My state of the art system to goal setting
I have yet to meet a person who was perfectly content with exactly who they were. Everyone is always trying to change something about…
I have yet to meet a person who was perfectly content with exactly who they were. Everyone is always trying to change something about themselves. The typical things includes the food they eat, the amount of exercise they get, how they spend their time and how they prioritize their lives. Turns out, change is harder than reading a blog online.
People are also creatures of habit. We all have our morning routines, our night routines, our commute to work routine and the web sites we visit on our lunch break routine. In fact, when we are put in new environments where executing our routines is hard, we generally tend to skip workouts and eat fried chicken for dinner.
I am going to share with you an approach that I use to form better habits. It is not fool proof. It does require some upfront investment. However, I believe it could work for almost any habit you are trying to form as long as you apply enough creativity. The system is very simple to apply. All you have to do is create a system. Yes, you read that right, the system is to create systems. Let me explain.
When I say “system”, I’m talking about a set of rules, or guidelines you use to guide your choices. The side effect of those rules should be that you execute your desired habit. Think of these rules as formalizing a contract with yourself. The contract has at least one rule: I can have as much [A] as I want. However, before I get [A], I must do [B]. This is what I call a personal contract.
The inspiration came from Dr. BJ Fogg, a researcher in behaviour design who had a great TED talk a few years back about this exact topic.
If you use an existing behaviour in your life, and you put the new, tiny behaviour after it, you can use the existing behaviour to be the trigger.
Nonetheless, over time, I noticed that simply defining the contract wasn’t always enough. Frequently, I couldn’t uphold the contract for long or I would completely forget about it. In fact, it was really a hit or miss — occasionally it would work really well but periodically it would completely fall apart.
More recently, I took a look at some personal contracts I was able to maintain for a long stretch and tried to boil it down to what made them different. I have identified four hallmarks of a good personal contract.
Automatic. If you can set this up for your desired habit, your job is practically done. For example, before I spend any money, I max out my 401k. I can automate this through my paycheque contributions. Done!
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to automate certain areas of your life. Exercising effectively requires you to be doing exercise. Calling your mom once a week requires you to talk (at least for now).
However, there’s a clear subset of bad habits that can be automated away. Anything digital will naturally fall here. Do you have bad browsing behaviour? Are you spending too much time on your Twitter/Facebook/YouTube ? There’s an app for that. Are you having trouble saving or budgeting? There’s a bank for that.
The advantage of automating bad habits away is you only have that upfront cost once but you reap the dividends indefinitely.
Breaks down barriers. One habit that I recently found to be absolutely effortless is the habit of eating a healthy lunch. In the past, I’ve tried cooking at home or buying out healthy lunches but inevitably you skip cooking for a few nights and end up ordering a large barbacoa burrito at Chipotle. You do it enough times and getting back to cooking regularly becomes more and more unlikely.
How many barriers can you identify with my past system? First, cooking at home is a pain in the ass. Second, when buying food outside, there are far too many temptations. Third, even if I manage to convince myself to buy a salad, in the back of my mind I’m always thinking it’s a bad a deal because I’ll stay hungry after that salad.
Here is my new approach: my current employer provides catered lunches every day. I made a personal contract with myself to eat a giant bowl of salad from the salad bar first. Once I’m finished with the bowl, I can have absolutely anything I want. There are no limits. This contract addresses all barriers I’ve had for eating a healthy lunch. I don’t have to cook anything; I am not tempted by anything else since choices are limited; and I am not getting a bad deal because I can have anything I want afterwards. I just need to get through that bowl of salad first. As an added bonus, there’s very little I can eat once I’m done with the salad. I tend to be much more ambitious when hungry.
In general, try and identify all the little excuses you are giving yourself to stop doing what you really want to be doing. Once identified, try to design your life in a way that will break down those excuses in the most effortless way possible.
Other barriers usually include, distance, accessibility and ease of use. Watch out for these.
Sets the correct incentive. You know how we said before you get [A] you must do [B]? Make sure that whatever [A] is, it is motivating enough to act as a trigger. If you remember reading my commitments for 2018, you’ll recall that one of my commitments was to drink two cups of coffee a day. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that as time goes on, I am creeping back to three cups. Each time I have it, I feel a little guilty but I reason that starting tomorrow I’ll be better. Instead of feeling guilt, I can turn this around and use it to my advantage.
I am a member of a gym located in the same building where I work. I am making the following personal contract: each time I feel like having a third cup of coffee, I must first hit the gym. The barriers to work out are exceedingly low and now I also have a great incentive to do the right thing (the fact that I made it public is a bonus).
You can generalize this approach as well. Essentially, you sacrifice one minor bad habit to enforce and carry out a major good habit by setting up the right incentives for yourself.
Consistent with the individual. Sometimes, despite all the automation, best intentions, lowest barriers, and most enticing incentives, you still fail at your habit building; and that’s okay.
Coming up with these systems is an iterative process. You will always be tinkering with them. Always trying something new. Always looking for a better way of doing things. You’ll never get it just right the very first time.
The key is to keep trying new ways of doing things and experimenting with what works for you. For example, a cup of coffee might be enough to motivate me to go to the gym. You might want a new pair of sneakers instead. If that’s your barrier, don’t bother with my system. It won’t work for you.
When I come up with great systems that work for me, I am always very proud and happy to share — just wait until I write my post about budgeting.
Let me know if you have a system you are particularly proud of. I am always looking to tweak mine and share with others.