Habits Vs. Goals? Try Habits + Goals!
Amplify your development by focusing on habits and goals
I have always been a fan of goals. Heck, my first article on Medium almost 3 years ago was about setting effective goals across the whole company.
The concept is great: Figure out something you want to get better at or do more of. Work towards it. Smash it. Be happy.
In theory that sounds easy. But in practice we usually get stuck. And most of the time it is about doing the hard yards. Putting the work in to make our goal a reality.
We have all been in this situation: We are super hyped-up and motivated at the start of the year (or quarter, or week). We think ‘I really want to achieve this’ (whatever it is). We kick things off and put a little bit of work in right away. Only for the focus to slowly drift to the back of our mind — or to completely forget about it.
Three months later we review our goals and are ashamed that we have not managed to achieve them. And we are sad. Quite the opposite of what we wanted to feel like.
But there has to be a way to do this right. Surely.
Habits
Lucky there was an article in my inbox about goals recently. However, it was not in favour of them, but advocating to focus on habits instead.
By switching our focus from achieving specific goals to creating positive long-term habits, we can make continuous improvement a way of life. This is evident from the documented habits of many successful people.
The advice is to create habits instead of focus on goals.
Interesting.
And it is true. Once you start getting into a habit, it is quite easy to stick with it. Think about establishing a routine for the gym. Or brushing your teeth. Or driving the car. Because a habit is
something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it
– Cambridge Dictionary
Habits + Goals
Habits are a great way to get stuff done. To move along on the path you’ve set out on.
But Goals play an important part as well — they help decide on the direction we want to take. If we would acquire lots of habits without goals, they might as well be random.
Based on this, I have come up with an approach that I’m using more and more lately. One could even say I made it one of my habits… get it? The idea is to use Habits +Goals as an unbeatable tag-team.
Decide what you care about by setting goals, then get there by developing habits.
Here is how it works in practice.
It is the season of goal setting again at Redbubble. And as every quarter, I work through with a handful of people what their goals could be — and how to make them a reality. Whether it is about learning how to become better at Ruby or expanding their communication skills.
One of my colleagues identified that Giving & Receiving Feedback is something they would like to improve on (don’t we all). Excellent Goal!
To get there, we figured out a habit-forming process:
- Spend 5 minutes at the end of each day reflecting on feedback opportunities
- Take notes about the feedback given and potential opportunities
- Review with me every other week to identify patterns
The intent is quite simple. We introduce some process to form a habit — in this case, to think about feedback opportunities. The aim is to create a pattern that the brain can follow without us having to invest a lot of energy.
The process will go away after a while, the habits will stay. Job Done!
Recap
Goals are great. Habits are great.
Put them both together and you are maximising your chances of achieving the goal you set out to do.
Decide what you care about by setting goals, then get there by developing habits.
