The Relationship between Goals and Habits
Goals set your direction, habits get you there.
Your goal sets your direction. Once set, feel free to forget. Let habits come in and give yourself success everyday. If we are constantly working *only* towards a goal, we live in a “failure-state” for a decent amount of time until we reach that goal, which at that point can be somewhat anticlimactic. When we engage ourselves in habits and we put systems in place to set ourselves up for success automatically and exist in a “success-state” more frequently.
In many ways, goals and habits are two sides of the success coin. Goals give you a direction; habits are the actions you take everyday in that direction. Often, once we set a habit into action we can actually overshoot our goal.
For example: Your goal is to write a book in three months. This on its own may seem daunting. So you create a simple habit to help you achieve your goal: write 200 words a day. This habit is something you can complete even on the busiest of days and when you have more time, you may find yourself in flow and writing much more. As a result, you finish the book in much less time and with much less stress. Much more simple and effective.
Habits also ensure that our successes do not have an end point. Many times, when we set a goal, there is an endpoint and we typically revert back to our previous state after it is accomplished.
For example: People run marathons, then stop exercising altogether afterward. Or they make a certain amount of money, then fall into debt soon after. Others reach a goal weight, only to spoil their progress by overeating to celebrate.
Habits compound; building a single habit can have a wider impact on our lives.These are behaviors that cause people to change related areas of their lives. For example, people who start exercising daily may end up eating better and drinking less. Likewise, those who quit a bad habit may end up replacing it with a positive alternative.
Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny. - Gandhi paraphrased by Stephen Covey
Habits can be as small as you need them to be to get yourself started! A common piece of advice for those seeking to build a habit is to start small. Know you need to floss more? Commit to flossing one tooth a day. Maybe it sounds silly, but once you are in there, you may find yourself motivated to do two, even three teeth. Then over time, once these acts become ingrained, the degree of complexity can be increased. If you want to journal more, you can do a two word ‘feelings’ check-in everyday. After this becomes part of your routine, you can increase the prompts or page count to reach your goal.
Some examples of habits and goals:
We want to get in shape. We could decide to lose 20 pounds in three months (goal/direction), or we could decide to do cardio for 20 minutes a day (habit).
We want to learn a new language. We could decide we want to be fluent in six months (goal/direction), or we could commit to 30 minutes of practice each day (habit).
We want to read more books. We could set the goal to read 50 books by the end of the year (goal/direction), or we could decide to always carry a book with us (habit).
We want to spend more time with our families. We could plan to spend seven hours a week with them (goal/direction), or we could choose to eat dinner with them each night (habit).
The power of good habits is in their long term gains. The more you keep them up, the bigger the return and the more automatic they become. There are already so many simple habits you do on a daily basis that bring so much to your life. Imagine if we set goals for the simple habits we were taught as children.
When you parents made you make your bed everyday as a child, it was about more than having a clean room, it was a habit to set you in the direction of responsibility. But try telling a child that they would learn to be a responsible five-year-old before they enter kindergarten! No way, just make your bed every day. Overtime, the responsibility we learned by making our bed everyday led to us doing our homework, brushing our teeth, cleaning up after ourselves etc.
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.
Warren Buffett spends five to six hours a day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports. Stephen King writes every day of the year without exception beginning work between 8:00 and 8:30 am. Oprah starts each morning with 20 minutes of sitting meditation, not skipping holidays and weekends.
While goals heavily rely on external motivation and willpower, habits are automatic. They actually rewire our brains. When seeking to attain something in our lives, it is in our best interest to invest our time in forming positive habits, rather than concentrating on a specific goal.
