Why You Fail to Achieve your Goals.

Your goal setting is being done wrong.

Current Nature of Goal Setting:

January 1st.

“This is going to be my year. I want to ___ (fill the gap, lose 10kg, get back to the gym, regain my health…).”

March 1st.

“What were my resolutions again?”

Who’s been here before? We all set goals with good intentions. Typically we aren’t happy with something, so we decide to change. If you’ve sat down with a personal trainer, life coach or even had some exposure to goal setting before you would have been told that you need to make your goals SMART-er. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Realistic, Time-based) is the process of goal setting that most of us are taught. It breaks down a vague dream and puts more action behind it. It helps you to nail down exactly what it is that you are going after. The Google maps for your next car trip. 

Goals have 3 layers and a term coined by James Clear being the 3 layers of behaviour change. Outcome, process, identity. Outcome based goals are those which are defined by what you achieve (lose 10kg). Process based goals are goals that focus on how you will achieve something (exercise 5x per week). Identity goals refer to who the person is you are wanting to become (fit, runner, bodybuilder, etc.). Quite often we address our goal setting in this order. “I want to lose 10kg (outcome). To lose 10kgs, I will exercise 5x per week (process).” The hope here is that by focusing on an outcome, you (your identity) will change.

What if we say you’ve been doing this in all the wrong order? Where most people go wrong is that they only set outcome based goals. They focus on what they want rather than how they should get there and who the person is that they want to become. 

Instead of starting with what (outcome), start by identifying who you want to become. Then asking yourself, how can I be like that person? In turn you’re creating a new identity. You’re creating a new “Self”.

Re-Creating Your-Self

The ‘Self’ - a person's characteristics that distinguishes them from others.

Unfortunately we can’t just think our way to becoming a new/different person. New identities require new evidence. You must prove this new person to yourself. You prove this new Self through small wins. You achieve these small wins by focusing on systems. Systems that help to reinforce the person you want to become.

“Forget about goals and focus on systems”

- James Clear

Systems Not Goals

Motivation is overrated.

Motivation is great for short term action or when you have an imminent goal just out of reach. When you want to achieve something in a short amount of time, motivation is your best friend. I’m sure you have all experienced surges of motivation. How good it feels when you know what you want to achieve and you are getting after that goal.

The problem occurs when we take these short term motivators and try to rely on them for longer term change. If we’ve only relied on motivation to achieve a goal, then we will need motivation indefinitely if we are to keep this off. 

As I’m sure you have experienced, motivation comes in waves. Sometimes we have it, other times we don’t. It’s what you do when motivation is low that will inherently determine whether you achieve & sustain the goals you set. What do we do in times of low motivation? We fall to our systems.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”

- Archilochus

By falling to our systems we inevitably revert back to our pre-existing behaviours. Psychologist Kurt Lewin stated that behaviour is a function of the person in the environment, therefore if we want to adjust our behaviour, we must begin by shaping our environment. 

“Motivation is overrated, environment matters more”

- James Clear

Make it Visual

Within our environment, vision is the greatest catalyst for our behaviour. We as humans have evolved to pay attention with our eyes. We see and experience most of the modern world through our visual field. If you want to shape your behaviour, start by creating obvious visual cues. 

Each day you have a handful of moments that choose the direction of your day, work out, don’t work out. Cook food, order Uber. If you know that getting to the gym is the hardest part for you. Start by laying your clothes out the night before. When you wake up in the morning, the clothes are right there.

2min Rule

“Reduce the scope, stick to the schedule”

- James Clear

After the visual cue, commit to just 2 minutes. Scale down any behaviour to a 2min (or less) version (read one page, tie my shoes, put on workout clothes, cut vegetables). Give yourself 2 minutes, then stop. Ask yourself do you still want to continue? By reducing the scope, you reduce the barrier to entry making it seem easier to just get started. Once you’ve gotten started, it’s then a lot easier to continue.

For me, when I was introducing journaling into my habits I wanted to start by writing one page a day. Now depending on the day that one page could take me anywhere from 10-30 minutes to write and sometimes that seems like an uphill climb (especially when you aren’t feeling very motivated. So reduce the scope, stick to schedule - instead of committing to the one page. All I commit to is one line a day. If I get to the end of that line and I need to do something else, or I’m really not feeling it that day then I stop. But I at least did my one line. 9 times out of 10, I want to continue writing and it was the mental barrier I built up for myself that was preventing me from getting started. Cold showers, much the same. At the start of the year I began introducing cold showers into my routine first thing in the morning. Now anyone who’s done cold immersion or ice bath/cold showers before will know the shock when you first get in. Once you experience that shock, every time after, you begin by questioning your life choices. Sometimes to a point where you hype yourself out of actually doing it. So, reduce the scope, stick to the schedule. “Just get in.” Once you're in, the initial shock quickly starts to settle. You begin to focus on your breathing and then remember why you are doing this. It becomes easier because the mountain you had to climb is that much smaller.

Simple Systems

We need to set our systems up so that when motivation is low, these are what we revert to. Simple habits that reduce the barrier to entry. Systems that make the right choice, the easy choice. Most of the time, this is the reality of achieving goals. It’s battling in the trenches just to turn up, not riding the hype of motivation.

• Focus on who you want to become

• Create visual cues in your environment to promote positive behaviour change

• Create a 2min rule for each new behaviour