Jump-Starting Your Goals. It’s Never Too Late

Not just jump-starting, but maintaining as well.

Hey, it’s the middle of June. How are those New Year’s resolutions coming?

All right, all right. I get it. Most of us were not expecting or prepared for world-wide sheltering in response to a global pandemic. A lot of our plans for the new year have been thwarted, and it’s no one’s fault.

Having recognized the problem sooner, some of you probably reassessed and adjusted your personal and professional goals for the year. I know I did. And, of course, we all set goals for ourselves that have nothing to do with new years.

We like challenging ourselves. We love setting goals.

But sometimes we need a little help or encouragement to keep the ball rolling, so to speak. That’s what this piece is really about.

And given the challenges the world has been throwing at us lately, I think we could all use a little encouragement.

So here goes.

New goals are not just for New Year’s Day

When you get right down to it, every day marks the beginning of a new year. Or, to revive a trite old saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

There is something called a growth mindset, which suggests we should strive to grow and learn something new every day. That sounds like a tall order, but not every bit of growth or learning needs to be momentous. No one expects you to learn to play the guitar in a day. But mastering a three-chord song in a week?

Why not?

If learning to play the guitar, or getting your writing habit up, or losing weight is the goal you set January 1st, great! If it’s the goal you set today, great!

There’s no sane reason why you have to wait for the New Year to roll around. Get on those goals today!

Little things mean a lot, even small changes

When we want to make significant changes, we’re tempted to start big. Sometimes it’s because we feel grand starts mean grand intentions and, dammit, we’re serious about change! Sometimes we want to see the effects of change immediately.

But many of us learn the hard way that, more often than not, sudden mega-changes tend to be doomed to failure.

Instead, start small. Want to be one of those productivity machines that begin their day at 5am, but never roll out of bed until 8?

Don’t set your alarm for 5am. Set it for 7:45 for a few days. Then 7:30 for a few days. As you get more used to those 15-minute differences one by one, you’ll train yourself toward your 5am goal. To bolster this goal, remember to go to bed 15 minutes earlier each time as well. You still need sleep. You’re just trying to get a handle on the time frame.

If you’re trying to establish a writing routine with a goal of a thousand words a day, start with 100. Do that for a week at the same time each day. Then go for 200. Then 300… and so on.

Want to cut sugar out of your diet? Start small. Start with soda. A week later, add ice cream or cookies or whatever to the list. A week after that, cut out another sugar habit. Before you know it, you’ll be more likely to have succeeded in your goal than if you had by trying to cut out sugar all at once.

Create a ritual

When my wife started working from home due to COVID-19 issues, she had a difficult time at first getting into work-mode. What had been work weekdays felt too much like work-free weekends. We agreed that her change in routine was too sudden and that we needed to find some kind of transition ritual to make easing into her workday more natural.

That’s when she started commuting to work again.

She went through her usual pre-COVID-19 morning routine, then got in the car and drove around the neighborhood for 15 minutes. Then she came home, turned on her laptop, and got to work.

That 15-minute driving ritual made all the difference.

I have a friend who wants to be a cartoonist. Being forced to stay home most of the time this year seemed like an excellent way for him to spend the time he needed to draw comics.

But he had trouble getting into it. He had read about artists who perform little rituals before starting their work to help them get into the headspace they needed for their creative endeavors. Not having a ritual, he invented one.

When he felt the urge to draw but had a hard time actually getting the pencil to paper, he would draw an “X” on the back of his right hand in ink. He had no explanation as to why. All he knew is that it worked. Since he started doing this in February, he’s drawn more than he had before his entire life. And you can visually see the improvements.

What small ritual could you start to help motivate you toward your goal?

Bribe yourself

Hit a milestone in one of your goals?

You deserve a treat.

I don’t feel like I need to get into a lot of excruciating detail about this. Self-reward is a tried and true method of positive reinforcement. Did I manage to keep a decent-looking yard all summer? I rewarded myself with a nice fish tank (and fish!),

This even works professionally. I hit my goal for 15,000 words written per week for an entire month. I rewarded myself with a Grammarly subscription.

The trick is not to give in and reward yourself before you’ve earned it. I have an advantage in having been raised Irish Catholic. We thrive on guilt, so giving myself a treat before I felt I deserved it would just haunt me and send me into a shame spiral. (We also thrive on shame, but not in a good way.)

In short… use a system of rewards to help you along with your goals. Don’t think you have to wait until the Big Goal is accomplished. Little prizes for little steps along the way work just as well, if not more so.

Could be as simple as a cup of coffee between tasks.

Get an accountabilibuddy

This is pretty simple. Some of you may already have something like this going on, but if you don’t, I recommend getting one.

An accountabilibuddy, that is. A friend or relative or, heck, a perfect stranger that you can reveal your goals to and who can check in on you now and then to see how you’re doing with said goals. I’ve heard some self-development gurus suggest adding a monetary aspect to this as, “Hey, Gina, if I don’t finish my novel by February 28th, I’ll give you a thousand dollars!”

I can’t say I’ve ever really seen that work — or have had it work for myself. All I know is Gina now has a thousand of my dollars.

Instead, I talk with Gina about my goals. She asks how I’m coming along. We talk about the goals and the process. There’s a back and forth.

An actor friend of mine in LA used to meet with a group of people who formed just to talk about and support each other’s goals. Of course, they meet on Zoom now, but my friend reports terrific results. She’s picked up more acting work — including a national ad campaign. Another member of the group had her book published, and now they’re brainstorming what to do next. Another had to put his plans to open a food truck on hold because of the pandemic. He’s using that time to refine his ideas and work on some new dishes explicitly aimed for street food fans.

So it works for a lot of people. Why not give it a shot?

Be your best friend

Hey, don’t be too rough on yourself if you’re having trouble getting traction — even with these suggestions in your back pocket. If change were easy, everyone would be doing it. If you’re having problems attaining specific goals, ask yourself why that might be.

Is something specific blocking you?

Maybe you should tackle whatever is blocking you first. You might even learn that the goal you initially sought isn’t the best one right now.

The point is, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not keeping to your original plan. Conduct a round of self-examination and then refine and retune as necessary.

People always feel so down about themselves when they don’t meet goals. Quite often, there is other stuff going on.

The real gain in striving for a goal isn’t the goal itself, but the process.

Nurture the process and the rewards — whatever they may end up being — will be worth it.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to share more with you via my Bi-Weekly Word Roundup newsletter sent to subscribers every other Sunday. It will feature news, productivity tips, life hacks, and links to top stories making the rounds on the Internet. You can unsubscribe at any time!