You Need to Identify Your Motivations for Your Goals

You need to know where you want your time and attention to go.¹ If you don’t, they will go somewhere. But it’s less likely to be to a destination that you really think is best. So, you need to identify where you want to be at the end of the year, which will help you use your days toward that end.

But you can all too easily lose important projects and goals amid the frenetic pace of day-to-day life. So, in addition to identifying where you want to go, you also need to identify why you want to go there.

With anything that’s challenging enough to become a goal, clear reasons for it will help you keep a hold of your aim. They will help you keep pushing toward it when circumstances press and tempt you to downgrade an important goal to simply an aspiration for “someday.”²

This temptation can be especially strong when you’re mid-way along toward a goal. At that point, your initial enthusiasm for the project has probably declined. But the finish line still looks quite far off.

Especially during times like these, identifying why you’re pursuing a goal can help you

1. answer your own questions about why you’re continuing to pursue it,
2. focus on achieving your goal amid possible distractions, and
3. take the very next action that’s doable enough not to be overwhelming.

1. Answer Your Own Questions

Maybe you’re in the middle of the large, multi-year project of “doing a PhD.” Or maybe you’re working on something shorter like an individual article or essay, or longer like a multi-volume project.

Whatever it is, your goal’s scope may well mean that, at some point, the steam of your initial enthusiasm for the project will wane. When it does, you might still find yourself too far from the finish line to get much motivation from how close it is.

The Temptation to Change Directions

At such points, it can be especially tempting to change directions. Sometimes, such a change is appropriate. Maybe you see now that where you’re going isn’t actually where you want to end up. But you definitely shouldn’t a key goal simply because it’s proving difficult.

It’s always easier to take only one step in any variety of directions from where you are than it is to move 26.2 miles in one direction. But one step in any given, random direction won’t ever finish a marathon.

Often, the temptation to change directions comes from

1. an increase of pressure in other, often more urgent, areas that don’t align with a given goal,
2. a decrease in the apparent, relative importance of your goal, or
3. some combination of these two.

You’re always faced with the question “What should I do now?” But when you’re contemplating whether to change directions from a given goal, it shouldn’t be for reasons like these.

If it is, you’re not fully answering the question “What should I do now?” Instead, to some degree, you’re implicitly substituting for that question the alternative “What will make me feel less overwhelmed in this moment?”

Escaping overwhelm can be a powerful motivator. And in the moment, it can be all too easy to allow what’s most prominent (i.e., what’s creating the most overwhelm) to obscure the—perhaps better—reasons for pressing ahead toward your goal.³

An Aid for Memory

Given these dynamics, it can be immensely helpful to have a mechanism for both

• putting increased pressure into context and
• increasing the prominence of your reasons for the goals you’ve chosen.⁴

Doing so counteracts the pressure that otherwise accrues toward changing directions. Such a mechanism is readily available in the simple tool of a list.⁵

This list doesn’t need to be lengthy or fancy. But you should write it down, and it should clearly state the most compelling reasons for a given goal that you’ve set yourself. You might find it most useful to make this list in the same place as you’ve written out your goals.

Once you have the list, you’ll have a backup for your all-too-malleable memory about why you have the goals you do. Your list can remember for you why you found your goal so important in the first place.

Then, if you find yourself thinking about throwing in the towel, your list can easily remind you of all the reasons you’re forgetting or implicitly devaluing because they just haven’t been quite as much in the front of your mind. And reconsidering those reasons can help you put back into perspective why you really do want to see your goal through.

2. Focus on Achieving Your Goal

Alternatively, you might have plenty of motivation for the goal you’re pursuing. You just have plenty of motivation for other things too. Whatever’s new and “shiny”—either physically or cognitively—might distract you from where your attention really needs to be.

At some point, your larger goal probably won’t provide the immediate dopamine rush of tackling something that seems more enticing. But allowing your focus to drift simply for the satisfaction of either starting or completing something else won’t produce the sustained results you’re after.⁶

Confronting yourself with why your goal is important clarifies exactly what the cost will be if you let yourself get pulled away onto something else. You’ll be trading away progress on your important goal that you adopted for definite reasons. And in return, you’ll be getting what?

Being able to review why your more demanding goal is worth a lack of immediate dopamine can help you resist the urge to digress. Reminding yourself of your reasons for your goal can help you see why this trade isn’t one you actually want to make.⁷

3. Take the Next Non-overwhelming Next Action

According to G. K. Chesterton, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”⁸ That’s not because it wouldn’t be nice if it were done better. Nor is it because we shouldn’t strive to do things well. It’s because having something done in any degree is better than leaving it undone.

Similarly, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing piecemeal. So, if you’re grinding to a halt because your goal seems too big, refresh yourself on why you’re committed to that goal. Doing so can help motivate you to find the next step that will set you moving again.

That step can—and sometimes should—be very small. Its size isn’t the point. It just has to be a step in the right direction. Once you take it, you’ll find it that much easier to take the next one after it.

Conclusion

Goals can be daunting. They can also be draining. But you have them because you’ve intentionally decided they’re worth doing. So, wherever you’ve written down your goals for the year, it’s a good practice also to write your main motivations for those goals.

At some point, you might

• question why you’re pursuing one or more of these aims,
• be tempted to dilute your focus into other areas, or
• feel paralyzed by how much remains to be done.

When any of that happens, review why your goal is worthwhile in the first place. Doing so can provide a helpful prompt for memory that all too easily forgets the bigger picture when the merely urgent comes knocking. And reminding yourself of that bigger picture can help you stay on track and see your goals through to the end.

1. Header image provided by Annie Spratt. ↩︎
2. On the importance of clear motivations, see Michael S. Hyatt, Your Best Year Ever: A Five-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals (affiliate disclosure; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), 151–66. ↩︎
3. On this and other such errors in judgment, see Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (affiliate disclosure; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). ↩︎
4. Image provided by Glenn Carstens-Peters. ↩︎
5. For more on the value of lists, see Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (affiliate disclosure; New York: Picador, 2011). ↩︎
6. See Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (affiliate disclosure; New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2019); Cal Newport, A World without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever (affiliate disclosure; New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2021). ↩︎
7. For more on avoiding distractions, see also Michael S. Hyatt, Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less (affiliate disclosure; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 205–21. ↩︎
8. G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1910), 320. ↩︎