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Please take a moment and reflect about the goals you set for yourself for 2020, both personally and professionally. What were they? What went well? What went poorly? Although the most important question to reflect on is: What was learned?
Personally, I had three goals for 2020.
1) Break the world record for push-ups in 1 hour (currently 2,806) | not successful, reached ~2,000 pushups
2) Read at least two books a month | successful, finished 52 books so far in 2020
3) Call my parents once a week | not successful, missed 4 weeks
As the year comes to a close, I have paired my reflections with what I have learned from my readings this year in order understand why some goals succeeded whereas others failed. I have concluded that goals need the three P's: appropriate Psyche, Prioritization, and Plan in that order. Let's expand on these.
Psyche
Success starts with the psyche, sometimes referred to others as the mindset or attitude. Angela Duckworth looks at "grit", which is an individual's willingness to stick with their overarching goals. A person with a large amount of grit will possess an attitude where quitting is not an option. Carol Dweck distinguishes between a "growth mindset" and a "fixed mindset". The former believes that talents, skills, and minds and are changeable and can improve over time. The latter believes that these metrics cannot be changed.
Combining Duckworth and Dweck's philosophies, if we start with a low amount of grit, and believe we cannot change our level of grit, we have low grit and a fixed mindset. Alternatively, if we start with low grit, but believe we can change, we will have a growth mindset. Our highest chances of succeeding come when we have both a high amount of grit and a growth mindset. If we are able to change our psyche to these trains of thoughts, we will be determined to fight through challenges and able to learn as we go through them as well.
Looking at my 2020 goal to break the world record for pushups in one hour, I certainly had a growth mindset, because I believed (and still do) that I could break the record, however, I did not have enough grit, because I stopped training after seven months into 2020. I started making excuses that my muscles were sore or that my training was taking too much time - typically multiple hours a day for 4 days a week. Although I did not break the record last year, I will try for another pushup record, clapping pushups in 1 minute (90), this year. My goal is to have the grit to want to train the entire year, and beyond, until I break the record. My Psyche: I believe that I can continuously improve and will work to make sure that I do continuously improve.
Prioritization
A common story, apologies that I am unaware of the author, goes as follows: An individual places a few large stones into a vase up until the brim, and asks the audience, "Is the vase full?" *Murmurs of some yes and some no* The individual then proceeds to add gravel to the vase up until the brim, and asks the audience, "Is the vase full?". The same is repeated for sand, and ultimately, with water. The key takeaway is, if water, sand, and gravel were added to the vase first, there would be no space for the stones. In life, we need to choose our stones first, or a few high priority goals.
In previous years, I may have had 5-10 goals for myself at one time. Through trial and error, I have found that I can parallel process 3-6 goals at once. If I have more 6 concurrent goals, they will all start to fall apart as I will lose my focus. I am certain that some people may be more capable of parallel processing goals and some people will need to be more focused. We can start by selecting a low number of high priority stones and adding additional goals one at a time to see how many we can work towards concurrently.
Plan
Our third P is planning. In Atomic Habits, James Clear distinguishes between a goal and a system. A goal is our final objective, but the system is our plan for making the goal come to fruition. He mentions that the system needs to include concrete steps to make sure we are working towards the goal. Our plan needs to be specific by explicitly mention time and location. For example, if our goal is to exercise three times a week, the plan needs to be, I will exercise at the park, every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7am. To increase the chances of accomplishing our goal, the time and location need to be engineered in a low friction manner. Building on the existing example, if the park is far away from our home or next destination, choosing an alternate location that is on the way would have reduced friction. Or if we do not normally wake up before 7am, then moving the exercise time to a later time would be lower friction.
This year, I had a goal of calling my parents once a week, but failed because it was not planned specifically enough. James Clear mentions 'Habit Stacking' as one system to work towards a regular goal. Habit stacking is pairing a new desired habit (e.g., calling my parents weekly) with an existing habit (e.g., after brushing teeth on Monday mornings). To increase the likelihood of success, I will habit stack in a specific and low friction manner.
Conclusion
These are my three P's to succeeding in New Year's resolutions or any personal goals that I have found through reflecting on what works and what does not work year over year. I encourage to jump into 2021 with the a high grit growth mindset Psyche, stone selecting Prioritization, and specific low friction Plan for your goals. As we conduct our plan, we should reflect on our progress at least quarterly to see what has been working, what needs to be changed or be more specific, and most importantly - what we learned. Over time, we will continue to evolve and improve from our goals.
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to read, share, and provide feedback to my writing journey this year. My next post will be released on January 7th, 2021, 8am Bangkok Time. As a teaser, in the coming days, I will also be launching my podcast, "Morale Mindset", where we will discuss tactical approaches to understand morale in order to improve our interpersonal relationships.
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