Hi worklifers,
With the new year approaching, it is perfectly normal to take stock of your work and life goals, analyzing what went well and what could have gone better.
As James Clear beautifully puts it, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there."
This year, how about re-thinking the idea of spending less time focusing on goals and more time focusing on the systems and habits that precede the outcomes you want.
Pitfalls with goals – They present themselves as all-or-nothing
When I was six years old, my father took me to an inter-school track and field 100m race. I ran as fast as I could and got a silver medal. I was disappointed that I did not get the gold. On our way back home, riding the local train in Bombay, I remember him putting his arm around my shoulders and asking, "Do you know why you didn't win the gold"?
I looked up at him at that moment, and what followed was one of the best lessons of my life. My father went on, "It was because you looked to the side. Just around the 50m mark, you looked to the side, and this was where you lost your edge."
My father knew I was competitive, and he encouraged that trait in me from the beginning. However, he also knew that the way to enjoy and pursue one’s goals was to enjoy the process and give one's best. He understood that setting a goal can be a great motivator. However, one of the big pitfalls with goal setting, is that they can easily present themselves as all-or-nothing. It’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t see success right away, or when you don’t pursue them with the right mindset. This was part of the mistake, I had made by comparing myself to the person next to me, instead of staying in my lane and doing my best. The all-or-nothing limiting belief can keep you stuck. To understand this further, let us go back to the 100m race. Before a race, it is safe to assume that every competitor had the same goal: to win. Yet only one wins, and not the others. Does it mean the ones who lose have less desire than the one who won? This is not true. Many people with much greater desires to win have lost races. The size of a desire, in and of itself, is not the determining factor in winning and losing. So, what is? It’s what you do with your desire, and your willingness to create and pursue a system to achieve it, that makes all the difference.
What does a winning system look like? Your system for winning a race could be running 10 meters every single day. Your system for reading more might be to read at least one page before bed every night. Your system for exercising more might be to work out for at least five minutes every morning. Your system for healthy eating might be to eat at least one apple every day at lunch.
This, of course, is where size matters. The bigger your desires, the bigger the systems you will invest in creating over time. As you improve your systems, you will naturally end up with bigger results than those who also desire to achieve but lack the grit and willingness to build strategies for getting there.
A solid system that reinforces your identity and beliefs also teaches you to learn and experience delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is embracing hard work and consistency over immediate rewards. It is about having the tenacity to create a better version of yourself. While gratitude is the key to long-term happiness, delayed gratification is the key to long term success. This all brings us back to systems, which you must create if you want continued long-term success.
Reflect on your beliefs and identity: What kind of person do you want to become?
Reflecting on your beliefs and identity can start with simple questions. What is something you believe or value that is unlikely to change, no matter what? Identifying who you want to become can also help you identify your beliefs and desires. Here are some responses I hear from people I coach. They are all simple and powerful.
I desire to be a leader who coaches my team members to achieve high performance with empathy.
I desire to be a leader who is not afraid to take risks and fail fast.
I want to be a person who is not afraid to feel any emotion.
I want to be someone who is in alignment with myself. When I say something, I want to do it.
I want to be someone who always loves myself and has my own back.
I want to be someone who values my time and that of others.
I want to be kind and empathetic to myself and others.
When I went through coaching, it became clear that I have always desired to be a person who brings clarity to herself and others. I love seeking clarity when I find myself stuck and coaching others get unstuck as well. I am also becoming someone who is not afraid to feel rejected, then I am willing to take bigger risks, fail more, and pursue my true desires without the expectation of validation from others. All of these realizations came as a result of identifying the kind of person I aspired to be. Once that was clear, it was important to build a system that enabled me to cast more votes towards this and be willing to practice delayed gratification.
Create a system that supports your identity, and beliefs & cast votes
At one of our recent dinner conversations, a couple of friends were discussing our systems around intermittent fasting. There is a lot of information about the health benefits of intermittent fasting, but my point here is not as much about the health benefits as it is about how our self-beliefs were guiding our reasons, and how each one of us went about casting votes toward our systems. Casting votes is another phrase used by James Clear, and I found it to be appropriate in this context. When we take an action toward our system, no matter how small, we cast a vote in favor of our beliefs.
It was quite interesting to me that self-discipline was a core part of my friend's belief. People with self-discipline push themselves forward, stay motivated, and take action, no matter how small. They use self-motivation to cast votes towards their system. In this example, every day they maintain their fasting window is a vote in favor of their belief in self-discipline. However, what one underestimates is how this permeates throughout the day and the week to other aspects of their lives. The same person, often during the same day, ends up casting more votes for the same practice outside the context of intermittent fasting. For example, if there is a hard problem, such as putting together a strategy document for a new product, this can faze a lot of people. For the self-motivated person who has cast enough votes for their belief in their own discipline, this isn’t as intimidating. They might start by putting together a bulleted outline or creating a mind map or putting together research material in a folder to kickstart that project. To those observing them, it may appear organic, like it’s part of their personality. However, this is something they have cultivated in themselves, and their system is what enables them to effectively do so. Over time, their desire becomes a part of who they are: a person who believes in self-discipline.
To contrast with my friend, what motivates me and is core to my belief is being able to effectively manage my feelings during the day. Staying calm and not letting my emotions overpower me when a tough situation presents itself at work is important. I use simple protocols as I discussed in Humaning workday evenings to cast votes toward the practice of emotional discipline during the day. I see intermittent fasting as an extension of this practice, as it allows me to not think about food during my fasting window and avoid buffering with it. Buffering is when we choose instant gratification, using food or drink to make ourselves feel better. Fasting allows me to increase my capacity to feel negative emotions. I find myself calmer when tough situations present themselves at work and in life. Using the strategy document example above, for me the reaction would be not to let stress dictate my next steps. Instead, I can look at the deadline and task objectively and ask myself some high-quality questions, such as, “What are the expectations of the reader? What effort is required for the first draft? Who else can help me make progress?” When I take this approach, I am casting a vote toward becoming someone who practices emotional discipline and hasn’t allowed for stress to take over.
Use meaningful outcomes (goals) as checkpoints and maximize your systems to achieve bigger outcomes
You can think of meaningful outcomes as checkpoints or benchmarks you wish to achieve. If these can be stacked on top of each other it starts to create a stronger base for driving bigger outcomes as you start to maximize your system.
You can start by taking up direct goals or indirect goals that align to your beliefs and can be achieved with your system. For example, a direct goal with intermittent fasting might be to lose weight, or bring down your cholesterol or sugar levels, during a certain timeframe. An indirect might be to start a blog and post every week. Both goals will cast votes in favor of your belief which is to build self-discipline. Also, the goal does not have to be all-or-nothing. For example, if you don't quite achieve the weight loss or the sugar levels you were expecting, it can still keep you motivated as you have cast several votes on self-discipline. You have built a system you can rely on, tweak, and experiment with without having to give up the goal, as it is still meaningful to you. Moreover, you will have learned the art of delayed gratification, and you believe in its value and benefits.
Once you start seeing the benefits of your system, it is quite an organic process to both maximize and increase the capacity of your system to achieve bigger and better outcomes. I see so many people who start out walking for 10 minutes every day and ultimately go on to complete a 3K, 5K, half marathon or full marathon. Runners have a system they have cultivated and invested in. The same can be observed for hikers, cyclists, bloggers who become published authors, solopreneurs who become small business owners… The list goes on and on. They undoubtedly got to where they are with much hard work, but they have also invested in creating systems that they could rely on and those acted as vehicles to their desired outcomes.
A well-built system allows you to fall back on it, even if you don't achieve the outcomes you desire. It does not help you at that very instant (instant gratification), but the success comes from the delayed gratification it offers by making you someone who is not afraid to fail. You can be confident, because you have a system you can rise to or fall back on.
Those who achieve long term success demonstrate both courage and vulnerability to not give up on their true desires. They are also more willing to enjoy delayed gratification in pursuit of long-term success. It took me experiencing burnout to realize I didn’t enjoy chasing goals that were not rooted in my beliefs and reinforced my identity. As, I have reflected on my systems, they have single handedly contributed to the outcomes over the last year. Now I get to fill the tank, dial up my systems, maximize them, and use them as vehicles pursue bigger outcomes along the way. This is only possible because I liberated myself of the limiting belief that outcomes have to be all-or-nothing.
I wish you all the success and happiness to rise to your systems this coming year.
Maithili Vijay Dandige