What Failing a Productivity Challenge Taught Me About Myself
Embracing Intrinsic Motivation for Personal Growth
Once upon a New Year, after years of trial and error, I realised that New Year’s resolutions do not work for me.
I remember a time in my life when I would religiously buy a planner at the beginning of each year. After spending New Year’s Eve reflecting on the previous year, I would sit down with my planner on New Year’s Day to set goals for the year ahead. Determined to stay organised and productive, I would wake up in the morning to plan my day — daily at first, then sporadically. In a couple of months, my resolve would fade.
The next year, I would repeat the process all over again, until one year I decided to stop setting resolutions altogether.
I still have those partly-used planners lying around, awaiting the moment I might get a spurt of productivity and start using them again.
But one day, in late December 2023, while watching a YouTube video by a productivity expert, I discovered a 30-day productivity course designed for people like me — those who have trouble sticking to goals and routines.
The course promised to teach me the science of effective goal-setting and help me build a sustainable daily routine that will skyrocket my productivity. Enticed by this promise, I signed up for the challenge.
Day 1 started with a personal commitment to stick through to the end. Easy enough.
Over the following days, I was instructed to envision my ideal life. It was only the second day and I had already started running into problems: my envisioned ideal life looked strikingly similar to my current life.
One of the activities was visualising my ideal daily routine in my dream life. So I pictured myself waking up in the same home, surrounded by my family, doing the same work, connecting with the same people, pursuing the same passions and going to sleep feeling deeply fulfilled. See the issue?
Determined to see the challenge through to its end, I carried on.
Once I had the big picture, it was time to get down to the nitty-gritties. This meant identifying my top 25 goals encompassing different areas of my life: health, relationships, career, self-development, hobbies, and more. Using these categories as guideposts, I reflected on what I wanted: better health, more creativity, and personal growth.
I chuckled as I looked at my journal. Instead of the 25 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound) goals I had intended to set, I only had a few vague ones.
I continued working on the list until I finally managed to come up with 17 SMART goals. It didn’t matter that I was short of 8 goals because ultimately, I narrowed it down to my top 5 goals for 2024.
The next daunting task was to break down my yearly goals into quarterly, weekly, and daily goals. At this point, I began to lose interest in the endeavour. I started skipping a few days here and there and by day 16, I had lost all motivation and completely abandoned the challenge.
So what went wrong? Was the challenge poorly designed?
Not in the least. It was exceptionally well-designed. As a behavioural psychology enthusiast, I knew that the science of habit formation and productivity backed all the activities.
Why did I give up midway, then?
Here’s the truth: I gave up because I don’t give a damn about productivity and goal setting.
Despite my indifference, I persisted for so long because I was swayed by the hustle culture’s insistence on relentless productivity as the key to success and fulfilment.
So, am I unambitious? Complacent? Don’t I care about personal growth?
Quite the opposite. I am deeply invested in personal development and find immense satisfaction in reflecting on my progress.
However, I’ve realised that relying on an extrinsic goal and reward system rarely works for me. Rather than motivating me, it undermines my interest in a particular task.
For me, motivation has always been intrinsic. I am driven by passion, and doing something for the love of it has always been an end in itself.
I read voraciously because I enjoy indulging in literature. I write enthusiastically because creative self-expression is important for me. I learn new things every day because I have an insatiable curiosity, and I do my job diligently because I find my work deeply fulfilling.
In a previous story, I have explored how pursuing my passions led me to a teaching career — a path that proved much more fulfilling than anything I could have planned for myself.
I realise that my experience with a goal and reward system may not apply to everyone. While I personally struggle with externally motivated goal-setting methods, many people find conventional productivity techniques effective for increasing efficiency and reducing work time.
One might argue that if I set clear goals and followed through, I could achieve so much more. Fair enough.
But what if my values don’t align with the pursuit of ‘more’?
I believe there’s much more to life than the relentless pursuit of goals that society deems important. I do not subscribe to conventional notions of achievement and success, nor do I want to climb the social ladder.
I am much more concerned with cultivating my inner world and living a deeper, more meaningful life — one that cannot be quantified or reduced to quarterly and weekly milestones. I want to live life on my own terms — a life that’s not tied to any external notion of productivity and success.
What truly matters to me is how intentionally I live and how fulfilled I feel with my actions and choices.
I find great satisfaction in contributing to the world through my work, savouring life’s small pleasures, and simply allowing myself to be — whether by indulging in and creating art, connecting with others authentically, or simply letting my imagination run wild in a daydream.
I have no desire to sacrifice these intrinsically rewarding activities in pursuit of goals that do not align with my values.
At the end of the day, I am deeply content with the life I am living. I continue to grow and achieve what is truly important to me, without needing to relentlessly “hustle.”
So, here’s to living intentionally, savouring the small moments, and growing in alignment with one’s true self. This is my definition of success, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
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