What Happens When You’re Just Checking the Boxes for Your Routines
As I tried to return to the life I had three months ago before traveling and teaching workshops in Southeast Asia, I found myself at a loss.
I felt confused, dissatisfied, and stuck.
But why? I was still doing the same set routine as before, but it literally had the opposite effect.
I was meditating, but felt unfocused. I was stretching, but felt unrelaxed. I was doing monthly challenges, but felt more unmotivated than ever.
My days were colored by sleeping at 3am, and being half awake during the day, even weeks after jetlag was over. If I wanted to get any work done, my thoughts would immediately turn to Youtube videos. I was aware enough to identify that as self-sabatoge, but couldn’t do anything other than that.
So I went on an investigative journey.
Back to the Basics:
To figure out what was different from before, I started paying more attention to how I was while going through the routines that used to give me so much joy.
Here’s what happened:
In meditation, I found myself repeatedly peeking at the timer, and looking forward to more than anything, the continuous streak graph at the end of meditation.
In stretching, I similarly found myself anticipating when the 10 minute timer would go off.
In my monthly challenge, I found myself “cheating” out of the goal that I created and finding ways to substitute lesser quality alternatives. For example, this month’s project was to record weekly videos so I can track my dance progress. But so far, I’ve only made one dance video and make up rationalizations like “I’ll do two next week to make up for this week”.
In essence, I was half-assing everything and thus, not feeling anything.
Short sighted goals = short term happiness:
On paper, it looked like I was doing everything I was suppose to do — I was reaching the stats and daily practice that I set for myself. But in reality, I wasn’t even progressing towards my workview or life ideals, I was just going through the motions.
Rather than doing the routine for its own sake, I was doing it for the sake of checking boxes.
Short sighted goals were the problem. Because of the way I set up my goals, the metrics that were suppose to guide me towards my end goal were exactly the metrics that led me astray.
Here are signs of a short sighted goal:
- Quantity over quality. For example, meditation. When my goal became “meditate for 10 minutes” every day, the original intention of practicing to be in the present became completely forgotten.
- Losing sight of long term vision. For example, stretching. I wanted to consistently stretch so I could get the splits down. But when I just go through the motions instead of pushing myself, each day is a practice opportunity that I waste.
- Unspecified end goal. For example, my monthly challenge this month was to dance three times a week and make a video. But I didn’t clearly define that the videos are to help me track my progress. Without that clarity, I was unmotivated to take videos.
Before this, I thought that as long as I hit my goal, everything would be fine. However, then I realized that when the goal is misaligned with the original intention, I am basically going nowhere.
Thus, investing time in the way you set up your goal is one of the most important things you can do.
How to set better goals:
Because if you are going to do it, might as well do it well. (And while this is a public post, it also serves as a recap of my learnings for myself as I aim to set better goals in the future).
Here are three best practices:
1. Get clear on your why.
Your “why” is the ultimate reason you’re doing a particular thing, such as pursuing a particular goal. For example, bringing back the stretching example from earlier. My “why” for doing that is so I can do the splits in my dance routine and get stronger in my foundations.
Once this is spelled out, you can see WHY me just getting in the stretching positions without putting in effort doesn’t serve my goal at all.
It’s easy to get sidetracked. Set your sight on it and don’t forget.
2. Define how success looks like.
Visualize what the perfect experience would be. For stretching, success would mean that I can effortlessly get into the splits by end of the month. And for each practice session, it would look like fully deeply sinking and pushing myself each time I practice to reach my month-end goal.
This means being more intentional with the allotted time, and viewing it as an opportunity to get better, rather than a time space that needs to be filled up.
3. Break down what the intermediary milestones are.
Now that you’ve figured out your why and what success looks like, there’s multiple milestones to get there. It’s time to reverse engineer the milestones so that it aligns with your end goal.
You can either break it down as weekly deliverables, or by each practice session. Something I’ve realized has been missing for me throughout my routines was deliberate practice — challenging myself enough so that each time I practice is a bit harder than the previous session.
After all, what feels the most fulfilling is often not the result, but the process of growth and overcoming obstacles. And thus, by upping the milestones one after another, not only does it make the journey more rewarding, but also gets you closer to the end goal as a byproduct.
Reflecting back:
This was exactly the wake-up call I needed. Sometimes when you do routines for a while, you lose sight of the initial intentions.
By taking a step back to see what was working and what was not, I was able to realize that my milestones weren’t aligned with what my end goal was, and rather than developing myself, I was running around in circles.
Since implementing the goal setting strategies a couple of days ago, I already feel more excited, focused, and in flow. I’ll most likely have an update on these changes in a month!
