Our biggest goals can be daunting because of the time, effort, or money to accomplish. Instead of using brute force motivation, I focus on breaking problems down into easier sub-goals.
I refer to this as chunking after its analog in psychology and my approach has five parts
- Identify my long-term goal
- Determine the smallest step I can take to achieve this goal
- Focus relentlessly on completing this step
- After completing, determine next smallest step
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 until goal is completed
Never was this more applicable than during my first marathon. At the beginning of the race, 26.2 miles seem incredibly daunting as I’d never run anywhere near that far. So instead, I convinced myself that I wasn’t running 26.2 miles. I just ran until I got to the first mile marker and then once there, I focused on finishing the next mile.
At the end of the race, I didn’t truly run 26.2 miles. Instead I ran 1 mile, 26.2 times.
While incredibly simple, this approach has helped me almost every day and can be applied to so many facets of my life
- Wealth – A house is far out, so I focus on saving $1,000 each month
- Work – My project is 6 months – 1 year, but what can I do by next week
- Personal – Instead of writing Christmas letters to 50 people, write 3 letters a day