There’s one core concept that has truly allowed me to keep making progress on my goals, week after week, without constantly needing to rely on massive amounts of willpower or sudden surges of motivation.
My aim today is to outline how I personally leverage this approach, and then show you how it could be applied in your own life to make meaningful improvements, both in your well-being and in your work.
The way we typically approach setting goals presents a challenge. If you’re like most people, you carry dreams and aspirations throughout your life. In fact, you likely have a good number of things, both large and small, that you hope to accomplish.
That’s certainly commendable. However, there’s a common pitfall many of us encounter when we begin to set those goals. And believe me, I’ve fallen into this trap more times than I can count.
Here’s where the main issue lies: we often set a completion date, but we don’t lay out a step-by-step plan.
Our attention tends to fixate on the desired outcome and the specific date we aim to achieve it by. We might say, “I want to shed 20 pounds before summer arrives,” or perhaps, “I plan to add 50 pounds to my bench press within the next twelve weeks.”
The difficulty here is that if we don’t precisely hit that initial, often arbitrary, timeframe, we can easily start to feel like we’ve failed. This can happen even if we’ve made significant progress from where we began. All too often, the consequence is that we simply abandon our efforts if the goal isn’t met by that first deadline.
I’ve touched upon this concept on several occasions before. For instance, when discussing how we sometimes prioritize performance targets over our fundamental identity, or when we lean towards grand, life-altering changes rather than consistent, daily lifestyle decisions.
But here’s some encouraging news: there’s a simpler, more effective approach to all of this.
The Benefit of a Schedule, Not a Deadline
From my experience, you’ll achieve your goals better if you set up a consistent schedule to work by, rather than just a fixed deadline to hit.
Instead of putting a deadline on yourself for a certain goal (and then feeling like you’ve failed if you don’t reach it), it’s smarter to choose a goal that’s important to you. After that, create a regular plan to keep working towards it steadily.
That might not seem like a big change, but it truly is.
I usually try to put my ideas into action, instead of just talking about them. So, let me tell you about this approach using a couple of real-life stories from my own experience.
Take writing, for example.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I put out a new article every Monday and Thursday for the first three years. Sometimes it was a bit shorter than I planned, or maybe not as interesting as I’d hoped, or even not as helpful as it could have been… but it always got published, no matter what.
And the results from sticking to that simple schedule? Pretty amazing. We ended up with millions of visitors, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and even a full-time business came out of it.
What if, instead, I’d given myself a specific deadline, like “get 1,000 subscribers in 12 weeks”? No way I would’ve kept up the Monday and Thursday writing. And if I hadn’t hit that number, I would’ve just felt like I failed.
Instead, little by little, we’re building what I believe is one of the best online communities around. (By the way, thanks so much for all the emails, tweets, and messages about things like losing weight, lifting, living healthier, and building good habits. Please keep them coming! I’m always glad to get your questions and will do my best to help out in any way I can.)