If I were to ask you, what’s the hardest part of sticking to your goal? What would you say? Procrastination? Distractions? Low motivation? Lack of interest?
The list can go on and on. But I think for many of us one of the most frustrating things is to see that we are not doing what we have planned to do.
Perhaps you have a good plan for working out 3 times a week to lose weight. But after 3 weeks, you find yourself going to the gym only twice in total.
Or maybe you have planned to finish that important project in two weeks, but then in the end you only finished half of it.
Things like this happen to all of us and quite often as well. What people at the beginner level of goal setting tend to do in face of situations like this is that they usually give up and totally abandon their goal.
But there is a solution. The trick is to dial down your goal effort when you are not completing your plan.
Instead of renewing your willpower or motivation to try again for the same plan, simply dial down your plan targets by 20-30% and then see if you can achieve that.
I have a goal to run 365km this year. That averages to about 1km per day, or 30k per month. But in January I only completed 18k, which is a far cry from the 30k monthly target. Admittedly, it’s hard to run on cold and rainy days. :-(
So in February, I readjusted my monthly target to only 20k. At the end of the month, I completed the full 20k as planned.
Now what I feel is a sense of winning and motivation to run more in March. If I still stuck to the original 30K goal in February, I would have failed my plan again and inevitably would be feeling frustrated and hopeless about the goal now.
When you find yourself not completing your original plan, reduce your plan and try again. If you fail again, reduce more. Until you can finally accomplish your plan. Then you can build up and slowly increase your goal effort. This is a much better strategy than trying too hard and failing again and again.
Harry
