💥This Is Why Your Goals Fail

Reading time: 2 minutes

Today at a Glance:

  • Why goals fail because they're too future-focused
  • A new mindset shift that focuses on daily wins
  • The power of visualising progress

A Mindset Shift for Setting Goals

Have you seen the Instagram caption "rent is due"?

It's usually accompanied by a motivational workout video or an alarm set to an un-human time.

Something silly like 4:03am.

It’s a reminder to show up daily—no excuses. But when it comes to our goals, we often set big ambitions to achieve in the future without ever breaking them down into manageable, daily wins.

For example, last year I set a goal to lose 4kg in 12 weeks.

I fell short because it's just not tangible to focus exclusively on an outcome in the future without bringing it closer into the every day.

Two Approaches to Goal Setting

Approach #1

The most common approach with goals is to set a target for the future. But how can we visualise something that's months or even years way?

Set up like this, our brain can assess the situation as:

Not Achieved, Not Achieved, Not Achieved, Not Achieved... [3 months later] Achieved.

Without celebrating daily progress, there's no reinforcement to show up the next day, and the next day, and it becomes easier to neglect the target entirely.

What if, instead of chasing one daunting goal, you celebrated small wins every day?

Approach #2

If we break down this 12-week target into 84 individual days, we can win every single day 100% and complete 84x days of progress.

Visualised as two charts, which motivates you more?

  1. Moving forward one progress bar by 1/84th every day, or
  2. Completing 84 progress bars every day to 100%

Momentum builds motivation, and when compounded, we're more likely to stay on track to hit our longer-term goals.

Related Quote 💡

"Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time." — John C. Maxwell

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Talk soon,

Joe Gannon

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