Your goals are not good enough
And to be honest, neither are mine. I’ve set plenty of goals in the past, and I have to admit I’ve reached almost none. In this post we'll discuss how you can turn this around and create your ideal life.
Setting goals is no doubt the most well-known strategy to “improve” our productivity. Starting from a young age, we get taught that it’s all about reaching our goals.
- “Get an A for that test”
- “Study hard so you can go to that specific college”
- “Work hard now so you can have that dream life later”
And later in our lives, our boss or our company has a whole list of ‘targets’ we should achieve.
The problem with goals is that they focus on the destination. The goal “I want to run a marathon” tells us nothing about how we get there. Not how we should start, not how we should persist through a rainy training.
Come to think of it, goals aren’t even that life-changing. Sure, you’ve run a marathon. But that is where the goal stops. Nothing about the goal makes sure you hang on to your new-found endurance. If our goals are the only thing we focus on, we move on to the next one and stop exercising altogether. Losing all that progress we made.
Luckily, goals are not alone. Let me introduce systems.
The most important step a man can take…
... It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step.
Only by making progress can we achieve our goals. It’s the daily actions we take that bring us closer to the life we want to live.
And that’s exactly what a system is. A system describes the daily (or weekly) actions we have to take to make us the person we want to be. We might want to run a marathon one day, we might even want to call ourselves an athlete. But we only get there by doing our weekly training.
Where goals focus on a future state, systems tell us about the things we should do in the present. A good system contains the when and how of the action we need to take. Without these systems, we are nothing but dreamers.
Systems are way more than just a way to reach our goals. Systems help us achieve the change in our lives that we desire.
When starting a goal, your motivation is through the roof. You start running every day. But summer turns to fall and the increasing rain starts to dampen your motivation. By the end of winter, you’re barely running once a week.
But let’s imagine that the marathon comes around and you manage to run it! Your friends congratulate you and you ceremoniously draw a fat line through your goal. Now what?
Do you keep running even though you don’t have a goal anymore? Maybe you do, but once summer turns to fall again, the rain is enough to make you stop this time. I mean, you’re not doing it for anything anymore, are you?
The next time a friend or family member asks or challenges you to run a marathon, you start at (almost) ground zero again. Even though your goals were reached, nothing changed in the long term.
If you had focused on the daily activities of exercise, without any end in mind, you would not only have reached your goal. But also would have had the permanent benefit of an exercise habit.
Goals are the direction. Systems are how you get there, and most of all, how you stay there.
Are you doing the right thing?
By now I hope I have convinced you that, at the very least, your goals need a system for progress. And while systems on their own are good enough as they are. The moment you use a system to reach a goal, you need a little more attention.
If your goal was to lose 12 kg in twelve months, but your system was:
- Walk at a brisk pace once a week
- Drink 4 glasses of Coca-Cola instead of 5
I would be surprised if you reached your goal of losing 12 kg at all, let alone in twelve months. Your system doesn't give a sign that you will reach your goal, only that you’re making progress (or trying to).
This makes your system a perfect leading indicator. A leading indicator looks forward to future results and is to predict which actions you need to get to those results. The amount of physical movement you engage in is a leading indicator for losing weight - because more energy spent often means more calories burned.
But as the example above shows, we need a way to see if our prediction is somewhat realistic. This is where lagging indicators come in. A lagging indicator looks back to see if the results are being achieved. Losing 12 kg in 12 months means losing 1 kg in 1 month. After 1 month we can look back and see if our brisk pace made us lose 1 kg or if we need to adjust our system.
When we measure our leading indicators, we can see if we are putting in the work to make progress. When we next measure our lagging indicators, we can see if the progress is enough to make it all the way to the top.
We need systems to tell us what we should do and how we should be doing it. But we need goals or milestones to tell us if we are making the progress we want!
From one-time goals to life-changing systems
The theory is all well and good. But if you’re anything like me, you want a simple step-by-step guide on how to turn your boring old goals into fancy life-changing systems. Luckily, that’s exactly what I have for you:
Start with the end in mind
Even though systems are not meant to have an end, it is often where I start. I start by fantasizing about the future. What would my life look like when I have reached a goal. Or more importantly, what kind of person would I be when I have reached that goal.
Often, our goals are based on some ideal version of ourselves. Losing weight is based on the wish to be a more healthy person. The goal to spend more time with our kids is the wish to be a better parent. This is the start of your system. What do your goals tell you about the kind of person you wish to be?
Matching actions with the person
In Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about Identity-Based Habits. Identity-based habits are habits we associate with how we view ourselves or others. If we see someone running on a track every morning, we assume they must be an athlete.
The previous exercise gave us the person(s) we want to be. Now we decide which actions and habits we associate with this ideal version of ourselves.
We might define a “healthy person” as someone who:
- Eats three homemade meals a day
- And exercises at least once a week
To determine which actions we need to include in our system, define all the actions and habits your ideal version should have.
Now tone it down
I wish that was all there is to it. But unfortunately, we don’t get to the future just by dreaming it. We start in the present. Good systems have to be realistic. However, we don’t want it to be too realistic. Even though we’ve never done any exercise and walking at a brisk pace seems realistic, it won’t help us lose weight.
Another great takeaway from Atomic Habits is The Goldilocks Rule.
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
For our system, we want to take the habits and actions from the previous exercise and tone them down to a realistic but challenging degree. Even though our ideal self cooks three homemade meals a day, we should start by actually eating breakfast instead of skipping it!
Our system should contain actions and habits that we can do every single day without it being too easy or too hard.
Lights, camera, …
Action!
The next step is simply doing the things you put in your system. There isn’t much to this step. Do your best, try your hardest, and see where it gets you.
Don’t panic if it isn’t working though, we’re not done yet with the step-by-step guide.
If you want it, measure it
Whether you’re doing great or you’re struggling, don’t skip this step. Earlier I showed you how important it is to hold your systems against your goals. Without any check-ins and measuring, you’ll fail your system just as fast as you did your goals. I recommend doing this at least once a month, but feel free to do it more if that works for you.
Before the measuring starts, check in with yourself! How are you feeling, are you sticking to your system, wherein the Goldilocks Zone are you?
Next, check in with your goals. Are you on track to reach them? Should you be doing more? Try to set some milestones between when you started and where you want to be. This makes it a lot easier to reason about your progress.
Sharpen the saw
The final step is to bring it all around. Armed with your check-ins and measurements, we can have an honest one-on-one with our system.
At this stage, we should examine the effectiveness of our system. Often, after a month of incorporating new habits and actions into our lives, we start to get a little bored. We’re moving outside the Goldilocks Zone, and things become too easy. This is the moment to increase our effort. Take a look at your ideal habits and actions, determine the next level and add it to your system.
However, you can also feel like things are too hard. Again, we solve this by adjusting and updating our system. Maybe you can add some easy things to help with the hard things. Eating breakfast every morning might be too ambitious due to lack of time. You can try solving this by adding "prepare breakfast the night before".
Wherever you are, taking time to review your system and adjusting it to your needs is crucial. This way, you make sure it all stays at a sustainable effort that is sure to make your life a lot better!
My closing thoughts
Like I promised in my previous post I would write about my systems, but it’s a lot, I get it. It has taken me years from setting goals to actually achieving some of them. I’m still failing my own systems now and then.
My views and tactics around systems are just one of many. There are plenty of excellent resources out there that might teach you more than I can. I fully encourage you to explore and find your own way.
You can be sure that I’ll update this article or write new ones when I come to know insights!
Have a good one!