Beat the Odds -- Achieve Your 2020 Goals!

We’re two weeks into January. By now, we’ve been at our 2020 goals for at least a full week, if not more! We may even be nearing the wall of regret, thinking to ourselves “Why am I doing this!? Do I REALLLY need to do this for a whole YEAR!?!”

We’ve heard the stats on New Year’s Resolutions. We know that over 70% of people who set New Year’s resolutions give up in them within the first 30 days. We know that fewer than 8% of people who set goals for the new year truly accomplish them. But this year, we’re not going to let those statistics bring us down! Why? Well, because you’ve been reading my blog – duh!

You’ve already examined and identified the deeper values and motivations behind your goals. You’ve already learned that having goals helps produce focus, drive, and a sense of happiness and purpose! You even decided this year to pursue learning goals instead of conditional objectives – so you can’t really fail anyway!

But still… being only two weeks in to 2020, the remaining 50 weeks might be starting to feel a bit daunting. Fear not! Yes, we have a long way to go before we celebrate our accomplishments at our 2021 New Year’s party. We want to end the race with a strong finish, but we also want to ensure our health and well-being along the way. To do that, here are a few strategies you can implement today to help make sure you stay on track as well as continually check that you’re on the track you want to be on in the first place!

Let’s dive in!

Goal Success Requires Habits and Routines

Our brains are stubborn little muscles. It turns out, they LOVE routine – even if that routine is slowly killing us! Sometimes, in order to achieve our goals, we need to trick our brain into rewiring itself. One of the best ways to do this is to consciously work your goals into new habits.

Our current default mode is to not do the thing we are trying to do… that’s why we aren’t doing it! But if we can find ways to work at, or at the very least, remain mindful of our goals on a regular basis, we can begin to reroute our brain to work for us instead of against us.

A great place to start is to look at routines you already have in place and find ways to weave your goals into them. Maybe you love to watch Netflix instead of working out. One way to fix this might be to work our while you watch Netflix! This way, you’re not completely changing your habit, plus you get the added bonus of giving yourself incentive to do the things you’re already prone not to do.

According to neuroscientists, our brains store goals and habits differently. Goals require intentional decision making whereas habits rely on much more deeply embedded brain functions. To convert a goal into a habit requires commitment and consistency.

As you begin to build habits, remember to give yourself grace. Changing habits is difficult and can take a long time. Many of us might be familiar with the pop-science stat that it takes 21 days to build a new habit. However, more reliable studies have shown that it can take far longer to establish new routines and depends largely on what kinds of habits you are trying to build.

One study showed that, depending on the individual, it can actually take anywhere from 18 days to 254 days to allow a habit to reach its highest level of formation.

This data can teach us a couple things. First, it shows that change requires commitment. Many of our ingrained habits have been building within us for our entire lives – we shouldn’t expect them to change overnight. Second, it shows us that we need grace and patience to build our new habits.

The study went on to suggest that even if individuals missed a day or two in the process, their overall progress was not deeply affected. The study did suggest, however, that the beginning stages of habit building are often the most crucial. So, if you are trying to build a new habit, try to begin strong to give yourself the greatest chance at success. That being said, if you’re off to a rocky start, don’t give up! There is still plenty of time to get it together! The whole point is to just keep trying, one day, one step at a time!

Data Driven Success!

In defining your goals, you should have already put together a rough plan on how to measure them as well as how frequently. My recommendation, after you’ve found a way to weave your goals into your regular habits and routines, is to record data at multiple intervals.

When I worked in Special Education and we wanted to help students replace unproductive or damaging behaviors with positive behaviors, we would take data literally every half hour everyday for the entire year! Why did we do this? No, its not because we love torturing ourselves. We took such extensive data because then when we compiled the data it gave us a much more accurate picture of the progress students were making.

While we recorded data daily, we only compiled and analyzed data once every month, or sometimes less. The reason for this is because results are almost impossible to see when you’re in the thick of it. However, when you finally zoom out to the roof to view, or skyscraper view, or satellite view, you can see the trends much more accurately.

Now, I’m not saying you need to take data on your goals every hour or every half hour. What I am suggesting, however, is to find a way to regularly record the work you are doing towards each of your goals. One way I’ve done this is simply by working my goals into the daily journal I already keep.

Each day, I write two entries into my journal – one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning portion is more about brain dumping, affirming, and setting my intentions for the day. The evening journal is more reflective, looking back and analyzing the day’s events. So, to keep tabs on my goals, I simply add them to the evening entry. I list out each of my goals and I ask a few simple questions.

1.) Did I work on XYZ Today?

2.) If “Yes,” what did I do specifically to work on that goal today?

3.) If “No,” why not? How am I planning to work on XYZ during the remainder of the week?

WHEN will I work on XYZ during the remainder of the week?

4.) How do I feel about this goal? Is there anything I need to change about the goal itself?

Is there anything I need to change in order to make more time/ space in my life to pursue this goal?

5.) Why am I pursuing this goal? Remember, how does this goal reflect my deeper, larger values?

The reason I keep this in the journal is not to beat myself over the head. Rather, when I record progress in my journal, I keep myself accountable to actually following through on things I set out to do.

Recording goals these goals serves a second function—giving me wealth fo data to asses and analyze. This is perhaps the most vital reason to record data on your goals. If I record my success and, lets say, non-success in my journal daily, or at the very least weekly it does me no good if I never stop to look at the bigger picture.

So, take the time – I’d say at least once a month – and actually review your journal. This is where you can look at all the daily and weekly entries and get a better idea where you actually stand. You may think in the moment that you aren’t making progress. Maybe the first few weeks started off rough. Maybe you skipped a few days or weeks in between. BUT if you look at all your entries, you can actually map out your progress.

More often than not, we find that we are making more progress than we give ourselves credit for. However, in the event that we are overconfident, assuming we can give ourselves more days off because “we’ve earned them,” our data can help hold us accountable there as well.

The gist is this – record your data daily or at the very least weekly in whatever way works best for you, but review your data every month to make sure you are on track. This will help encourage you if you are on track, comfort you if you think you’ve fallen off track, or motivate you if you have, in fact, gone off track.

This also provides space to asses your goals in general. Sometimes throughout the course of a year things change and what we thought needed to be a priority doesn’t, and vice versa. Reviewing our goals regularly can allow us to maintain our internal conversations about our aspirations.

Maybe we conclude that we need to release some of our goals and habits. Maybe we realize we went through our goals far faster than we thought and its time for new ones. Or maybe we’ve had an epiphany and we need to change course all together. Regularly reviewing our goals and assessing our feelings towards them will help us continually check that we are living the life we want to live with intentionality and purpose.

By finding ways to weave goals into habits, we can rewire out brain for success. By staying consistent and patient, we can see results build over time. As we maintain a record of our success as well as our failures, we can keep regular tabs on our progress, which in turn will help us keep a healthy perspective on our ambitions!

Here’s to a new year of learning, growing, succeeding, failing, and learning all over again!