62 - Starting small with the things
The smaller the goal, the more likely it is to be accomplished
Growing up, my father encouraged us to read by constantly buying books. As with most parents of his generation, his preferred genre was self help, and so we grew up reading about assets vs liabilities and habits of highly effective people. At the beginning of every year, my father would make us write down a list of resolutions for the new year. It didn’t matter that we would most likely give up on them by February, we still had to write them down and present them to him.
Over the years, I have carried on this practice of writing down goals without any concrete plans on how exactly to follow through, just lofty ideas (usually borrowed from aforementioned self help books) about things I thought were expected of me. Thankfully, this has changed in recent years. I still like to start the year with a written down list of things I would like to accomplish, but now there’s so much more thought to what I put down.
As a person who lives by her lists, I quite enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that comes with crossing something off my list. And if making lists has taught me anything, it is that the simpler the thing, the more likely it is to get crossed off.
When making goals, we tend to focus on the big picture/outcome, without paying attention to how we might get there, including the things that might prevent us from getting there. And then when we do not get there, the feeling of disappointment can sometimes keep us from trying again.
While going through my reading challenge on goodreads, I noticed that in 2018, I pledged to read 100 books. To be honest, I picked the number 100 because I had seen a friend’s reading challenge for the previous year and she had read a similar number. I did not consider that in order to achieve this, I would need to read a new book every 4 days. As you can imagine, this would be a very difficult task to accomplish while working full time as a doctor. After managing to read only 13 out of the 100 books I had pledged to read in 2018, I decided to lower the bar in 2019 by pledging to read 52 books. I figured I could aim to read one book a week. Once again, I failed to hit this target, managing only 11 out of the 52. In 2020, I further reduced my target, pledging to read only 25 and at the end of the year, I was quite excited to see that I had read 24 books that year and now that has remained my pledge for the past couple of years and I have to say it feels good to see that “completed” banner.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, sometimes to achieve success, it is necessary to lower the bar for yourself. This by no means signifies a lack of ambition, instead I think of it as using your small wins to encourage yourself to reach for more.
This brings to mind the 2-minute rule proposed by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. The idea is that when you want to start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. This way you’re less likely to procrastinate and more likely to be consistent and gradually make your new habit a part of your identity.
This can be applied to many of the goals we commonly set for ourselves.
One of my goals for this year is to return to the gym/build muscle. I started by making enquiries at my local sports club and although they had all the facilities I was looking for, I knew that if I chose to register with them, I would be less likely to use my membership because it wasn’t within walking distance and I do not drive plus it was expensive. I continued my search and found a gym I really hate that is within walking distance and now by eliminating the obstacle of distance, and considering my own unique non-driving situation, I’ve increased my chances of achieving this one goal.
You can start by having a piece of fruit everyday instead of commiting to the cutting and blending involved in making a smoothie.
Your journey to better skin can start with a basic 3 step routine instead of the 10 step one your fave influencer does.
Whatever it is you’ve put down to accomplish this year, whatever promise you’ve made to yourself, you might increase your chances of success by eliminating the possible obstacles and paring things down to the bare minimum.
This week I am reading
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. Fell in love with this one while still listening to the preface. It is a collection of advice seeking letters from an agony aunt column. The stories told by these letters were a good reminder that we all share an innate desire for connection as humans, and it is what underlies many of our personal conflicts. The letters told stories of love, loss, grief, family and everything in between. The author answered the questions with remarkable insight and vulnerability, drawing on some of her own experiences and telling some beautiful stories along the way. Savouring this one because I am not ready for it to end.
This week I listened to
Episode #154 of The knowledge project. Shane talked to Emily Balcetis (who is a social psychologist) about setting and achieving goals. Part of Emily’s work involves studying how successful people set goals and she shared some interesting findings from her research. One big takeaway for me was about foreshadowing the ways that things could go wrong when setting a goal or making a plan. Thinking ahead about what your obstacles might be and how to bypass or overcome them. Enlightening discourse as usual.
The year has started off at a steady trot for me. I have a few big things to get out of the way this first quarter, so I’ve had to hit the ground running, literally. Looking forward to things falling into place seamlessly. Amen.
Here’s wishing you a week of doing the barest minimum possible to get you to your desired outcome.
Chioma.