Momentum & Compounding; How I Set My Goals

With the proliferation of the internet, modern humans have the world's knowledge at their fingertips. We can quickly find instructions on changing a car tire and making a sauce using the world’s best spaghetti recipe and read about them in under 15 minutes. I can only imagine how many animal skins our ancestors would have given for such access to information. This access to information comes with negatives, however. Paradoxically, one downside of the internet is that there is so much information: Long pieces, short pieces, listicles, YouTube videos, testimonials, etc. One can spend forever looking up how to do something and never get to actually doing it. I call this the “100% planning/0% action” problem.

Tutorials on achieving goals are one corner of the internet demonstrating the "100% planning/0% action” problem. On one end, some say, "just do what you need to do." Conversely, you have people advocating spending hours setting up elaborate tracking systems filled with stickers and decorations. With this number of options, one can easily spend an unfathomable amount of time planning their frontal assault on the goals without ever landing on the beachhead.?

How do I know this? I used to have this problem. I would spend days or even weeks crafting the perfect S.M.A.R.T. Goal. I would ensure I was tracking the perfect metrics and had a fail-proof system. I was mere weeks away from greatness! As you may have guessed, my whole system would collapse under the weight of its complexity after a few weeks. I would then hunt for the next goal-achieving system and try again. (Whispers: I was using planning as an excuse to avoid taking real action toward my goal.)

Hypocritically, I will contribute to the mess of articles on achieving your goals by sharing my system. My system pulls from James Clear's Atomic Habits and Brian P. Moran's The 12 Week Year. I highly recommend reading both of those books (if this blog post is not enough, of course). Be warned, this system is simple and won't give you time to do the fake action of planning instead of doing it.

Momentum & Compounding

I base my entire theory of achieving goals on the idea that momentum and compounding are the gasoline and spark that will propel someone toward their goals. Momentum keeps you attacking your goals because making progress through small actions becomes second nature. Compounding allows the small activities that help keep momentum to build into real change.

Momentum

You can distill achieving your goal into finding ways to build momentum. Momentum enters someone's life when they keep doing something because it has become routine. A universal example is putting on your shoes and socks. Some do one sock and one shoe, while others do both socks and then both shoes (my apologies for choosing such a divisive example). The sock-shoe order doesn't matter here, as the person gets their shoes and socks put on either way. However, try asking someone to use only the opposite method. Such a simple task may become their life's most challenging undertaking, requiring effort to avoid slipping back into old habits.

While this example may make momentum seem like an albatross that we are all forced to carry around our necks, that is not all it may be. You can use momentum to create real change in your life. Take the timeless example of someone and their New Year's resolution to go to the gym regularly. Momentum would make going to the gym their routine. There is no thought involved. They get up and go to the gym at a specified time. Why? Because that is how they have always done. It is the equivalent of their chosen method of putting on shoes and socks. Instead, what happens? The person goes to the gym for 8-10 days, misses a day or two, and then gives up. They put on the wrong-colored business sock one day before work and decided it was time to walk barefoot around the office for the rest of their career.

By missing a day or two, they broke their momentum enough that going to the gym was not allowed to become part of their routine. Metaphorically, putting on socks was no longer a routine and became a chore.?

How can we fix this? Let’s go back to our resolutioner. They’ve read about S.M.A.R.T. goals and have molded their goal into "I'm going to go to the gym three times a week for three months." Their setup is the classic S.M.A.R.T. goal framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). While S.M.A.R.T. goals are great, three times a week could be better for building momentum. Our dear resolutioner can adapt their goal to intertwine the concept of momentum. Instead of only going to the gym three times a week, the resolutioner can build momentum by adding a minor action for the non-gym days. An example of such an action is: "I am going to go the gym three times a week and do a ten-minute yoga routine on my off days." The addition of off-day work because it adds a feeling of making progress, even on days when our resolutioner is not "in the gym." This framework does well for me because "making progress towards my goal" becomes my new "putting on shoes and socks." Making progress becomes so routine that not doing so is uncomfortable and makes my days feel incomplete.?

Compounding?

We've all heard the Einstein quote that compounding is the most powerful force on Earth. Ask anyone with a large amount of student loan debt, and they will tell you just how right Einstein was! Have no fear, fellow graduates! Compounding can bring happiness, too! It also comes into play when achieving your goals. As James Clear demonstrates in Atomic Habits, it is because of compounding that repeated small changes can have a lasting effect. Clear uses the concept of 1% better every day to demonstrate the power of compounding. If someone gets only 1% better each day for a year, they will wind up 37 times better than they were at the beginning of the year. 37 times! All from a slight daily improvement!

Getting 1% better has become a cornerstone of my goal philosophy. I no longer focus on making significant changes that may only last a week or two and instead focus on simplicity and consistency over the long term. Instead, I focus on showing up and doing the action that will help me improve.

That is not to say that I will not adjust my 1% better action. If I am not getting better at whatever I am trying to do, I will experiment with changes. A simple example is losing weight. If I want to lose weight and it is not happening quickly enough, I keep the 1% habit of tracking what I eat and then adjust my daily caloric intake.

Segmented Goals

The final pillar of my goal setting is that I always set them for 13 weeks. I got this idea from The 12 Week Year. There are many reasons for breaking down goals into segments, such as the ability to change course if things are going wrong and avoiding overwhelm by seeing "the light at the end of the tunnel." I'm going to be honest: I break my goals down into 13 weeks because I get bored. If I pursue four goals during 13 weeks, I may keep three for multiple 13-week periods. I will swap the fourth goal for something else. Having a bit of novelty keeps me on track with the other goals and brings a new layer of excitement.?

Putting It All Together

If you've made it this far, you must be interested in achieving something, so I will hit you with the payoff – a short summation of my goal-setting process. After reading the earlier parts of this article, I bet some of you wish I had led with this "short" summation.

Let’s say I'm our resolutioner and "want to go to the gym more often - maybe three days a week."

First, I think about a typical week, usually with an actual calendar in front of me. After filling in three slots for the gym days, I then think of momentum. What small action can I add on the other four days to allow recovery while still getting 1% better and keeping momentum? A simple fifteen-minute core workout with some stretching for three days fits nicely here. The routine has obvious 1% improvement benefits and, given the small time investment, will allow flexibility in your schedule.

I can already hear you asking: "But Jake! What about the seventh day!?" The seventh day, usually a Sunday is all about knowing yourself. I am very Type A. Sometimes, the best thing for me to do, especially with fitness-related goals, is to take my foot off the gas and give my body a break. I will leave Sunday open on the goal calendar to allow me some flexibility. If my body feels good, I may get a light walk around the neighborhood and keep the momentum that way. Conversely, if I have been burning the candle at both ends, my metric for 1% better changes. I may count reading fitness-related research papers or watching a few YouTube videos as getting 1% better. Treating your seventh day this way requires some self-honesty but can allow for more variety. If you don't trust yourself, you could add another day in the gym or more stretching & core work.

Then, using the most unsexy methodology ever conceived, I keep at the 1% better activities for thirteen weeks. Usually, every other Sunday, I will ask myself: "is this working?" (note that I did not ask myself, "is this still as exciting as day one?") and adjust as needed. Using our gym goal, maybe I will figure out six weeks in that four times a week in the gym is doable and make that change. Then, at the end of 13 weeks, I sit down and see if I want to continue on this goal, add in a new goal, or end this one. Then it is back to square one.

Good luck!

Goal Setting Framework

1. Pick a goal for the next thirteen weeks
2. Grab a calendar
3. Decide what actions you can take each day to push you towards your goals.
4. Write them on the calendar.
5. Evaluate your progress every week or two.
6. Just. Keep. Going.
7. After week thirteen, back to number one.

Some tools that I recommend:

For a full goal-tracking experience, I like the BestSelf Co Journal. This journal contains tools allowing you to implement the system I outline above, along with several other features:

https://bestself.co/products/self-journal

For simple 1% better/momentum tracking, James Clear’s habit tracker is great:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habit+Tracker.pdf

Atomic Habits Book:

https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/

The 12 Week Year:

https://www.amazon.com/12-Week-Year-Others-Months/

Also published on jakedenham.net