Hey Brainiacs,
Welcome to this weeks’ newsletter! This week is Part 2 of setting and achieving goals, where we’ll dive into how to get started achieving.
Section 2: Start Achieving
By now, we’ve narrowed our goals to the most important ones. They should be shaping up to the SMART framework – specific, measurable, achievable, rewarding, and time-bound. Our mindset is that these goals are challenging but not overwhelming, and they are worth our time!
Great…but how do we start?
I mentioned last week that we should think of our daily schedule and our circadian rhythm to see where we can fit our daily steps (like running, meditating, cooking, writing, etc.) to meet our goals1,2. We pencilled in these goals and our schedule, but now it’s time to get out the pen.
Make A Schedule
Make a schedule that you think is reasonable and you can stick to. Studies have shown that a poor school schedule can impact students' ability to learn3 – which suggests we should all be thinking about how we schedule our time. Allocate time from your calendar when you would expect to be able to work towards your goal. Write this on your calendar, so that you cannot fill that time with anything else. This is known as time-chunking; it can be used for any task you have, and helps you to hyper-focus without worrying about other tasks4.
Contrary to popular beliefs, we actually cannot multitask well5, and so whilst you may not have to worry about this if your goal involves physical activity (pretty hard to run and send e-mails, not impossible, just pretty hard!), it can be useful if your goals are more cerebral.
Top Tip: Include prep time as well – if you want to go for a 30-minute run, you need to factor in changing into running clothes, warming-up, cooling-down, and showering! I know this from personal experience.
Some things to think about when scheduling in your daily or weekly activity:
how much free time do you have?
how tired are you on each day of the week?
what time of the day are you most tired?
Be kind to yourself, and think about alternatives as well! If you can’t do the run on Saturday, would you be able to fit it on Sunday? If you cannot manage a 30-minute run, would 20 minutes suffice? You don’t want to ruminate on things that can go wrong, but looking at a physical calendar and logically thinking about how much time you have and where you can slot in alternatives can be useful for the inevitable day you plan too much to do and cannot fit everything in.
We have talked about using visualization as a tool before, so this is just a reminder of how helpful this technique can be. It can help you in imagining what your day is actually like, imagining how difficult a task will be and how you can power through it, and imagining potential setbacks and how you can overcome them.
This isn’t to say we’re ruminating on bad things, but preparing for some common ones in a rational, coherent way. If you know that running early in the morning isn’t your thing, but you can’t find any other time to do it, then practise visualising getting out of bed and putting on your running shoes when you’re tired. Think of how groggy and gross you’ll feel, and convince yourself to go anyway. This will help prepare for the actual moment it happens.
Milestones and Rewards
Set Milestones
Last week we talked about having sub-goals (or milestones) towards a larger goal which can help us stay motivated in the short-term6. It is important to have quantifiable milestones to measure your improvements and feel rewarded for your hard work. Take some time now to think of specific milestones you want to achieve.
Rewards
Milestones go hand-in-hand with rewards. We know from research that when building habits, it is important to have consistent rewards early on. But, they need to be ‘work-to-unlock’ rewards, meaning we should complete multiple tasks before getting them7. In a study looking at consumer engagement7, this was the best method because it encouraged consumers to set realistic goals, motivated them through the initial goal-setting process, and kept them engaged after achieving the first goal, because they felt they could keep earning even better rewards.
Integrating a similar system for your milestones might mean that your first milestone is a 3k run, knowing that it will take 5 runs to build up to this. Your next milestone might be a 5k run, because you know that will take another 10 runs to build up to. But the reward for the 5k will be slightly bigger than the 3k. Think about what you find rewarding, and assign a reward to each milestone.
Next week I’ll talk about the benefits of changing to intermittent rewarding once a habit has been established8.
Find a Community
Studies show that we become like the people we are surrounded by9. So, at this stage, it can be a good idea to join a community of people trying to achieve similar goals. There are groups for almost any sport you can imagine, groups for hobbies like knitting, groups for self-employed entrepreneurs, and many more. Even if you don’t want to exercise with people, joining a Facebook group for runners so that running posts come up on your feed can be a good motivator.
Keep a Secret
Studies show that telling people about our planned achievements actually gives us the same rewarding feeling as completing them10! This leads to a depletion in our motivation to complete them. And the more passionate you are about a goal, the more talking about it will reduce your motivation10. So, try to keep a secret!
This is where a community might also be useful, because you can tell them your goal and then they’ll hold you to it!
Until next week,
Nicole x
P.S. Leave a comment with any future topics you want to see, and let me know how you’re getting on with this 3-parter!
References
Everybody’s Working for the Weekend, But When Do You Actually Get Work Done? | Redbooth
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4509960.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01627/full
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054402
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000116