Turn Goals Into Habits

 Sounds easy, right? Have a dream, set a goal, smash it. 

Hardly ever works out that way, does it? You get as far as setting a goal, and then you trip. Your goal of getting in shape falls to quarantine couch potato-itis. Your goal of going on holiday fell to bad shopping habits. Your goal of learning to play guitar went down in flames against the temptation of a series of Netflix binge sessions. 

How do you avoid the trap? 

Break it down. The goal is too big to take on all at once. If you decide your goal is to run a marathon once we're all safe and vaccinated, you need to get off the couch first. If you just pop up and go for a 10K jog, that'll be the end of your journey because tomorrow you will hurt so much you'll convince yourself it's not worthwhile. 

Aim for getting where you want to go without blowing your motivation (or your knees!). The best approach? Small steps. 

Instead of that exhausting 10k run, try a ten minute walk. 

Pick a time for that walk, and schedule it every day, or as many times a week as you can. It takes 21 days to build a habit, so that's our first step. You can take a walk every day for three weeks, right.? It doesn't have to be at the same time, or follow the same route, or even take ten minutes. If you've only got five minutes, put your shoes on and go. All you want to do at this stage is tick the proverbial box. 

Now that you're three weeks in, you've started to think of yourself as "Someone Who Exercises." It suits you. You're ready for the next step. Maybe you switch to a specific distance to walk- 5k could work. Or you could pick up the pace. Start turning that 10 minute walk into a ten minute jog. Run for at least some of the time. Even if you can only jog very slowly for a single minute, you're still running! That's a win. Take it! 

Get used to that small amount of running. Don't look too hard, or you might scare yourself: Dude, you're a runner! 

Keep upgrading what you're doing slowly. Before you know it, you're regularly running 5 or 10k at a crack and looking forward to it! 

This approach works for anything. I decided back in April that I wanted to learn how to make a quilt using a Japanese embroidery technique known as Sashiko. Did I sit down and attempt to do the whole thing in a weekend? Nope. I've been stitching away in chunks for months. I started out with fifteen minutes at a time, and now I do what I have time for. Which is to say, if I'm watching television, I'm stitching. TV is a horrible time suck if you sit passively and let it wash over you. 

So I work on it every day for ten or fifteen minutes if I'm not watching TV. If I am, well, that's an hour right there. I'm getting through a little bit at a time, and I've done one better than getting it done: I created a habit that will stick with me for the next project. I am a sewist, and that is established as a part of my identity. (As you can see, "photographer" is not part of my identity! Sorry!)

What do you want your identity to be?