My wife and I just moved cross-country and as we slowly
unpack the last of our things, little pieces of long-forgotten items keep
popping up. Among the most frustrating are those scraps of paper containing notes
I’ve been looking for over the better part of the last year. And now here they
are, in all their presently useless glory because they’re a day late and a
dollar short.
But jumbled up among those frustrating scraps are the occasional
items that draw me into contemplation. Like finding my old New Year’s
resolution lists, some of them over five years old. It’s an interesting
exercise to peruse the lists and see where my thinking was over the course of
the last few years. My goals and ambitions, and the things I eagerly intended
to accomplish to make my life feel more fulfilling. But you know how I feel after
looking over those lists now? Like a bit of a loser.
Well, “loser” is probably too strong a word, but definitely
like someone who bites off more than they can chew. People like that are the
type that set themselves up for failure because they spread themselves too
thin. And that is why I think we’ve got this New Year’s resolution thing all
wrong. We (as in “I”) spread ourselves too thin.
Truth be told, it’s not just those resolution lists, but how
we set up our goals in general that is the problem. I think we go shopping for
our goals like we do when we hit the grocery store with an empty stomach. We
end up buying way more than we need or can possibly eat before it spoils, and
also throw in a lot of “junk food” in the process. Just like our eyes can be
hungrier than our stomachs, our minds’ eyes can hold heartier ambitions than
our ability to accomplish them may be.
Take my last year’s resolution list as an example. It’s
nearly two pages of fist-pumping, heart-throbbing, inspiration-building stuff.
And I got about a half-page of it done before I either lost the paper they were
written on, or lost interest, or both. I can’t remember which happened first.
And out of that half-page, maybe only one or two items actually stuck for the
long haul, while the others got a good week or so of dedication before my
willpower to continue them waned.
The point is there was just too much stuff to focus on with any
serious level of intent. Human minds don’t function well when you spread their
willpower too thin. Task saturation sets in. And science informs us that our
brains don’t form new habits as easily as we can list the new habits we want to
bring into our lives. Whether that be to quit smoking, eat better, exercise
more often, write more regularly, commit to a certain hobby or career endeavor
with more zeal, or whatever. So, why try to force a goal/habit structure on
them that they’re not biologically inclined to succeed at?
In order to form and instill new habits into our lives, it
takes a concerted, focused effort over at least eight weeks of time. And that’s
for a single habit. It’s much harder to focus and instill habits over the same
period when we’re trying to do more than one or two at a time. Our willpower
drops and we tend to give in to the nags of our daily lives.
A better way might be to make a short list of those things
most important to you to change or begin. Consider it a good exercise in learning
to distill what’s important from the clutter of the unimportant. And then
prioritize those items in the order of which you’d like to accomplish first,
and set about doing them in two month blocks over the course of the year. If
you haven’t done the math already, that translates into about six to twelve new
goals/habits per year. A pretty sustainable number.
Two books I recommend as a means of helping you along on
your journey are
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
by Roy F.
Baumesiter and John Tierney, and
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
by Charles Duhigg. Both are written in easily accessible
language, but the first is by far the more important in my opinion since one of
the key scientists involved in the studies behind the science of willpower and
habit formation is its author. The second is more of a reinforcement of the science
of the first book and its appendix has a good layout of how to apply these ideas to your daily life.
Good luck!
