Big goals can hinder our growth.
I’ve seen it, you’ve felt it. We love to set massive goals. And why not: we can point to others who have achieved great things and we just know we can, too!
I’m going to run a marathon this summer!
I’m going to pray for an hour a day!
I’m going to read 100 books this year!
I’m going to lose 50 lbs by Christmas!
But more often than not (you know it, I know it), we do not run that marathon, pray that much, read that many, or lose any weight at all. And yet we remember those aspirations and carry a sense of regret and failure. No wonder some come to hate New Year’s Resolutions.
What January makes bold, February through December drags along with guilt. I know, conventional wisdom says that big goals are essential to growth. Aim high! Be bold! Make it count.
And there are times when those BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) can be just what we need. To break out of a plateau, we sign up for some monster challenge. To achieve a new level of mastery, we go all in with a learning project. Until most of us quit or fade or just…don’t. Big goals feel great when we feel good, but what about when the desire fades or we mess up or we just don’t feel so pumped up anymore? What then?
What I’m discovering is this: Our daily habits keep us growing more than our big goals. And when those habits are small, short, and simple, we can keep them operational even when we feel less than Olympian. Or Big, Hairy, and Audacious.
Here’s the truth: consistent, small steps, taken in the right direction, create meaningful change over time. This is the water-dripping-on-rock, erosion method of change, and it’s powerful.
My post today was inspired by a conversation I had with pastor and podcaster Jeff Strong. In Jeff’s Mere Disciple Podcast, we talked all about the power of incrementalism and the importance of habit formation. If you are interested in learning more, I encourage you to check out the podcast.
As I’ve reflected on how growth has been happening in my own life, here are four “Grow Slow” habit hacks I’ve discerned.
4 “Grow Slow” Habit Hacks
Habit Hack 1: Emphasize habit creation over goal achievement.
Anyone in the goal-setting arena will tell you that goals needs to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) and that’s helpful. Vague goals get short shrift.
But here’s the thing: Vague goals do set direction, and then you can build daily and weekly habits to get you moving that way. For example: the classic unSMART goal is “I want to get healthy this year.” As far as goals go, it’s pretty fuzzy. However, if you build a regular habit around that “get healthy” desire, you will see growth. Start a food log or use a standing desk or set an alarm on your phone for an hourly set of five air squats. Habits over goals.
Habit Hack 2: Set the habit bar so low it’s laughable…and then slowly raise it.
I have a tendency to over-reach and then under-perform–do you? So here’s the thing I’m learning: instill a habit by starting with something so easy that completing it always leaves you with a sense that you could have done more.
Want to make push-ups a regular habit? Start with 3. Yes, that’s right, 3. Use your knees if you have to. Easy right? Or maybe not. If that seems too hard, then just one–it doesn’t matter. One to three push-ups as a start, then have a rest day. You heard me: one rest day after your push up day. And feel good about that rest day–you are a champ. Think you can do that?
For that first week, only complete 1-3 push-ups, every other day. Then, on week two (and it’s already getting to be a mental habit), increase the amount by 1 push-up per “push-up” day. By the end of week 2, you’ve had 6-7 push-up days, with rest days between. And guess what? This is now becoming routine. You’re getting down and pumping out your 3 push-ups before coffee at work or on your way up from the basement–it’s taking you no time at all. On week three, you start increasing your push-ups by one extra per push-up day, which means that around the end of your second month (if you started with 3 per day), you would be completing around 25 push-ups in a single go.
Again: consistent, small steps, taken in the right direction, create meaningful change over time.
When we start laughably small, and then increase slowly, we’ll see surprising gains before we know it. The same principle can be applied to meditation (start with 30 seconds a day), reading (how about 2 minutes, or 1 page?), or just about any other habit you want to form.
Habit Hack 3: Make habits unforgettable.
One of the biggest challenges about incorporating small habits is our forgetfulness. Before they become established habits, they can be easily missed.
A related life hack I learned from David Allen is to make the thing you want to remember so obtrusive you can’t possibly forget. Example: I don’t want to forget my keys tomorrow, so I put them in my shoes. Have you ever done something like that?
Well, take that memory hack and apply it to habits. Make your habit unforgettable, placing a memory aid, a phone alarm, or a habit enforcer so front-and-center that you have to trip over it to avoid it. Make a habit easier to keep than to ignore.
This is where our strategic intentionality plays a role. What will make something memorable for you? I wanted to increase the number of times a day that I paused to pray, and so one of the things I did was set a phone alarm for 3pm daily, reminding me to pause and say the Lord’s Prayer. Would a similar strategy work for you? Another thing I’ve found surprisingly helpful is placing my exercise log on a counter top that I walk past many times a day. There it lay, unavoidable with pen ready, and I’m prompted to log my daily physical activity. That log book has jogged my memory so many times, reinforcing my physical exercise habits. How about that?
Habit Hack 4: Limit the number of new habits.
As I said, I have a tendency to over-reach. Which means, if incorporating one new habit is good, then why not try incorporating 15 new habits? Wouldn’t that be better? Funny how silly that looks on the page and yet how many times I’ve tried to instill too many new habits all at once. And failed.
And so, in this final habit hack, I encourage you to limit new habit creation to a few good ones, maybe only one at a time. And until it’s established as a habit, don’t try others. (Of course, play this by year–sometimes habits pair together nicely, where completing one leads directly to another and the momentum serves us well.)
Most of the time, however, focus on a few good habits. You see, not all habits are created equal. Some really do fight above their weight class, impacting multiple other areas in our lives at the same time. Habits such as placing your alarm clock too far away to reach from bed, keeping a food journal, or memorizing one Scripture verse per week all create tiny ripples which grow into big waves.
These kind of ripple-effect habits are called “keystone” habits, and they have been proven exponential in their net worth. Charles Duhigg, in The Power of Habit, explores this in detail but the short challenge is this: Certain habits will create greater change than others. When you focus on one or two of those keystone habits, you leverage good habits to greater effect.
Here are some examples of keystone habits I’ve already mentioned, with a few more thrown in:
Keeping a food journal
Regular exercise
Consistent meditation
Family dinners
These kinds of habits have been proven to effect multiple other areas in our lives, areas that we may not have even realized were connected. I’ve long noticed that my spiritual practices and physical exercises mutually reinforce and strengthen each other.
These four habit hacks will help you grow slow, but grow sure.
Where do you go from here?
First, take action:
How can you apply these habit hacks to one area you want to grow?
What is one, simple thing you can do today to make good habits stronger?
Then, learn more:
Don’t forget to check out Jeff’s podcast. We dig in deep.
What’s more, my book Growing Good Influence explores many ways we can grow personally, so that we can better help others grow, too.
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