finish something hard

The 1% Rule and Other Ways to Make Goals Manageable

Darren Wu — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:36:41 +0000

Goals. They're the things that motivate us to wake up a little early every morning and stay up a little late at night. They give us something to look forward to.

Do you have big goals? Do you get overwhelmed by the sheer size of them or wonder how you'll achieve them?

If so, here are five effective ways to achieve your big goals. (See also: But I Don't Want To! Secrets of Self-Motivation)

1. Write Your Goals Down

The very first thing you should do is to write down what you want to accomplish and why you want to accomplish it. How else can you get clarity on what you want to do?

After you write down your goals, put them in a place where you'll see them every single day. For example, your bathroom mirror. That way, you'll see them at least twice a day — when you wake up to get ready for the day and before you go to bed at night.

How does this help?

Looking at your goals every single day will keep them at the forefront of your mind. This, in turn, will motivate you to take action on them. You'll look for things to do that'll bring you closer to achieving your goals, and you'll look for ways to do better than the day before.

2. Focus

After you figure out what goals you want to achieve and have written them down, you've got to dedicate time to achieve them. For many of us, this is easier said than done. We all lead busy lives, often with a job to go to in the daytime and a family to take care of at night.

So how do you have time for your goals?

The answer to that question is this — you need to learn how to manage your time better.

One thing you can do is decide what you will give up so that you free up time to pursue your goals. This is where knowing why you want to accomplish a goal becomes important.

For instance, a big time-waster for many people is TV. Sure, we may need to unwind in front of the TV for a short while after a long day at work. But if you can get into the habit of cutting down on your time watching TV and thinking more and more about your goals, you'll give yourself the time to work on your worthwhile projects.

3. The 1% Rule

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." – Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu

Did you know that if you improve just 1% everyday, in 71 days you'll be twice as good? Yep, it's true. And since I'm a nerd, here's the math behind it. Go ahead and plug this formula into Microsoft Excel: =(1*(1.01)^71)

The answer comes out to a little bit over 2.

How does this apply to your goals? Let's say you're trying to exercise more.

This means that if you start by walking one mile today, tomorrow you should walk just a little more than a mile. The day after that, you'll walk a little bit more. Keep this up, and little by little, in 71 days you'll have doubled your capacity, working up to two miles.

Remember — inch by inch, everything's a cinch.

4. Persevere

Here's a harsh dose of reality — whenever you try to do something that others haven't been able to do, or something that's out of the ordinary, you'll most likely get criticism or a lack of support, or people will flat out tell you it's not possible.

If you hear this, you've got to do everything you can to ignore those voices.

Sure, you'll probably fail a few times and face setbacks on the way to achieving what you want to achieve. Don't get discouraged.

Many people remember Michael Jordan for the six championships that he won with the Chicago Bulls. But check out this quote that describes his journey to success: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot — and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why....I succeed."

And here's another one from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

So here's the moral of the story: Have an unshakeable mindset. Find a way. Keep searching, and keep working.

5. Create Milestones and Celebrate Small Victories

Lastly, it's important to appreciate the journey you're on. Think of achieving your goals as a marathon.

Celebrating after you reach certain milestones will allow you to pause for awhile and reflect on your current success. Reflecting on your current success will then motivate you to keep pressing on to do even more, and to do it even better.

How do you stay on track toward reaching your goals?

Like this article? Pin it!

This article is from Darren Wu of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How to Finish Something Hard

Sarah Winfrey — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:00:03 +0000

Sometimes, life is just hard. None of us want to hear it, but there it is, plain and simple. And during the holiday season, it can be especially hard to deal with difficult things because we feel like we should be so happy.

Different people respond to this fact in different ways. Some people give up because they feel discouraged, hopeless, and depressed. If life can be hard and we never know exactly when "hard" is going to hit, maybe life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Other people slam through walls as if they aren't even there. These are the world's driven folks, the ones who couldn't stop pushing if they tried (but why would they try?).

At first glance, it seems better to be the second kind of person than the first. At least they get things done. On a closer look, though, these people sacrifice themselves and those close to them in order to do it.

So what's the answer to dealing with difficulty? If we're all going to face it, whether it's getting through an illness, surviving a tough semester, grieving a difficult loss, sticking to a limiting budget, thriving during the holidays, or parenting a difficult child, there has to be a way to approach difficulty that both gets things done and allows us space to care for ourselves and those around us.

Breathe

When hard times hit, the first thing we need is some space. If the difficulty is relatively small or requires immediate action, just a breath or two can be enough to help us cope. There's something about letting our body do something that it does naturally and well that re-centers us and allows us to keep going forward from a non-destructive place.

If there's time and place for more space, take what you can get. All hard things, no matter how small, send the human system into a state of shock. The extent of this shock is usually greater the greater the difficulty or the more it means to us.

Shock isn't something that we can get rid of by choice. Giving ourselves space, though, will go farther towards relieving it than anything else. In that space, our thoughts get the chance to organize and come to grips with reality without panic. From that place, we can begin to move forward.

Take Small Steps

When something is hard, human beings face two temptations. We can get overwhelmed because overcoming the problem seems so hard and take so much energy, or we can insist that the problem is nothing, all the while lacing up our hiking shoes.

Breaking the problem down into smaller chunks can help us conquer both of these temptations. When the problem is small enough that it doesn't overwhelm, we feel like we can take it on, but we don't feel like we have to deny it, either.

Taking small steps also means that, many times, we will look up and realize that we have come farther than we think. Sometimes, one small step after another doesn't feel like much, but it adds up to something greater than just the sum of its parts when the pieces come together.

Find Motivation

A key to not only stick out but thriving in a hard situation is having motivation that will see you through. Survival itself is usually not motivation enough, because human beings don't want to just survive, but thrive instead.

It helps if your motivation for getting through is something deeply personal and central to who you are. If your family is what you value above anything else, for instance, being with them and giving them the best life possible will be a great motivator for everything from fighting cancer to balancing your budget.

If you're not sure what motivates you the most, think about the things you would die for. This is usually a good way to get a quick indication of what is the most important to you. Then figure out how to make this important thing a key part of your motivation for continuing to struggle through.

Keep Going

More than anything else, the way to get through hard things is to keep going. When you think you can't, keep going. When you're tired and stressed and sad, keep going. When all you want to do is stop, keep going.

Life is the sort of thing where, often, you will look up one day to find that the difficulty is over. Somehow, you will have slogged through and gotten to the end of the problems to find normal life there, waiting for you. But you'll only get there if you keep walking forward even when you want to stop.

If you're struggling this holiday season, be it financially, physically, mentally, or any other way, I hope these tips help you find your way out. May you find the light in what you thought was all darkness.

This article is from Sarah Winfrey of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: