Goals or Habits?

Short answer: both.

Long answer: Habits are there to enable you to be a productive person, reduce friction and reconfirm your identity. Goals are there to help you visualize an end in sight, your progress and what you’ll need to get done to achieve your dreams.

You need both and you can combine them too!

For instance, you can help build habits by setting small goals for yourself. Essentially, you want to make achieving your habits a goal. And then later on, you can use those habits to tackle the big goals you have for yourself.

Example

I want to run a marathon. But I’ll need to build up to that. So I should make a habit of running regularly. In order to see if I am actually running regularly, I set a goal for myself to run at least 2x a week. Later I can expand my habit to, for instance, 3x or 4x a week.

When January hits and people start a New Year's Resolution, more often than not they start without a plan. Even if you’ve got all the intention to change your life for the better, it can be mentally draining to keep thinking of everything you should or could do.

Exhausting

Keeping all your to-dos, what you're going to eat, and your plans inside of your head is just insanely exhausting. It’s called your mental load. You want to reduce it by writing down everything that comes up in your mind about what you’re going to do.

Confusing

Without a proper schedule and goals that you have concretely written out for yourself, it is hard to measure the progress you're making or to know if you’re on track.

Uncontrolled

The biggest problem with not having a schedule is that there won’t be much structure to your day. If you have to use your willpower and mental energy each day to decide what to do in order to, for instance, crush your exams, not only are you draining yourself, you are also inviting your Limbic System to put up a fight or say: “Let’s do that later and now watch TV.”

You’re Missing Out on Loads of Benefits

There are a lot of benefits to schedules and setting goals that will psychologically help you further. If you’re not convinced yet, check all the positive reasons WHY you should at the end of this chapter.

1. Write Down Your Goals or Dreams

Write down the goals or dreams that you’d like to achieve. It can range from losing weight to becoming a millionaire!

The more inspiring, the better.

Underline it, mark it, frame it, make it important and visual to you.

2. Think About the Milestones

Think about the different steps / milestones that are involved in this.

For my example: I want to be able to run a 10K. I’ll have to first complete a 2K / 3K, then a 5K, and build it up to maybe 7-8K before trying to run a 10K.

3. Think About the Habits and Actions

Think about what habits and actions can bring you just a little bit closer to that goal. For my example, I should try and run regularly. To improve my fitness, I could cycle instead of taking public transport or the car whenever possible.

Also, I should probably avoid eating too much processed food or sugar, as this will crash my energy levels and slow down my goals.

4. Set Realistic Goals

Write down the realistic goals* that you want to achieve today, this week and this month.

Today

Today I want to try running. At 17:00 I will run for 15 minutes around the block. I’ll also have an apple instead of a chocolate bar today.

This Week

This week I want to run twice more and if it’s not raining I’ll cycle to work. As a challenge, I’m going to try to eat a healthy breakfast in the morning. I’ll replace CocoPops with oats and add a piece of fruit to my breakfast bowl.

This Month

By the end of this month, I will run a 3K.

Challenge

Write down your goals and a simple schedule to achieve those long-term goals. Fill in the template.

So, what are habits actually?

They’re a regular action performed as a reaction to a cue. They’re built up like this:

Cue	Something that provokes the habit: Location, Time, Emotions, Event.
Action	This is what you do.
Reward	The satisfying element that makes you want to do it again next time.

Example

You’re working and feel bored with the task at hand (cue), so you go on your phone to check social media (action) and then you get dopamine hits from your brain for the distraction (reward).

Ideally, you want to build positive habits that promote your health and save time and change the more negative ones. To start with habit building, you need to decide what your desired cue, action and reward will be. Additionally, you want to add some goal telling yourself WHY you want to build this habit.

Build Your Habit

Goal
I want to: __________________________________________

Habit
For that I will need to: _____________________________

In order to do this I need to build a consistent habit, so:

Cue
When: ______________________________________________

Action
Then I will: ________________________________________

Reward
Afterwards I get: ___________________________________

Let's Put This Into an Example

I want to (GOAL): get my work done efficiently.

For that I will need to (HABIT): avoid distractions and dopamine hits when working.

In order to do this I need to build a consistent habit, so:

When (CUE): I am bored while working on a task.

Then I will (ACTION): Stand up, stretch, take a deep breath and tell myself that

Afterwards I get (REWARD): to listen to my favourite song.

As you can see, in this example I’m not only building a habit, I’m transforming it from a negative to a positive one.

The power in habits is that once they’re built, they become an automatic process. You don’t think about consciously doing them anymore. You’ve taken away the resistance and mental effort and let your Limbic System work for you.

Habit Stacking

You can optimise this even further by habit stacking: basically, you link the end of one habit with the start of a new one. The first habit becomes the cue for the next.

After I have (HABIT 1):

---

I will (HABIT 2):

---

In Practice

After I have (HABIT 1): listened to my favourite song

I will (HABIT 2): set a timer to work for 25 minutes.

Take Control of Your Habits

We all have habits, good and bad. But successful people can change and improve their habits for the better.

Take control of your habits, don’t let them take control of you.

Challenge

Fill in the two sheet cards and try to apply these habits the next time the cue arises.