What is the worst problem I can have on my path to achieving my goals? Definitely it’s postponing actions. There are plenty of reasons (or rather excuses) for this to happen. So I prefer to back up my journey with habits because they stick much better than a task list in a project.
We all break down goal to projects and then projects to tasks. Usual approach is to then plan those tasks and start executing.
Then a bad day comes when you don’t have energy to work on the task, something urgent breaks your day plan, or you simply forget to check your task list. We’re all human beings. I bet everyone had a day like that.
It’s good when next day everything goes back to norm. But more often than we want it doesn’t. It could be several bad days in a row. It could be overwhelming after several days when you try to catch up. And before you know you’re way behind your original plan.
I tend to mitigate this with help of habits. Here is how I do this. Once I define my goal I:
- Write an approach to achieve the goal. That’s just a couple of paragraphs outlining my vision on how I can achieve the goal. I think of important milestones, timelines, time slots which I could dedicate to working on the goal, and habits which can help me.
- Create projects with their corresponding tasks. I don’t do anything special at this step. I just define projects based on approach from previous step and add first actual tasks.
- Add habits that backup my journey. Here comes very important part. I tend to add habits in my routine that help me stay on track with my execution to achieve the goal. For example, if my goal is to write 26 posts in a quarter then I would add a habit to write for one hour three times a week and edit for half an hour two times a week. Just like any new habit it will take some time to be consistent. But I believe with such habits I raise my chance of achieving the goal significantly compared to putting in 26 tasks to the project. Moreover if I enjoy writing and want to continue then I will have a foundation to continue writing in next quarter, quarter after it, and so on without extra effort to plan this.
For sure building a habit takes time. So this approach works best with the goals that are starters for bigger and longer path. For shorter goals or projects I would propose to use time blocking in calendar as a lighter option.