Instead of working toward a goal, build a habit

My advice: Hang around and hike Mount Fløyen. (Image by Michelle Maria from Pixabay)

Jerry Seinfeld, when asked about his method for success in comedy, shared a very simple strategy: He wrote new material every day. In order to accomplish this, he drew a big red X on his wall calendar for every day he wrote. A day without an X became unthinkable.

“Don’t break the chain!” he said. In other words, keep that streak going — do whatever it takes to earn that X.

There are some situations in which compressing your activity into a particular time frame (i.e., setting a goal) will cause you to accomplish more. But in order to do that, you have to have clarity and confidence. You have to know exactly where you’re headed and how to measure your end result.

If you don’t have this clarity and confidence, a goal may demoralize you. Instead, consider this key question from Gary Keller’s book, The ONE Thing: “What is the one thing you can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

For Jerry Seinfeld, it was comedy writing. For John and Paul in the early days, it was songwriting, knee to knee on hotel room beds. For Michael Phelps, it was swimming. For Venus and Serena, it was hitting the tennis court. For Dr. James Curran, it was getting his colleagues on board with early AIDS research. For Michelangelo, I think it’s safe to say that the highest and best use of his time was making art.

If you’re not sure exactly what that “one thing” is, find a starting point. Find something you can feel good about, even if it’s just a ten-minute walk around the block, set aside for thinking, without your phone.

As you do your thing every day or every week or however often you set out to do it, you’re building a habit. If you break the chain, begin again at the next opportunity. Following through on your commitment is your leading indicator, your best sign that you are living in alignment with the things you care about (as opposed to fame and fortune, which are lagging indicators).

Some days will be hard, and some days will be nearly impossible — but as you fight through the challenge of building a new habit, you will be making gains all the while. You’ll also find yourself developing the clarity and confidence to take additional steps toward the outcomes you seek.

Once you’ve figured out how to establish “leading indicators” of your growth in certain areas, consider how you might support the children and adolescents around you in doing the same. Just like adults, kids have lofty goals and big dreams that they are earnestly trying to follow through on, but they don’t know how. You can have a major impact by taking kids seriously and guiding them through this same process. You’ll see what a difference it makes when you help someone let go of an “all or nothing” mindset and take modest, aligned action, accepting missteps and slip-ups as part of the game.

What’s the smallest thing you can do today to move forward — even if you aren’t sure where the path is?