You need to know where you’re going with your time and attention.1 So, it’s important to identify where you want to be at the end of the year, which will help you your days toward that end.
But it’s also important to know why you want to be there. With anything that’s challenging enough to become a goal, you’ll benefit from having some clear reasons for seeing it through.2
Clear motivations can be especially helpful when you get into the challenging middle of a goal. At that point, the finish line will still look quite far off. So, knowing why you’re pursuing a goal can help you
- answer your own questions about why you’re continuing to pursue it,
- focus on achieving your goal amid possible distractions, and
- take the next non-overwhelming next action.
1. Answer Your Own Questions
Maybe you’re in the middle of the large, multi-year project called “doing a PhD.” Or maybe it’s something else.
Whatever it is, the scope of your goal may well mean that, at some point, the steam of your initial enthusiasm for the project will peter out. When it does, you might still find yourself too far from the finish line to get much motivation from how close it is.
At points like this, it’s useful to have some clear notes about why your project was important in the first place. These notes don’t need to be lengthy or fancy. But it does help if you have them written down.
That way, if you find yourself thinking about throwing in the towel, you can easily remind yourself of all the reasons you’re forgetting for why you want to see your project 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 something easier to tackle. But allowing your focus to drift simply for the satisfaction of completing something—no matter how fleeting—won’t produce the sustained results you’re after.3
Being able to review why your more demanding goal is worth a lack of immediate dopamine can help you resist the urge to digress into busywork. Confronting yourself with why your goal is important clarifies exactly what the cost of that busywork will be. You’ll be trading progress on your important goal that you adopted for definite reasons for what? Reminding yourself of your reasons for your goal can help you see why trade isn’t one you actually want to make.4
3. Take the Next Non-overwhelming Next Action
According to G. K. Chesterton, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”5 That’s not because it wouldn’t be nice if it were done better. But it’s because having it 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, knowing why you’re committed to seeing it through can help motivate you to find the next small step that will set you moving again.
Conclusion
Goals can be daunting. They can also be draining. But you have them because you’ve intentionally decided they’re worth doing.
At some point, you might question why you’re pursuing them, you might be tempted to dilute your focus into other areas, or you might be paralyzed by how much remains to be done.
But when any of that happens, reminding yourself of why you’re pursuing a particular goal in the first place can help keep you on track and see that goal through to the end.
Header image provided by Annie Spratt. ↩
On the importance of clear motivations, see Michael S. Hyatt, Your Best Year Ever: A Five-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), 151–66. ↩
See Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2019); Cal Newport, A World without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever (New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2021). ↩
For more on avoiding distractions, see also Michael S. Hyatt, Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 205–21. ↩
G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1910), 320. ↩