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When I post this blog update, it will be my third article of the "summer" (post-King's, pre-Hong Kong university period). My goal was to post five articles this summer, and so far I'm ahead of that!
For the past three years, I have been very conscious of my mindset when I create goals. The first reason for that is because I have struggled a lot in the past with perfectionist tendencies and prioritising achievement over my health. It makes me feel like I have to be careful when I start making new goals, like I'm going to fall off the wagon or something :-) The second reason is that three years ago, I read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear.
I won't try to summarise the whole book, since I haven't read it for a while. But I took a lot of notes when I read it, and there were a few really great things that I took away from it:
I don't have much to say about the first point because things just vary a lot person to person. Still, when I started making more specific, actionable, granular goals for myself, my satisfaction with my life and myself went way up. I think it was great for the people around me, as well.
For the second point, James gives a lot of great advice about designing goals. Firstly, things that you strive for should be achievable and sustainable. Some unrealistic goals that people often strive for are going to the gym six times a week when they normally never exercise, or going on extreme short-term diets that they can't maintain. Maybe they meet these targets for two weeks, but mostly, people end up giving up pretty fast and being really frustrated with themselves because of it. It's a shame because I think that making goals is something we should all be proud of ourselves for doing, but it can lead us to being deeply dissatisfied with ourselves. Instead, James argues, we should aim to "prioritise systems over goals".
Systems are the actions and methodologies we use when we strive to achieve goals. For instance, your goal might be to get a top grade on your Cryptography exam, but your system is your method of revising, how often you revise, and the way you ask for help when you don't understand something. James points out that people who succeed and people who fail often have the same goal. The difference is in the way that they cultivate their systems.
For me, this often means giving up on a concrete goal ("get top grades! Bench this much weight!") and focusing on consistency. My goals end up sounding more like: "go to the gym 3-4 times a week", or "go to total failure on every set today". I trust that by cultivating the right system, I will eventually end up benching a nice high weight anyways, and it will happen in a more healthy way.
This brings me to another point, though. Even though I might explicitly have the same goal as someone else ("go to the gym x times per week"), I also try to be realistic and sustainable about how I achieve that. I didn't start off by expecting myself to immediately to the gym four times a week. The gym was so scary to me that my first big achievement there was showing up and doing one exercise! After that exercise, I got so anxious that I hid in one of the bathroom stalls and tried to calm myself down for about ten minutes, and then I left. So then my next mini-goal was to show up the next day and do three exercises. I built my way up to a full workout, and I built that up to multiple workouts a week.
I was probably more anxious than most people when I first started at the gym. But my suspicion is that there are many people out there who set their expectations to immediately going four times a week, and then they hate themselves for not being able to do that, and then these negative emotions drive them away from going at all. If I didn't think about systems and how to build them sustainably, who knows? I probably would have felt the same way.
I'll end this with a few disclaimers. The first is that I think everyone is different, and going so into detail with your goals that you map out yearly, seasonal and weekly goals is never a one-size-fits-all approach. I will probably come back to this in a few years and realise that I have completely changed the way I try to achieve things, especially as I gain more responsibilities in my life. I also don't judge people for making goals in a certain way, because I think that it is really brave to try to achieve anything in the first place. The reason why I wrote this article is because seeing the way other people designed their goals -- James Clear, my family, my girlfriend, or anyone else -- was incredibly helpful for me figuring out my own approach. Whether you like it or you hate it, I hope that reading about my approach to making goals has provided some insight to you on the way that you want to approach yours. :-)
Email me if you think this approach is completely wrong! Or email me if you think it's great >:)