Small progress is still progress
A month ago I wrote an article on how we can shape our identities by shaping our habits. This week's article goes hand in hand with the habits article, so make sure to take a look at it!
To have a radical change all we need is tiny smart choices, consistency and time. Every choice, big or small has a compounding effect in the making of our lives, and that's exactly what I will address today — our decision making process.
What stands in between us and achieving our most wanted dreams has a lot less to do with some magical skill, talent or timing, and far more to do on how we approach our problems and make decisions to solve them.
"You cannot make progress without making decisions", Jim Rohn.
Because of the compounding nature of those millions of decisions, even a tiny improvement in our decision making can create massive improvement in our results.
A lot of the ideas in this article came from an awesome TED, and it really goes along the lines of what I believe as well.
Focus on the journey
We are so addicted to goal setting, new year goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, that we forget the most important thing. We forget to focus on — and enjoy — the journey to get there.
Goals are the results we want to achieve. The journey — or processes — are the steps that leads us to those results. If we want better results in life, we need to focus on processes instead of goals.
"Goals are needed to set a direction, but processes are what truly makes progress", James Clear.
To give some context, here are some interesting facts about goals:
- Winners and losers have the same exact goals. If successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, setting up goals is not what differentiates them.
- Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. If we fix the problems at the results level and we don't fix it at the identity level the changes won't be permanent. We need to embody it.
- Goals restrict our happiness. Goals create an either/or feeling. Either we are a success when we achieve them, or we are a failure when we don't.
- Goals are against long term projects. Once we reach it, it's hard to maintain. We didn't focus on enjoying the journey. It was just a goal not a process, so we tend to revert back.
One tiny decision leads to another
We have no control over the course of things, but what we do control is all the tiny little decisions that we need to make correctly along the way.
We need to stop being a spectator in our decision making, and start being an active participant.
When we are lying on the couch, glancing through our Instagram feeds in our phones, or mindlessly scrolling through the channels on our remote control, in that very moment we need to make the decision to put it down.
We put it down. We put in our shoes. We walk out the door and shut it behind us. We walk 100 meters. Then 200 meters. Then 300 meters.
"If you don't make the right decision when you are in the couch, then there is no decision that can occur in the top of the mountain", Stephen Duneier.
Each step is a tiny decision made correctly along the way. To be able to make decisions at the 300 meters step, we needed to make a tiny decision to get up from our couch in the first place.
Target the small adjustments
We all know Djokovic, one of the greatest tennis players of all times.
From 2004 to 2016, he went from rank 100+ to 1st. By the time he was #1, his prize money had grown 50 times, and he was winning almost all of his matches. If we look at those numbers alone, the changes required to go from one end to the other seem massive and unattainable.
But the interesting thing is that in tennis, to actually win matches, you don't need to win all the points. You just need to win more points.
If we break down a match into sets, a set into games, and games into points, we get to its smallest portion. The points themselves — and here is where the magic happens.
Djokovic did not need to win 50% more points. He just needed a small improvement. A small adjustment to his skills to win a few more points, lead to massive results in ranking, prize money and matches.
Break down your goals
Take these big concepts, these big ideas, assignments and goals, and break them down to much more manageable tasks.
If we want to achieve something big, the best way is to find something in our existing routines that we can adjust, make small improvements, and let them compound over time.
We gained some weight, and we want to change that — thank you quarantine! How we usually handle it? We either give money to a gym that we will never go. Or we swear to never eat sweets again, that we know also won't work.
Or we can do the right thing, become an active participant in our decision making. Like outdoors? Enjoy listening music? Why not walk to work a few times a week?
It's not about losing the 10 kg of weight. It is a about breaking down the big targets into more manageable decisions, so we reduce the chances of us screwing it up along the way.
Analyze your own routine
Think about the habits and passions that you already have in life — What small adjustments can you do to them, so they work in your favor to achieve what you desire?
If you commute to work 1 hour daily, why not use 30 min of that time to study something you want to learn? In 1 week that's 2.5 hours. In a month it adds up to 10 hours. In a year you would have 120 hours of learning under your belt! That's a lot.
Let me share a personal experience. I've always had a hard time reading paper books. I just don't enjoy it as much, and often don't have the patience to sit down, focus and read. But I realized two things when analyzing my routine — I like walking outdoors and I love podcasts.
So why not listen to books instead of reading them? So I did. A small adjustment into my already existing routine, led me from struggling to read 4-5 books a year to almost 30 books every year. Small adjustment, massive outcome.
Get to work!
I've been using this approach in my life for a while now. By applying it, I managed to study more, read more, workout more, create a blog, start a few side projects, and all it took was the ideas I shared in this article.
I still don't have any superhuman skill. All I do is to take those big ambitious projects that we are too scared to start, break them down into their simplest form and make small improvements along the way, to improve my odds of achieving them.
The reason I am writing this today, is that I am hoping to inspire several of you who are reading this, to stop and think about some of those ambitious dreams you have for yourself — the ones you've been putting aside.
We are going through difficult times, and I feel COVID-19 situation made us give up on pursuing our plans. There is still time. Just because they seem unattainable, it doesn't mean that they actually are. Break them down, focus on the process, do small adjustments, enjoy the journey.
So which goals you've been putting off until now? Close this article and get to work!
