Your goals are useless without this

Last week, we covered the basics: what habits are (automatic actions that save time and energy), how they work (cue, action, reward), and why your brain stubbornly clings to the ones that make your life worse (they’re easy and feel good/better than the alternative). Today, we’re tackling Goals vs Habits (and how most people get this backwards).

Pre August of 2020, I lived my life on autopilot. I took no deliberate action to shape my future and I simply let life unfold in front of me because back then, for some weird reason, there was this huge disconnect between me from the past, current me, and future me. Or, to be more specific, I thought of “the future” as an abstract concept that is eternally pushed by the present, therefore never actually becoming now, and (as painfully obvious as it is) I never realized that there is a strict correlation between what we do in the present that could either set our future selves up for success, flat out failure or make things extremely difficult. Moreover, to fail to see yourself as a fundamental member of the community of selves across time that lives in your head, consisting of the people you’ve been, who you are now, and who you will become -thinking of yourself as an island, suspended in time- is what doesn’t allow you to see past your nose. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s a lengthy topic for another time. What I’m trying to say is that pre-August of 2020 I confused daydreaming with goals by keeping them alive in this abstract future while taking zero actions in the present, and if there’s one way to make sure you don’t achieve your goals, keeping them in an abstract, vague, and distant future devoid of action, is the way to go.

Pop Quiz:

Whatever your definition of success, what do successful people have in common with the unsuccessful?

a) Goals
b) Goals
c) Goals
d) All of the above

If you chose a, b, or c, pat yourself on the back. But if you chose d, pat yourself on the back three times as hard because you’re three times right!

Everyone has goals, but only a handful achieve them. Why?

Habits vs. Goals: Stop Focusing on the Wrong Thing

Most people obsess over their goals, putting their vision board on a pedestal, glancing at it every day for inspiration, daydreaming about their “one day, I will finally…”, only enough to pick themselves up from feeling down and get back to their regular, anti-lever moving lives, all the while ignoring the systems (aka habits) that would get them closer to achieving those goals.

Being vague is costing you a lot

If you have vague goals, you have lame goals. Vague goals are easy. It’s to only think of the sexy outcome and to completely disregard the unsexy process that gets you there.

E.g. “Get in shape.”

On the other hand, to be specific with your goals is to purchase a one-way ticket to dread land, which is why most people turn the other way. It’s too uncomfortable. It forces you to look at the fact that your current self is wildly different from the person you must become in order to achieve your goals. It also forces you to come up with a crystal clear plan, and that takes lots of thinking, time, and hard work. Alas, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.

E.g. "I will lose 10 pounds and increase my strength to do 20 push-ups in a row within the next 12 weeks by exercising 4 times a week and following a balanced diet."

If the level of specificity above makes you uncomfortable, good. It’s supposed to. Being this specific challenges you because it has the process baked into its DNA. Being vague only feels good because it only shows you the outcome.

In a nutshell, being vague breeds a lack of clarity. Lacking clarity leads to feeling overwhelmed and anxious, and that leads to inaction. And inaction is a slow death of the soul. Before you know it, your life’s passed you by, and all because you didn’t have the courage to be uncomfortably specific with what you want out of life. So, a reminder to myself: don’t frog-boil yourself.

Dreams vs Goals

See the difference? I’m simplifying, I know. There is so so much more to this, which I can cover if you’d like (just let me know by replying to this email!), but the point I’m trying to make is this: the people who actually achieve their goals are the ones who are willing to go through the uncomfortable, hard work of being vividly detailed and specific about what they want. Then, based on that crystal clear vision, they build a system of habits that make success inevitable, prioritizing consistency over perfectionism.

Alrighty, that’s a wrap for today. This was freakishly challenging to write, but I hope you got something useful out of it.

P.S. This week give it a go. Take those New Year’s Resolutions and get crystal clear on what “getting in shape” -or whatever your goal was- actually means, then reword your goal based on that clarity into something crazy specific (stop being vague!), then think of at least one habit that would make that goal a reality by being consistent with it.

See you next week for part 3.