1. Be specific and keep a log.
The process to achieve your goal will be more successful when it is measurable. This is likely obvious to you and yet it’s worth reiterating.
Let's say you want to ride your bike more often to achieve a healthier lifestyle. Decide how many minutes you want to devote to the activity each day or week. Perhaps you will opt to ride four days a week for 40 minutes. Post a blank log in your kitchen with the specific target numbers for the week. When you complete a ride, record the time spent next to the target number. Just knowing your targets and how close you’ve come to achieving them can motivate you. And even if you don’t hit the target, you’re still doing something, which is better than nothing.
2. Get it on your calendar.
People who plan to engage in an activity at a pre-determined time are twice as likely to engage in it. Someone who wants to spend 30 minutes each day de-cluttering will have much greater success when they schedule the activity. Why? The research shows that once an activity is scheduled, you can re-direct your attention to other matters and your mind doesn’t have to think about the activity. Otherwise, you have just one more thing to negotiate and you end up dropping the ball to reduce your mental workload.
Caveat: This strategy works when the activity is something you want to do. If you want to avoid the activity like the plague, adding it to your schedule will not lead to greater success.
3. Design "if, then" strategies (micro plans).
If you’re concerned about succumbing to pressure in specific situations, create a micro plan. Someone attending a wedding who wants to eat healthily might decide, “If I am offered a dessert, then I will decline and take two bites from my partner’s plate instead.” Other examples include, “If it rains on Tuesday morning, then I will go on my run that evening at 6 pm instead.” “If the community meeting runs late, then I will excuse myself at 8 pm to go home and read to my kids at their bedtime.”
4. Flex your self-regulation muscle wisely.
It may surprise you to learn that we have a limited supply of self-regulation. Once we use it up during a stressful day, we are prone to slipping into unhealthy behaviors later when we feel weak and tired. Be aware of the number of activities each day that require you to use mental and emotional restraint and don’t overtax yourself. Reserve some energy for an area of your life in which you have set a goal.
In addition, we can build our self-regulation muscle through small exercises. Try washing your cereal bowl rather than leaving it in the sink each day as a way to learn self-regulation. After that easy success, you may find that you have greater mental muscle to do sit-ups each evening before bedtime. Success with sit-ups will lead to more significant successes in other areas.
Real Life Example
My boyfriend and I are training for a big bike ride in late July, taking us 450 miles across Iowa. We both are busy people and live in different suburbs, so coordinating bike training rides is critical to ensure that they actually take place. We have a 15-week plan that we pulled off the Internet, with four distance-specific rides each week. The plan is posted on the kitchen bulletin board with blank spaces where we record our actual mileage after each ride. On Sundays we discuss our schedules and how we can fit in the four rides. We each then add those activities to our calendars. In a particular week, we know that if it’s raining on Tuesday or Thursday, we can sneak in a ride after my daughter’s soccer game on Wednesday or before dinner on Friday. So far, out of 28 rides, we have only missed four. They were rides during weeks when we didn’t sit down to schedule out the week!
Try these strategies for a goal that has been sitting on the back burner or for which you’ve lost focus. Get a blank piece of paper, draw some horizontal and vertical lines, add a few dates, and voila you have a log! I’d say that’s a good start.
You can decide the next move.
Note: See books by Heidi Grant Halvorson for a review of research and findings in the area of motivation and success.
