Want to Achieve Your Goal? Focus on Systems
Words to Live By Series – a series where we unpack our favourite quotes.
We are big fans of James Clear here at The Vocationist. His emphasis on practicality and action equips readers to achieve their desired goals.
We love his message that what we achieve is not a function of our highest desires but the result of our routine actions and environment.
These are words to live by because they…
…Establish the importance of the present
· Systems are your current, interconnected reality and habits.
· Goals represent a specific outcome you want to achieve in the future.
If you are overly focused on the future outcome, and compromising present physical and emotional enjoyment, there is a risk that your goals will not be achievable or sustainable.
Pursuing your goal through habits that make you miserable – like gruelling exercise or working overtime – is not sustainable. You are more likely to abandon overly-strict habits or revert to old behaviours once your goal is achieved. Reaching a future state of happiness should not require that you sacrifice your present quality of life.
Expecting a goal to make you sublimely happy can result in feeling underwhelmed when a goal is achieved. Meeting a target is fantastic, but it is one moment in time, one milestone along a path that keeps moving forward. If you are sacrificing your present well-being or relationships in pursuit of a single goal, ease up.
While small daily improvements may not yield fast results, they allow you to progress toward your goal in a way that can be maintained in the long term. Instead of pushing yourself to your limit, think of ways you can make it easier for yourself to make good choices daily. Identify the patterns and environmental factors that boost your performance, and repeat those systematically.
Integrating goals into a system that helps you slowly and steadily improve your day-to-day life will allow for enjoyment in chasing, achieving and celebrating a goal. Having a present-focused perspective will also help you keep an eye on opportunities to keep growing even after an initial goal is reached.
…Identify the factors that threaten or enable your goal
A system is a series of inter-related parts working toward a single purpose. Taking a systems approach to a goal requires identifying the various components of your life that relate to this goal. Identifying the parts of a system requires naming the chain of events and tasks needed to fulfill a purpose. Look beyond the surface what and where, instead focus the how and why of a situation.
If your goal relates to nutrition, then you might take a look at your ‘system’ for nourishing yourself.
· How do you plan, purchase and prepare your meals?
· How does your current food situation make you feel in terms of energy, digestion, mental alertness?
· How much money are you currently spending on food?
· How can you avoid some common and repeated challenges that tempt you away from your nutrition goals?
You may realize that…
o you need to pack snacks as well as a lunch to avoid being starving by the end of the work-day and being ‘hangry’ throughout your commute.
o it is not realistic to cook every night after work, so you want to make some freezer or batch meals on the weekend;
o your knowledge of healthy meals and portions is limited, so you prefer to invest in a meal prep or delivery service;
o eating certain foods makes you feel lethargic, so you want to cut them out for 4 weeks.
Incorporate these realizations as habits in a system that moves you closer to your goal. You will also need to acknowledge the situations that trigger behaviours and actions that move you away from your goal.
A system aligns various components of your life toward your purpose, creating lots of small reasons to celebrate daily instead of delaying all happiness until the final goal is achieved.
…Take it one step at a time
Systems thinking can feel overwhelming because systems are complex. Please do not feel you need to change your entire life over night. Just think of small steps – or habits – you can adopt to help the system run smoother. If there is a common glitch in the system, or a bad habit that is counterproductive to your goal, identify solutions to avoid bad habits and instil some good ones.
Here are some common system adjustments you can adopt one at a time, based on the area you think will make the biggest difference.
START SMALL: Make small changes gradually. If you want to become a morning person, wake up 15 minutes earlier one week, then 15 minutes earlier the next, and so on. Trying to go immediately from a 9am wake-up to a 6am wake-up may be harder to sustain.
ADD-ON: If there is a skill or new activity you want to develop, think about when you can best free up time to commit to small but consistent action.
REDUCE: What existing bad habits are in place that you could remove? The 15 minutes you spend on Instagram at the end of the night – could those be reallocated to laying out your exercise clothes for the next morning?
RESCHEDULE OR RELOCATE: Maybe a habit you are trying to achieve in the morning would be better done mid-day or in the evening. Maybe your yoga practice is more likely to grow if you commit to class in a studio nearby. Experiment with different scheduling options and locales to find what fosters consistency.
REMOVE: If there is a tangible or environmental temptation that directly threatens your goal, get rid of it. Examples include but are not limited to using social media while at work, junk food in your pantry, emotional vampires, TV / cell phone in your bedroom, late nights, gossiping with co-workers, a subscription you don’t use. Make it easy on your willpower by removing the temptation and waste from your environment, calendar or credit card bill.
…Track the system components and results
Writing down your actions and how they affect your performance / mindset / wellness will provide insights on the efficacy of your systems. When you link your actions to outcomes, you can decide what is working for you or what is sabotaging you.
Sometimes measuring progress toward a goal is very straightforward. In your quest to bench press 200 pounds, you might realize your personal best lift does not change on weeks when you do 200 crunches. But after two weeks of accessory work on shoulders, chest and triceps, you are posting higher bench-press numbers, so you scrap crunches and focus the actions that contribute to your desired results.
Other times, you may not know where to begin in assessing and . Tracking various components related to the goal area can help you take a systems view and see how different factors intertwine.
If your goal is exercise in the morning, you may want to track the following variables: Planning workout in advance, laying out exercise clothes the previous night, bedtime the previous night, wake up time, workout type, workout duration, level of energy during the workout, how you feel after the workout, post-workout nutrition, energy throughout the day. By tracking all of these variables, you can see clear paths to success (planning ahead + early bed time = high likelihood of success) or potential pitfalls (not eating breakfast after the morning workout leads to low energy and fatigue). Tracking individual components of your system for achieving the goal - and following through with what works - will help you progress faster.
How to track your goals? Without going too in depth, there are a variety of planners, journaling techniques and apps that allow you to track you habits. Depending on whether your goal is focused on your career, health, fitness or relationships, you may want to do some research to find out what works best. You may find a sheet of graph paper or a home-made excel chart works best as an affordable and flexible tool for tracking your system as it evolves over time. Check out our additional suggestions at the end of the article.
…Celebrate progress not perfection
Tracking your daily actions – and their outcomes in relation to your goal – allows you to see the progress you are achieving each day. You will take pride in the times when you get back on track after some off-days. Long before your long-term goal is achieved, you will be able to celebrate your consistent effort and commitment.
Not to get too existentialist here, but the present moment is all we have for sure. We are not defined by our goals, but by the routines and habits of our daily lives. No matter how compelling and important, goals are hard to achieve without systems that structure our present lives toward our goal.
If you can gain clarity on how to make it easier every day to feel good and progress toward your goals, that is truly awesome. We are not seeking perfection, but better quality of life, confidence and opportunity here and now. When you focus on building a system of compounding positive habits, and your tracking allows you to emphasize the most effective habits and see improvements over time, then you can adopt a mentality where you are able to enjoy your progress – right here and now – and feel peace and optimism about your future.
All Systems Go!
If you want to achieve a big goal, you should go for it. But focusing on the far-off and glorious moment of achievement is not enough to get you there. Identifying practices which you can incorporate every day – and removing the barriers to achieving those actions – is the system that will help you achieve your goal and continued growth.
Tracking Apps & Tools
A home-made calendar, spread-sheet or chart is free and can be easily customized to your specific situation and updated as your tactics evolve.
But in case you are curious, here are some tools to help you create, track and evolve systems for achieving your goals:
Check out this fantastic overview from our man James Clear on habit tracking… or his Clear Habits Journal.
Consider a bullet journal for a fully customizable method of tracking your habits
Habit and goal tracking planners / daily journals – do some research to see which would work best for you and your goals
Chalene Johnson’s PUSH Goal Planners
Emily Hayden’s Daily Evolve Journal
CGD London Planners & Diaries
Erin Condren LifePlanner
Habit tracking apps:
Social – if you’ll be motivated by having friends join you Flora – Focus Habit Tracker
Solo – if you want a streamlined approach to habit tracking Habit Tracke.r
Nutrition & Fitness Tracking
My Fitness Pal is the go-to for athletes and folks looking to track their caloric intake – you can also track fitness and exercise activities
Nike Training Club features tracking for distance sports as well as workout programming
Strava is excellent for runners and cyclists
Professional Goal Setting
You may have to create a custom Excel sheet specific to your job with the growth areas and targets you want to achieve. Think about your long-term goal and the necessary weekly and monthly actions necessary to get here. Involve your boss or colleagues, if appropriate and motivating for you.
