear, a leading thinker on the subject with his best-selling book Atomic Habits, Clear writes:
Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.
In the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth, she says that what really drives success is not “genius” but a combination of passion and long-term perseverance.
Just be weary, it’s incredibly easy to instantly create a bad habit by giving in, even just once.
MOTIVATION
Each little success (win) is motivating. Each little success gives you confidence. The accumulation of small successes makes the process, um, maybe not fun, but definitely rewarding — but that’s all you need to keep going.
Motivation is a result, not a precondition. Motivation (put simply) is the pride you take in work you have already done which fires your willingness to do even more. Once you start, it’s easy to keep going. To keep going towards that goal.
GOALS
Everyone has goals.
When we think of goals, we think of them as something we strive to attain; in the traditional sense. To truly achieve greatness, it pays to understand what goals really are.
How do people actually achieve their goals? These are people who create routines. They build systems. They consistently take the steps (habits) that, in time, will ensure they reach their ultimate goal.
Goals are good for setting direction, but creating systems are what is best for making progress. Establishing the right systems ensure you reach your goals.
Every goal should be specific. You need to be clear on what the results look like, then work out and understand a process to get there.
One way to get you there is to set and forget the goal because it’s all in the system and routine.
As Jeff Haden explains in The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win, Haden writes,
The key is to set a goal, use it as a target that helps you create a plan for achieving it . . . and then do your best to forget all about that goal.
The best way to determine the right process for achieving a life goal is to study people who have actually achieved that goal. (Why reinvent the wheel?) PRO TIP: Start at the end and work backward.
Every goal should support multiple aspects of your life — health, family, career etc.
CONCLUSION
Dream big. Set a huge goal. Commit to your huge goal. Create a process that ensures you can reach your goal. Then forget about your huge goal and work your process instead.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
The key to accomplishing your goals is to build the right habits and follow the right routines. When you control your environment, you make building those habits easy — and you make following the right routines as close to automatic as possible.
Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
Don’t give up. Fix whatever schedule problems have arisen. There is always a way.
More importantly, don’t compare yourself with other people.
For further enlightenment, I highly recommend reading:
Atomic Habits by James Clear
The Motivation Myth by Jeff Haden
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
