Choosing Habits or Achievement Goals

0:28Hi, I'm Michael Hyatt. a bean, which is that the podcast is getting some really exciting things happening to it. So we can't tell you any details, but in the new year, all will be revealed. So hang tight. But in the meantime, we're not going to leave you hanging because we have some really important content to help people get prepared for a great new year. We do. And the one thing I want to say about the new podcast that we are excited about, that we have shared before, but it's going to be a new format, new emphasis, new name. All that's coming soon. We're just trying to get all of our ducks in a row so we can launch it in the appropriate way.

1:08It's just such a tease. Thank you. Some people call that marketing. So today we're going to be talking about choosing habits or achievement goals. And I really like this distinction. Me too. Well, and this is part of a five-part series that we have been working our way through. And so the first one was going further by giving thanks. The second one was rescuing your 2023 goals. Still not too late. Third was filling out your wishlist for 2024, which is kind of like, you know, pre-goal setting, just starting to let yourself dream again and think about the new year. And then this week, we're going to be talking about habits or achievement goals.

1:49And then next week, we're going to be talking about jumping into 2024 with confidence. So I love this because I think sometimes, you know, we just go through the holidays and we kind of like tumble into the new year, a little disoriented. And it's like, oh yeah, I should probably set some goals, you know, and it's helpful if you can begin to kind of put your toe in the water and move toward that and start getting yourself in a headspace of being ready to do it as opposed to just, you know, tumbling into it. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but futuristic is your number one strength, right? Yes. Which basically means that I'm really good at imagining bad things happening in the future.

2:26Right. And you're not fully present in the moment. Which is why I have a great question to determine habit or achievement goals in this episode, because I'm trying to decide, am I going to do like a mindfulness habit goal or should it be something of an achievement goal? So there you go. Case study. Discuss. Okay. Well, we'll get to that in just a minute. When do you first start thinking about personal goal setting for the new year? I just want to compare notes here because futuristic is pretty high for me too. I feel like already in the fourth quarter, I'm thinking about it. I don't necessarily have like a list going.

3:05I think in some years past, I've had like an Apple note where I've just started dropping things that I was kind of thinking about. But probably because about this time of year, I'm thinking there's this new thing I want to do like mindfulness or something like that, that I just don't have the bandwidth to add right now because it's the holidays, it's wrapping up the fiscal year, it's all those things. And so it's not really a great time to add a new habit or a new achievement goal. And so I start thinking to myself, oh yeah, that could be something to consider for next year. So that's about the extent of it, but I am kind of thinking about it.

3:37I would say I start thinking about it usually about August or September, and that's driven - Seriously? Yeah. Wow. That's driven in large part because of the requests and demands on my calendar. So I'm getting requests pretty early in the fall for the next spring. Right. And so Jim wants to get ahead of that. Jim's my executive assistant. Jim wants to get ahead of that and get the annual calendar laid out. and of course our practice is to put the big rocks in first to use a metaphor that Dr. Stephen Covey uses. So we want to make sure that there's time for the things that are really important.

4:15We're not just in reactive mode. So by necessity, if you're thinking about the calendar for the next year, for me at least, I started thinking about the goals and usually there's more requests, more to do in the next year that I'm going to have time to do. So I'm going to have to make choices. So I just naturally start thinking about goals. I'm not setting goals, but I'm getting into that headspace of thinking, what is it that I want? Which by the way, that is the number one most difficult thing to do when it comes to goal setting is figuring out what you want. And people have a hard time getting clarity.

4:49And that's part of the reason why we wanted people to begin doing that wish list, which was the last episode, to begin to think aspirationally about the future, even before they dial us in to an aspect of smarter goals, which is what we're going to talk about today. So there are smarter goals, and smarter is kind of our interpretation of and modification of smart goals, something GE, I think, came out with maybe back in the 60s. But what a lot of people don't know, and even people in our own tribe don't know, is that there are two different kinds of smarter goals. So there are achievement goals and there are habit goals.

5:33And those are two different things. So an achievement goal is like a one and done kind of thing. Right. You know, you achieve it, you check it off, you go to the next thing. So that could be something like a financial goal. Like I want to save X amount of dollars this year, or I want to make this much money or something like that. Or it could be running a marathon or, you know, going to a marriage retreat. Yeah. Those are not things you're going to continue doing necessarily. They have a starting point and an end point. There's going to be the buildup to it. Yeah. And then hopefully you achieve it, check it off, go to the next thing.

6:08A habit goal is basically implementing a recurring behavior like running every day or having a weekly date night or having a morning mindfulness practice. You know, something you talked about a moment ago. So I don't know if you're thinking about morning, but anyway, a mindfulness practice. So those are habit goals, and they're both very useful. And when to use which is more art than science. But we want to kind of dig into that and ask ourselves the question, what better serves us as we're thinking aspirationally about that thing that we want? Do we want to use an achievement goal, which is one tool in our toolbox?

6:50Or do we want to use a habit goal? or there's actually a third alternative, which is to use an achievement goal, but to use a habit practice to get us there. Like, let's say, for example, I wanted to write a 55 ,000 word business book, nonfiction business book. That's the achievement goal part of it. You know, we still have to add some things to make sure that it - Conforms to smarter. Yeah, conforms to smarter. But maybe a habit goal is the best way to do that. I'm going to write 500 words a day for X number of days until I get there. I was going to try to do the math in my head, but never. Never do math in real life.

7:28No, never do math in front of people. It's like trying to do spelling on the whiteboard. Oh. Just try to spell success on the whiteboard. Just knock yourself out.

7:40Okay. So I have a very important question for you that I have wondered myself, even though this is our methodology and I feel very immersed in all the goal achievement literature. You've come to the right place. Great. I feel like there should be like a screen between us or something. Okay. So. Why'd you say that? I don't know. Like, you know, like a confessional. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm not trying to create separation. Anyway, this is awkward now. Okay. Okay. Got it. My real question is this. There is a lot of buzz and there has been for a long time. about habits as being the superior way to improve your life.

8:20So in other words, your habits are basically what determine the quality of your life. And so if you want a better life, you should just focus on your habits and kind of dismissive of achievement goals. So what do you think about that? I mean, first of all, are you familiar with that kind of sentiment? Yep. There are a lot of people that have that sentiment. I would say this, I don't think that achievement goals are worthless. But I would say, if possible, do choose a habit goal. Because I think it's a little bit more manageable. It's more difficult to forget because you're doing it with more frequency.

8:58And so you won't as easily lose visibility on it, which is another component of being successful. But I still do think there's achievement goals that are really worthy. And maybe the best is to have an achievement goal that has a habit practice to get there. But one of the things you've got to be really careful of, and I know we've talked about this a lot, is that you can end up, like if you have eight to 10 goals for the year and they were all habit goals, I mean, let's be honest. If you could acquire two new habits or three new habits in the new year that were really meaningful, that would be life-changing.

9:30Yeah, totally. You don't need 10 new habits in your life and you probably don't have time for 10 new habits and that's a setup to fail. Well, and I think it's very easy for people to think when you say that, that they're the exception. Now, don't ask me how I know this. You're not special. You are special, but you're not that kind of special. Yeah. So I've done this before. I've thought, well, I've got great focus and I've got the time and I'm just going to do more habits than I probably should. And the problem is anybody can start well, start strong. But it's what happens after you get going that determines whether you continue on because the habit goal is worthless if you don't install it.

10:09Right. And the installation process takes some time.

10:16So today we're going to walk through three considerations you could weigh as you're deciding whether or not to set a habit goal or an achievement goal. Okay. So what's the first consideration? Well, the first one is permanence. So habit goals are intended to be permanent. I mean, think about it. We want to have these habits. It's like we have this vision for what does a good life ultimately entail or what is a healthy life or, you know, however you would describe it. And that usually does consist of certain achievements and certain habits. And so we're not looking, for example, like in my idea of the mindfulness practice, I'm not looking to do that for eight weeks or 12 weeks and then I'm done.

10:58I'm looking to do that for the rest of my life as a way to better manage stress without damaging my body. You know, that's my motivation for that. so I think that this is an important thing to think about are you just trying to do something for a short period of time like you're going to be running because you want to run a marathon but then you might you'd like to do a lot of different things you might pick some other competition you want to do like a you know tough matter or something like that that's different yeah I think that's a good example could you think of an example of a habit goal in your own life that it's had persistence for years?

11:34Yeah, well, two. I guess they would all go under the umbrella of my morning ritual. But a part of that, the two most consistent parts of that are devotional time that I do. I use the Philisticle version of the daily hours that are based on the Book of Common Prayer. Done that for years. It's very efficient. I can do it in like five minutes, which is great. I mean, it's very consistent. And then also using my full focus planner and filling out the daily page. I do almost every single day, even on the weekends without fail. Wow. I'm impressed. Yeah. And so those two things, I would say like exercise is another one, but due to some injuries, I've been a little less consistent in the last year.

12:15Yeah. I think for me, okay, this sounds stupid, but there was a time when I didn't do this, but flossing my teeth, like I literally can't go to bed without that, but it served me well. I still have my teeth. Congratulations. Congratulations. I know. And like my wife says, only floss the ones you want to keep. Yeah. I would say another one is reading through the Bible every year. Now, to be fair, and to be honest, I don't always make it all the way through, but I use the one-year Bible, and it's got a reading for every day. And so if I miss a day, I don't worry about it. I just kind of pick up and keep going.

12:49So it may take me a year and a half to get through it, but I've done that for maybe 35 years. Wow. So do you think you've been through the whole Bible 35 times? Yeah, probably 25 times. That's a lot of times though. Yeah. I remember one time when I was in college, it was my first exposure to the Bible. I got all excited about it. And not saying that sometimes I go overboard on the front end, but I decided to read through the whole Bible in 90 days and I found a plan that could do that. Oh, wow. And so one summer, that was my project. You just had to quit your job so you could be - Well, it didn't take that long.

13:24I would say it probably took about 45 minutes to an hour a day. Oh, really? That's not bad actually. No. Like to read through the Bible in a year using the one-year Bible, which they're not an affiliate. We're not getting commissioned on this, but I love that product. It's published by Tyndale House, and a lot of publishers have a lot of different versions of it. But it literally takes me 15 minutes a day. And you can read through the entire Bible in a year in 15 minutes a day. Okay. I might have a new idea for a habit goal. Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of cool. Okay. So back, but back to the point, the idea is that this is a habit you want to permanently install or a behavior you want to repeat on a permanent basis with some regularity that you've defined.

14:04Right. Yeah. Whereas an achievement goal, as it relates to the permanence consideration, that is a one and done thing. So I ran a half marathon and I decided to do it again the next year. And I think I ended up doing like five of them. And so that could have looked like a habit, like an annual habit. Right. But I really didn't have any intention even when I began to do that every year forever. And so there was just a point where I said, okay, I'm done with that. I've done it. Now I'm going to just focus on the habit. Right. Which in your case turned out not to be running. It turned out to be daily exercise.

14:40Exactly. Right. Yep. So it was a mix of cardio and strength training. Okay. So how permanent do you want this to be? I think that's the question to ask if, as you're considering this aspiration, this thing that you want to do, how permanent do you want it to be? Now, here's an odd one. So for decades, we've had a weekly date night, Gail and I have, and that was a weekly have a goal. And by the way, once it's installed, this is really important. It doesn't need to continue to show up on your goal list. Thank goodness. Right? Yeah. So people ask that all the time. Well, okay. I've been doing a weekly date night for this last quarter.

15:18Do I need to do it the next quarter? If you consider it installed. Like you don't have to try anymore. Like brushing your teeth. You're not like, oh, I better write down brush my teeth in my planner. You don't do that. You just do it every day. I just do it. And I literally can't go to bed without brushing my teeth and flossing. I mean, that's an installed habit. And that's like actually how they should work. That's right. It's a way of self-automating. Yeah. So our weekly date night persisted after we became empty nesters. But then we just realized pretty much we have every meal together. We go do things like the other night.

15:53Mom needed to run to Walgreens to pick up a prescription. And I said, well, let me go with you. And so we just rode together. So there's a lot of togetherness. So it doesn't really take a lot of planning. But I would say that that's the kind of thing where when you start it, that might be good to think of it. That's permanent enough to be a habit goal to focus on. Okay. How many habit goals do you think you can set reasonably in one year? Because the last R of the smarter goal framework is relevant, which means everything has to work together. It has to be compatible with your season of life. Don't set 10 habit goals if you have a newborn baby or you just started a new job and moved across the country, like that's a setup to fail.

16:37Yeah. I would say probably one per quarter or at least one, one till it's installed. I think that's a really good rule of thumb. And again, don't think you're the exception. Cause you're not. Cause you're not. I mean, you're a person, you're a human and we have limitations and you could end up in an effort to do all of it. You could sink, you know, your, your best efforts on even a few. Yeah. And by the way, I'm preaching to myself because I have often tried to do more than one. And what happens is I don't really install either one of them. Have you ever succeeded with that? With what? With doing multiple habits at the same time over the long haul, like over a period of years?

17:16I'd have to think about it, but I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think I have. No. It just takes a lot of energy. I mean, you wake up in the morning, maybe this is a limiting belief, but with a certain amount of willpower. And I think that's - That's not a limiting belief. That's part of the research. Yeah, I think that's actually right. Okay, Joel is over in the corner and he's saying sort of, kind of. That's a disputed finding at this point. Okay, it's a disputed finding that is not replicable. So knock yourself out. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. Don't knock yourself out. Well, in my experience, let's speak anecdotally, I have never, I don't think I've ever been able to work on more than one goal or one have a goal at a time.

17:58Yeah, I agree. Because it takes a lot of focus. And for me, at least, it feels like willpower, there's a fixed amount of willpower. And particularly if I get tired, like here's the thing for me is, and right now I'm trying to install a meditation practice. Right. But if I get tired, I'll blow it off. And what that does is it prolongs, You know, and I allow myself when I said I have a goal is I allow myself a certain amount. I try to define the compliance, like how compliant do I have to be before I have to completely start over? Like, for example, if I miss one time, that doesn't warrant me totally starting over.

18:44Yeah. If I miss, like if it's going to take me 90 days to install it or 120 days to install it, then I might give myself like a 5 % non-compliance factor. Make sense? It does make sense. Okay.

19:10Okay. So the next consideration first is permanent. The next one is flexibility. I really like this point because I think this has helped me to, although I wouldn't have maybe used this language, to determine habit or achievement goal. Because, for example, if you have an outcome in mind, like you want to save, you know,$20 ,000 this year or you want to go on a vacation to Europe or something like that, it's going to be difficult if you don't have a clear strategy for that to become a habit. And sometimes you don't know it's going to work yet. And this was true for me. I think I talked about this in the last podcast or maybe the one before, but last year I had a weight loss goal.

19:55And the strategy that I was using initially, though I was very faithful to it, was not effective. And so because I had an achievement goal and not a habit goal, it meant that I felt very free to try something completely different to get to the outcome, which ultimately was very successful for me. But in that case, I was holding tight to the outcome that I was committed to, but holding loosely to the strategy that I began with. Because it was just kind of like my best guess for how I was going to get there and then I needed to adjust. So I think if you find yourself in a situation where you're like, I know what I want the end result to be, but I'm really not sure what it's going to take to get there, then that's where like an achievement goal might be the right choice.

20:40I love that. Do you agree? I do agree with that. And I think that that does allow for maximum flexibility and keeps you from getting locked into an ineffective strategy. And one of the things that we've talked about a lot, particularly in the context of strategic planning, is that you've got to make sure that the strategy serves the goal. And you've also got to make sure that you don't derail the goal on the front end because you can't think of a strategy. You know, you got the clarity is the first and most important thing. Get clear on what it is that you want to achieve. And then secondarily, what you can do is pick the strategy that you think will get you there.

21:14But if the achievement goal is sufficiently risky, as that first R in the smarter framework says, if it's sufficiently risky, you probably don't know what strategy is going to be successful. Right, because you haven't done it before by definition. That's right. And so you kind of have to be experimental. Like, I'm going to try this, but if that didn't work, I'm going to try something else. But I'm not going to give up on the achievement goal just because the strategy I chose didn't work. So back to our mindfulness or meditation example, you know, you couldn't set an achievement goal around mindfulness because what's the outcome?

21:50Like it's not measurable. I mean, if your outcome with a mindfulness or meditation goal is less stress, you know, better sleep or whatever. I mean, how can you measure that as like a singular outcome? But a habit is really easy to think about that, you know, that every day for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or something like that, you're going to practice mindfulness. Well, absolutely. And I do think that this is a great way to solve for an aspiration you can't quantify. Using a habit goal. Using a habit goal. Yeah. So for example, I'd really like to love Gail more. Well, how do we quantify that? Well, maybe we don't.

22:28Maybe we just do a habit goal that we know that will move us toward that aspiration. I mean - People get into this with spiritual goals. They want a closer relationship with God or something. Well, I mean, you literally cannot measure that. But there are behaviors that would lead to that naturally if you repeated them frequently enough. And that's where the habit comes in.

22:51Okay, so that's flexibility. So then the last consideration if you're deciding between habit goals and achievement goals is motivation. I mean, this kind of sounds basic, but I think it's a good checkpoint. And I think this is an area that I have ignored in the past. Like, what is your motivation telling you? Does it sound better? Does it sound more fun to do a habit goal or an achievement goal? And sometimes you think about a habit goal and you're just like grown to yourself, you know, because you don't actually like the idea of doing the habit. And sometimes an achievement goal sounds really exciting.

23:26Or maybe the achievement goal sounds really intimidating. And if, but if you think about it like a habit, breaking it down into something you're going to do every day or every week, you can imagine that and you can really wrap your head around it and you can get excited and engaged and motivated to do that. So I think that's kind of a seemingly easy thing to pass over as a criterion here, but it's a great way to think about what am I more motivated by? Well, and I don't think that achievement goals are inherently more motivational. No. You and I may disagree on this. I don't know. No, I do agree with you.

23:57Okay. But I do think that if you have a habit goal, like for example, in the goal I'm working on right now, which is to meditate for 20 minutes a day. I don't get excited about that. I mean, that sounds like boring. It's all I can do to make myself do it. But I love the idea of how that's going to make me feel more at peace, have less stress in my life, and really impact my overall health. In fact, I think it's job number one. So when I think about the outcome or what it's going to be like once that habit is installed and I'm consistently practicing, that I can get motivated about, that I can get excited about.