Are You Building Systems or Still Just Setting Goals?
We’re five days away from 2022! Have you started thinking about your New Year resolutions yet? Or do you deem them as a waste of time and don’t bother to have any, after a track record of not achieving any of your own goals year after year? The determined you writing down “I will read 20 books this year” turning into “I have more important things to do with my time right now” within weeks or days. 🙋
And that’s the problem with goal-setting. Having a goal is motivating at first, but how long does that motivation last? What concrete measures are we taking to reach that goal? And how are we keeping ourselves accountable?
Sure, we can make our goals specific and actionable - the SMART framework that we all know about! You break down your “20 books this year” into a daily subgoal of reading 50 pages. I got this! You think setting this goal will automatically rewire your brain into adopting the habits and taking all the action required to achieve that goal. A week later, you begin slacking. The “20 books this year” goal no longer seems as meaningful and worth pursuing anymore. Why bother? You move on with your life. Another year goes by.
Well, if you want to try something different this year, it’s perhaps time to start considering building systems.
Don’t get me wrong. Goals are still good to have - they give you a direction to work towards. But systems are best for making progress. We can all have the same goals, and no matter how much time we spend thinking about them, what will ultimately makes the difference is if and how we are designing our systems.
Systems VS. Goals
Systems create a repeatable set of actions.
Goals rely on motivation
Systems replace motivation with routine
Goals are hard to follow up on
Systems are consistently rewarding, realistic and flexible
Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
Solving problems at the system level address the cause
Goals restrict your happiness - I’ll only be happy when I achieve X
Systems focus on the process - you can be satisfied anytime your system is running
Turning Goals into Systems
There are plenty of ways to designing a system. If you read my last newsletter, you would know that I’ve been practicing the Daily Active Questions. This is a great system for keeping myself focused on areas that are most important to me, and to make sure that I’m improving on them.
What are your goals for 2022? Consider rewording them into daily questions that can get integrated into your every day life.
Rather than having a list of “My goal is X” and forgetting about it after a few days, practice asking and scoring yourself on daily questions of: “Did I do my best to progress towards goal X?”
For example:
I want to read 20 books this year → Daily question: Did I do my best to learn something new?
I want to gain/lose X lbs this year → Daily question: Did I do my best to eat nourishing meals and move my body?
I want to build better relationship with my family → Daily question: Did I do my best to build positive relationship with my family?
As I’ve mentioned in my last newsletter, the most important part of the Daily Questions is consistency. But this is the beauty with creating a system that works for you - you will enjoy the process because of the continuous reward of knowing that you are making efforts on improving yourself. Knowing that you gave your 100% today is more satisfying than knowing that you’re 1% closer to an arbitrary goal you set in the beginning of the year. Daily questions, or systems in general, might seem more forgiving and flexible than goals, but they are actually more efficient in the long-term, because they focus on the process of improving thyself rather than achieving a momentary result.
And that’s all that I wanted to talk about today! Ending with this quote from James Clear:
The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
— Atomic Habits, James Clear
Favourites of the Week:
Read: Excerpt on goals VS. systems from Atomic Habits by James Clear
Watched: Why you always feel so mentally drained. from Matt d’Avella: this was hilarious hahaha. Love Matt! Decision fatigue is real, and I’ve been working on removing those unnecessary decisions that waste my cognitive energy... (cough - I’m NOT making an excuse for wearing the same things everyday 😃 nope.)
Thanks for subscribing, and enjoy the rest of your 2021! ✨
Ingrid
P.S. Talk to me (via replying to this email or IG)! What do you like? What do you dislike? What do you want to see? Please help me get better :) If you want to help even more, send your friends a link to sign up for this newsletter!
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