At the end of each year most people realise how little they have accomplished and fall into the tempting trap that is new year’s resolutions, in hopes that they can redeem themselves in the coming year—all to be disappointed a week later when they haven’t lost 50 pounds and become an overnight success with one simple trick they found from an ad on PornHub. It’s outrageous I know!

Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe you hear it every year from good old uncle Bob; or perhaps it’s everyone that hears the same old thing from you?

Whatever the case may be, I am a big believer that new year’s resolutions are a dumb paradigm to think in, which lead to nothing other than a little hype and that oh so addictive dopamine rush when your Facebook friends congratulate your new year goal announcements.

In this post I hope to convince you why you should not set typical new year’s resolutions, and instead opt for methods that make a lot more sense. Or don’t and continue to live in a land of mediocrity… that’s on you.

So as an obsessively motivated and goal-driven individual, and as a CEO wanting to accomplish all I can in the limited time I have, here’s a few methods I use to win at completing my goals.

1. Deconstruct your goals.

It’s one thing to understand your goals from a high level, but what about understanding them from A-Z? It’s my illusion that many people think of goals like this: Goal > Finish line. When really it’s more like: Goal > A thousands steps in between > Finish line.

I believe that a major cause of not accomplishing your goals is due to a lack of clarity. Not precisely understanding all of the steps needed to complete your goal is paralysing, as you can’t see a clear path forward and don’t know what to work on next… so instead you default to not taking any action at all, which doesn’t help.

That’s where the awesome DiSSS method from Tim Ferriss come in. He has developed this badass step-by-step approach to deconstruct something large and break it down into actionable chunks.

Not only HOW to break something down, but how to break it down effectively and prioritise what steps should actually be done.

What is DiSSS?

D = Deconstruction: What are the minimum useful action(s) you can work on to make progress toward your goal? S = Selection: What 20% of said minimum actions will lead to 80% of your desired outcomes? S = Sequencing: What’s the most effective order for doing said units? S = Stakes: What psychological and social mechanisms can you setup for discipline and motivation?

In practical terms this simply means breaking larger goals down into a series of smaller goals, selecting the highest impact actions, scheduling them in an order that makes sense and setting up habits to make sure you get them done.

2. Think consistent small steps.

The larger the leap the less likely you are to make it to the other side. If you set the goal of losing 50kg in 12 months with no steps in between, how likely do you think you are to achieve it? Unlikely.

As I mentioned in the last point, it’s important to deconstruct large goals into smaller steps, aka chunks. Chunking not only makes things clearer and less confronting, it allows for consistency. It’s not possible to consistently get progress on large chunks, only small ones that can be worked on in smaller amount of time (hours / days).

Below is one of my favourite methodologies, the Kaizen method, in all its beautiful glory. On the left you have the traditional approach to completing tasks (big leaps and bounds), and on the right you have the Kaizen method of many smaller, more rapid steps.

Instead of thinking: “I need to become healthy”, think, “what is one food that has a lot of artificial-sugar which I can get into a habit of eliminating from my diet”. Then repeat, and continue to scale by eliminating more bad foods one by one until your diet is “clean”.

The Great Wall of China was built brick by brick, section by section. Each brick was made from clay, dirt, sand and mortar. Each individual material was harvested from different regions.

As you can see by the above example, it’s the accumulation of small chunks (in this case bricks) which make up the whole.

Always keep in mind these macros and micros.

3. Think habits.

Another major reason for not achieving your goals is a faliure to form a habit around said goal. Unless your goal is completely trivial it will require you to take many actions over an extended duration of time. So make no mistake, habits are what actually achieve goals, not one-hit-wonder based efforts.

If you want to form a new habit, many suggest it takes 21 days, while others say it’s more like 66.

But I say screw averages, they are meaningless here. If you really want to form a habit, you need to do it on a neurological level.

Enter dopamine

“Your nucleus accumbens craves the dopamine squirt that it knows goes with what it has learned to be pleasurable. The confounding thing is that the first time you do something, the dopamine comes after the action. In the future, the dopamine is released earlier and earlier until just thinking about something in anticipation causes a dopamine reward. So, the dopamine released before the action and along the way actually motivates you towards the behavior.”

— http://goo.gl/iQQ2Xf

So in essence to form a habit you need to make your brain release dopamine every time you do the activity — so that eventually it releases dopamine before you do the activity, therefore turing it into a true habit.

A really straightforward way to form habits is to set reminders. You can set reminders based on time or location so that you don’t forget. Eventually the goal is to remember the habit off by heart, but until that point simple cues are really helpful. Using the reminders app on your smartphone, or setting up events in your calendar will do the trick.

This is a good read on habits.

4. Clearly define the finish line.

You need to clearly define the success state of each goal. Without a very clear picture of how that looks you will be aiming at a target which does not exist. This will lead you to waste a lot of time.

I simply use a KPI based system. KPIs are “Key Performance Indicators”, aka markers that allow you to easily measure performance.

A simple KPI for a weight loss goal is the numeric value you want to see on the scale. If you weight 100kg and want to lose 20kg, then your KPI is seeing 80kg on the scale when you stand on it. That’s a simple success metric.

You can take this a step further by defining a more personal description of how you will feel when you complete the goal.

For the example above, you might say something like: “In 12 months when I weight 20kg less on the scales, I will feel extremely proud and satisfied with myself, as well as much more confident with my body image.”

Many people use this form of visualisation to reinforce the emotional aspect, which is very important for staying motivated and convincing yourself that the success state will be that of a fulfilling one for you.

5. Track your damn progress!

Accomplishing a single goal is a challenge for many, imagine if you have 10 of them you’re working on simultaneously! It’s a tough gig.

Having all of your goals scattered on notepads and post it notes—god forbid only having them in your head and not written down—is a sure way to not complete your them.

You really need a solid system in place to manage them and track your progress along the way.

If you don’t have a simple and effective way to manage all of your tasks then you’re in big trouble. It’s very important to organise and schedule said goals / tasks so that you know what needs to be done.

You may have heard terms like Agile, Scrum and Kanban before. No? They’re all task-management methodologies. You can learn more about them here.

My favourite tool by far for managing tasks is Trello. Here’s a demo of how it works: https://youtu.be/xky48zyL9iA

You can simply setup a “Goals” board where you create a task for each of your goals, and break them down into bite-size actions via a checklist.

Then simply set a due date and a reminder to checkup on the goal regularly (a once-weekly calendar reminder is good), and get it done!

Here’s a few Trello pro tips:

You will be a task-completing machine in no time with Trello.

6. Think 10X!

Although I think most “motivational seminars” are for fools, I am quite a fan of Tony Robins and Grand Cardone.

I find that you NEED to be highly energetic, passionate, unrelenting and delusionally-positive to make your goals happen, and I personally find these two very motivating and inspiring!

Lately I have been fully embracing “The 10x Rule” by Grand Cardone, which is all about thinking bigger. If you think a task is going to take a month, shorten that time by 10x. If you want to generate $100k of sales this month, times it by 10x.

DO 10X WHAT OTHERS DO EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The philosophy is all about being more ambitious and telling average to GTFO, because you don’t want anything to do with it.

Instead of aiming low and being happy when you accomplish mediocre goals, it’s all about aiming for the starts, hustling your heart out and being content when you make it further than you otherwise would have.

I highly recommend getting the 7+ hour audiobook, as well as his “Be obsessed or be average” audiobook. They will rock your world and keep you motivated to achieve your goals without stopping.

Bonus: Improve your productivity.

A big part of making shit happen is to actually be really productive. Being a go getter and ticking tasks off like there’s no tomorrow will amplify your progress toward larger goals.

Check out the post I have written on the topic below:

How I plan my goals.

I used to plan my goals quite differently, but nowadays I can get away with keeping things pretty simple as I already have reliable habits and a ton of self motivation to get the job done.

My system is a simple Google Sheet with my goals. Each goal has a KPI and a list of actions I can take.

These goals are all fully outlined on Trello, where I track their progress and manage all of the individual tasks on a more micro level.

Below is a sample of my 2017 goals.

I hope these methods and systems can help you smash your goals and feel a great sense of accomplishment not just every year, but every day!

If you’re truly ready to take charge of your goals and life then implement these systems and see if they have an impact. What’s worse than not achieving your goals is not entering the race at all.

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Be happy and stay healthy peeps 😀

— John, CEO at Hapi.