Make your goals happen

In this slightly longer episode, Laura shares tips for setting goals in a way that leads to success

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one, but
rather than interviewing someone else as I do usually once
a week, I am going to be talking about goals

(00:25):
and how to set them and how to structure their
pursuit so they actually happen. I know a lot of
people set goals around this time of year, often framed
as New Year's resolutions. There is something about the fresh
start energy of a new year that makes people think

(00:46):
they can do new and exciting things. However, I know
there is also a reasonable amount of cynicism about New
Year's resolutions. I read a statistics somewhere that one percent
of them fail. Now I don't know if that is
true or not, probably because sometimes these goals are so

(01:07):
vague that I am not sure you'd even know if
someone had succeeded. What does it mean to get in
shape or to eat more helpfully? What would it mean
to be in control of your finances or to stop procrastinating,
or any of the other resolutions like that. In any case,

(01:27):
I know a fair number of people set out to
do things and then feel like they haven't succeeded at
doing what they set out to do. This can be frustrating,
and in a worst case scenario, can lead to a
feeling like life is what it is and it is
not even worth trying to change things. But I think

(01:49):
goals can be incredibly motivating, and I also think it
is often possible to shape life in a schedule to
make goals happen. To do that. Ye that, though, we
need to be careful about how we set our goals,
both in how we choose these goals and in how
we structure these goals in order to make success possible.

(02:12):
This episode is going to be about ways to think
through these issues so that your goals stand a good
chance of actually happening. So the first thing to think
about is whether your goal is something that you actually
want to do. Now, perhaps this sounds like a silly question,

(02:34):
because if you are considering something as a goal, then
clearly you do want to do it, right, But I
don't think this is necessarily true. People set goals for
all sorts of reasons. Maybe they sound good at least
in theory. Maybe other people are telling you that it
should be a goal for you. Maybe it is in

(02:58):
the abstract, something that you would like to do. I mean,
maybe eventually, but it is not as big a priority
as other things in your life, perhaps right now. So
here is a way to figure out if you are
motivated to do something or not, particularly something which might
involve a habit or putting something regularly into your life,

(03:19):
or changing your daily schedule in some way. Ask yourself this,
would I do this on vacation? That is, would I
continue this habit or would I still be pursuing this
goal while on vacation. If you are planning to eat
more healthfily this year, would you eat more healthfuly on vacation.

(03:41):
If you are planning to exercise more often, would you
be willing to exercise on vacation. If you are planning
to drink less, would you drink less on vacation than
you normally would? I am not saying you would follow
the exact same schedule and protocol because hey, vacation, But

(04:03):
the key is whether you would eagerly ditch the protocol
because you were on vacation or not. This framing came
to me several years ago when I was on a
cruise and was attending the orientation, the cruise director told
us about all the fun things we could do on
the ship and during our shore excursions, and then he

(04:25):
grinned from ear to ear and let us all know
that all diets are officially kicked to the curb. He
then mimed kicking something off the stage. The crowd went wild.
I found this all fascinating. I am sure that at
least some people on that cruise had set some sort

(04:47):
of goal to eat more healthfully during the year, and
then decided that being on a cruise was a guilt
free reason to not follow those eating patterns that they
had set for themselves. But why what is it about
being on a giant boat that would change anything about
a goal you might have. I imagine the truth is

(05:09):
that people didn't particularly want to eat more healthfully, at
least among competing priorities, and so when there was a
socially acceptable reason not to, people were happy to take
the excuse. But for a long term habit to stick,
you will need to call upon your problem solving abilities

(05:32):
to figure out ways to stick with the habit. When
life is different from the norm for some reason, you
can't be calling upon your problem solving abilities to get
out of doing it. So that is why I like
this vacation question. If you would still more or less
do something while on vacation, then you do in fact

(05:55):
want to do it. For example, I still track my
time on vacation because I find it useful to track
my time. When I had my running streak going several
years ago, I would run on vacation. For instance, I
ran laps around that cruise ship deck and in the
cruise gym. But not because I am some sort of
paragon of virtue, trust me, I am not, but because

(06:19):
I wanted to run. I really like running. I also
like eating dessert, so I would not set a goal
that involved not eating dessert. I always want a little
bit to be okay. I think anyone ditching a diet
on that cruise ship might have been better served by
an eating goal that involved moderation in all things. So

(06:43):
you could enjoy a cocktail on occasion or a treat
on occasion, but generally eat produce and lean protein for
most of your calories. Asking would I do this on
vacation leads to the next question, which is figuring out
how to structure a goal to fit in with your

(07:03):
regular life and life when it is not so regular.
I am not having to say, you know, you do
something all the time, you do it every single day,
but you might want to figure out how it will
fit into what your day to day existence tends to
look like. And guess what, you are busy. You do

(07:25):
not have five hours a day to devote to optional things. Right,
So we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back talking about more ways to set
goals and stick with them. Well, i am back. This

(07:45):
is a longer episode, but I'm not interviewing anyone this week.
I am talking about ways to set goals for the
new year that increases the chances that they will happen. First,
we talked about setting goals that you truly wanted to do,
and one way to get at this is to ask yourself,
would you do at least some version of this goal
while on vacation? Would you stick with this habit at

(08:07):
least to some degree on vacation. That is a good
way to gauge motivation. Now we're talking about building a
goal into daily life. I know people listening to this
show are incredibly busy. We do not have hours a
day to devote to optional things. Goals need to fit
into life as it is, so in general, one of

(08:30):
the best ways to make goals happen is to figure
out how you can break your big goals into as
small of steps as possible, and then you can figure
out where these small steps can fit into most days.
I like to think about small steps. Because the cruise
director on that cruise I was talking about didn't tell

(08:52):
us that all toothbrushing habits were officially kicked to the curb.
He didn't tell us that oral hygiene no longer applied
on this ship. I think people would have found that
rather odd if he had kicked a toothbrush off the stage.
So I was sitting there pondering why are people willing
to stick with one healthy habit, that is brushing their

(09:12):
teeth on vacation, but not others, like the diets. I
think it is because toothbrushing is easy, reasonably pleasant, doesn't
take much time, and we generally plan for aberrations in
our routines. People take their toothbrushes with them on vacation. Indeed,

(09:33):
if you want evidence that a lot of goals and
habits are less about discipline than they are about structure
and incentives. Consider that many people who don't think of
themselves as good at habits might have a multi decade
streak going of brushing their teeth daily. No one points

(09:53):
to daily teeth brushing as evidence of their ironclad discipline.
Nor do people try to weasel out of toothbrushing by
claiming it is their birthday or are there on vacation,
or they did it yesterday, yesterday was a really tough day,
and name your excuse. People still brush their teeth. So

(10:14):
if you have big goals, it might help to think
about how you could make individual steps toward these big
goals feel relatively easy, much like brushing your teeth. This
is one reason that I am drawn to big, year
long projects. When I set my goals, even very big

(10:34):
things spread out over three hundred and sixty five days
tend to become relatively little things. Back in twenty twenty two,
I managed to read through all the works of Shakespeare
by reading three pages in my anthology each day for
an entire year. Reading all of Shakespeare's sounds like a

(10:56):
huge project, and on some level it is. But his
complete works fit into a one thousand page anthology, and
if there are three hundred and sixty five days a year.
That's just about three pages a day. The math works
as long as you just keep going. I did the

(11:18):
same in twenty twenty five with listening to all the
works of Beethoven. That is something I set as a
goal for the year. Now, this was about thirty minutes
of listening a day when I followed a particular calendar.
Some days it was a little more, some days it
was a little less. But I know from my time
logs that I spend at least thirty minutes driving around

(11:39):
each day in my car, So listening to Beethoven just
meant listening to something a bit more elevated than I
usually would. It all fit pretty easily, no major discipline required.
Breaking big goals down into small steps can even make
things that have I've eluded us before finally happen. So

(12:05):
I have made several bucket lists over the years. Longtime
listeners have heard me talk about my lists of one
hundred dreams, and over the years I'd often put something
like write a collection of seasonal sonnets on the list.
So sonnets are generally fourteen line poems with a certain
rhyming scheme. So I put this on the list, and

(12:25):
then I wouldn't do it. But a few years ago
I decided to set a goal to write just two
lines in a sonnet every day. Two lines is truly
not that much. Now, these sonnets are in iambic pentameter,
so two lines meant twenty syllables a day, very very easy.

(12:49):
But it turns out that two lines a day add
up two lines a day is one fourteen line poem
a week. There are fifty two weeks in a year,
so I have now written about one hundred and fifty
six of these poems over the last three years. It
feels easy, unpleasant and rewarding enough that I plan to

(13:13):
just keep going. We're going to take one more quick
ad break, and then we'll be talking about how to
make our goals happen. Well, we are back talking about
how to set goals so we can actually accomplish them.

(13:37):
Of course, all goals do not need to happen daily.
Sometimes there might be reasons that you wouldn't want to
have a goal structured as a daily habit, perhaps with
things like lifting heavy weights or running for people who
aren't going for streaks. In general, you do need some
recovery time for habits like those. But in those cases,

(13:57):
I think it helps to figure out what success would
look like for you in terms of frequency, allowing for
the reality of life, and then to figure out where
exactly these things could fit into the schedule. So let's
say you want to exercise more. That is a common
goal people might set as a New Year's resolution. It

(14:20):
is also hard to know hearing that what success would
mean for any individual person, so let's aim to make
it a little more specific. For example, I intend to
exercise for thirty minutes three times a week, unless I
am physically incapable of doing so. In general, I believe

(14:40):
that three times a week is a habit, so that
is probably a good number to shoot for. So let's
say the answer is three times a week. Then you
would need to look at your calendar for the next
few weeks and go ahead and block these sessions in.
Where can three exercise sessions go next week? How about

(15:02):
the week after that? This is where you figure out
if this is a reasonable goal for you or not.
If you can't block in three sessions during the first
week of January, it is not like other weeks will
magically be better. So if you can't find three spots,

(15:22):
you'll need to refine your goal or figure out ways
to change your schedule. Maybe that can't happen immediately, but
over ninety days maybe. But the truth is, I'd actually
aim to block more than three sessions in if that
is your goal, in order to make sure that the
three sessions happen. Because here's the thing, life for sure

(15:47):
will happen. Stuff will come up. If you make space
for three sessions, there is a good chance one will
be taken away from you when there is a work
crisis or a kid gets it's the flu. If you
set a goal of three and only make one or two,
you might feel like a failure. It seems not to

(16:10):
be happening regularly. But if you carve out space for
four sessions and miss one, you have still hit your goal.
If you carve out space for four and miss two,
you'll still feel quite a bit closer than if you
missed two out of three. Now, I know it is

(16:34):
hard to carve out a backup slot in addition to
carving out time for our priorities, but hey, this episode
is about how to make goals happen. It's not always easy.
There is a reason that we believe most people fail
at their New Year's resolutions, and I think not planning
for life to go wrong on occasion is a big

(16:55):
part of that reason. Finally, setting goals that actually happen
means being constantly reminded of your goals. How will you
remember your goals? How will you make sure you don't
forget until New Year's next year? As you are planning
your life, How will you make sure time for your

(17:16):
goals winds up in your schedule. Longtime listeners know that
I advocate creating a regular weekly planning time. Each week,
you sit down and around the same time and look
forward to the next week. What is most important to
do in the spheres of career, relationships and self. What

(17:40):
do you need to do? What logistics do you need
to sort out for all of this to take place?
During this time, you can look at your goals list
and think about what steps can happen and where during
the week these should go. So look at the list frequently.

(18:02):
You might also be helped by figuring out some form
of accountability. Sometimes we drift away from goals because they
no longer make sense in our lives. But if you
do want to stick with your goals rather than drift
away from them. Then it helps to find ways to
boost motivation when it might flag. So can you enlist

(18:25):
an accountability partner? An accountability partnership doesn't have to be elaborate.
All you have to do is check in by email
or by text once a week or so to see
how things are going. If you don't want to keep
sending texts about why you just couldn't find three times

(18:45):
a week to work out, or last week you didn't
need to do it either, or maybe even the week
before that you don't really want to send that text, well,
maybe you will work on your schedule in order to
make it happen. The good news is that if if
you do think about all these things, you will have
a good chance of making your goals stick. You'll choose

(19:08):
goals that you really want to do. You will think
about how to make the individual steps of your goals easy.
You will think about how they can regularly fit into
your life. You will think about how they will fit
into your life when life is complicated, and how you

(19:29):
will create a backup slot so success is more likely
even when things go wrong. You'll think about how you
will be reminded of your goals and how you might
keep yourself motivated through the year. Is that a lot maybe,
but it is also likely the difference between success and

(19:52):
feeling frustrated with the whole process. I want everyone to
feel next December like they've been able to do what
they set out to do. Success is truly possible when
we achieve our goals and then we really do take
life from great to awesome. I would love to hear

(20:18):
about your New year's resolutions. Feel free to share them
with me. You can always reach me at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com. What are you doing to make
success more likely in the meantime? This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.

(20:48):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(21:11):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.