Motivation and a system for monitoring progress matter equally. Remove either one, and you'll spin your wheels in place.
The 2 most important things in achieving goals.
Without these 2 factors, real progress is very hard to come by.
1. The first thing is motivation.
You need a very clear, specific answer to the question “why do I want this?” You need real hunger and a burning drive to get what you want.
More than that, you need to work with that motivation and “feed” it daily. It’d be great to set inspiring goals in January and then just ride that motivation for the next 12 months, but I’ve never once seen that actually happen.
So if we want to genuinely move in the direction we care about, we need to keep throwing the right logs onto the fire of our inner motivation, constantly.
I regularly watch motivational videos and pull up photos of what I want to achieve. I leave myself hints and reminders at home and at work that I “trip over” with my eyes.
2. The second thing is a system for monitoring your progress.
If someone sets goals in January and doesn’t look at them again until December, it’s not hard to predict that most items on that list will end up failed and unrealized.
Personally, I think the optimal rhythm is weekly work on your goals. You need to pick 2-3 items you can start working on right now, and then follow through with specific daily actions.
That’s how you build a life you actually like, one where you feel happy.
If we feel progress every day, we’ll feel happiness every day too.
The principle of “motivation” and the principle of “monitoring” are equally important. Remove either one, and you’ll spin your wheels in place.
If we have a lot of motivation but never analyze what we’re doing and how, we act like a motivated fool: we get tired but never get results.
If we have a great system for monitoring and tracking our goals but aren’t motivated to do anything today, we also don’t move forward.
So it’s only when both factors are working together, in equal measure, that we get good results.
Ideally, you’d also have people and an environment around you that help you move forward — though for a lot of people, unfortunately, it’s the opposite.
What tools and principles help you achieve your goals? What gets in your way?