How to set a goals in one step. Pick the biggest/grandest thing you can expect to actually accomplish. Don’t try to engineer a reward dispenser, extrinsic or intrinsic. Don’t get high on motivation and then come crashing down. Just pick what you already want and expect you can do, and do it. This applies to both daily, weekly, yearly, etc. timespans.
This is basically the next best alternative to BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Rather than setting the easiest possible goal “Plug in the treadmill after breakfast” you pick one you’re sure you can do anyway “Run for five minutes in the morning”. Whatever you think you can do. Then once you can do five minutes, you’ll probably believe you can push farther.
(Disclaimer: I have recently started using this. It might not be the super be-all-end-all goal setting method.)
This is basically how I set goals, with the caveat that there aren’t that many entirely new goals for me. For example, I know I can exercise, so there isn’t really a fear of failure there, just laziness). There’ve been periods when I’ve finished a novel in months despite being in classes all day and swim team seven days a week, so I know I can write ten pages in a week–I just have to choose doing it over watching stupid videos on the Internet. I started meditating, which was an entirely new activity where I felt no confidence of success, by joining a study to provide extrinsic social motivation.
How to set a goals in one step. Pick the biggest/grandest thing you can expect to actually accomplish. Don’t try to engineer a reward dispenser, extrinsic or intrinsic. Don’t get high on motivation and then come crashing down. Just pick what you already want and expect you can do, and do it. This applies to both daily, weekly, yearly, etc. timespans.
This is basically the next best alternative to BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Rather than setting the easiest possible goal “Plug in the treadmill after breakfast” you pick one you’re sure you can do anyway “Run for five minutes in the morning”. Whatever you think you can do. Then once you can do five minutes, you’ll probably believe you can push farther.
(Disclaimer: I have recently started using this. It might not be the super be-all-end-all goal setting method.)
This is basically how I set goals, with the caveat that there aren’t that many entirely new goals for me. For example, I know I can exercise, so there isn’t really a fear of failure there, just laziness). There’ve been periods when I’ve finished a novel in months despite being in classes all day and swim team seven days a week, so I know I can write ten pages in a week–I just have to choose doing it over watching stupid videos on the Internet. I started meditating, which was an entirely new activity where I felt no confidence of success, by joining a study to provide extrinsic social motivation.