You do not rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your systems
This quote is from the book “Atomic Habits” by American journalist and author James Clear and fits quite well within the topics of our last couple of articles. The general idea of this statement is that our daily systems or habits are a better predictor of our long-term success than our goals are.
Often people have the same goal for years and even decades—"I want to lose weight, get fit, get a promotion, etc.”—you get the point. We need goals and we need habits, but we think goals and habits have more in common than we give them credit for. They’re not different things, but more like opposite sides of a spectrum—where one influences and improves the other.
This is where it gets a bit tricky. As we have written about in our last couple of articles, you need goals to orient yourself—your goals and aspirations should be the compass that guides you in the right direction—but like a compass, goals will not get you to your destination—they only show the direction.
This is where your systems or daily habits play a huge role. There are a couple of useful ways to go about this matter, and a couple of books and concepts have influenced our way of thinking about this matter.
The one thing
In their book “The One Thing,” American entrepreneur Gary W. Kelly and American writer and business executive Jay Papasan explore the notion of daily goal-setting and what habits you should aim for. The foundation for their idea is simple—find the one thing that will provide you with the greatest return on your investment, and the thing that will make the greatest impact on your daily to-do list. This is a great way to think about your daily tasks. Think diligently about which things you’re doing daily, and how they help you get closer to your goals. Which things are important, and which are not? We often have a lot of “clutter” on our to-do lists, and this way of thinking can help you assess your daily habits—are they getting you closer to your goal? Or are they leaving you with a low return on your investment? We all have the same hours given to us every day, and it can be quite useful to assess your daily routine through the prism of “the one thing.” This is a simple, but quite effective tool, and leads us neatly to our next topic.
The aggregation of marginal goals
James Clear uses the story about Team Sky, an English cycling team, to elaborate on this concept. Team Sky went from being a middle-of-the-road team to being a dominant force in the cycling world—winning the Tour de France and then having their athletes go on to doing very well in the Olympics. The idea behind the concept is that you look for small improvements in your daily routine and try to aggregate them over time. This can be anything from better hand sanitation (translating to less sickness) to a better morning routine (that sets you up for a more productive day), but like the one thing, it’s a useful way of assessing your daily routine and habits.
The general idea is that this perspective focuses on better systems instead of goals. You can have a goal, but it’s your systems, or daily habits, that get you there. If you can improve by just one percent every day, then you can improve massively over a year. Set the bar low enough and do the work—then you’ll see great improvements in your everyday life. The wonderful thing about this approach is that it can be utilized in almost any context. It doesn’t matter if it’s work-related, family-related, or fitness-related. You set a goal or a direction, and then you focus on smaller things that you can improve daily. The more mundane and repetitive tasks are often the most potent ones—because they are the ones you perform most frequently.
To summarize
The beautiful thing about these systems are that they focus on the smaller tasks that you perform on a daily basis. Most people don’t need better goals, they need better systems. They’ve seen the direction of the compass needle for years, but they can’t create a stable system or daily habits that will get them closer to their desired outcome. We’ve often said that you should set the bar as low as possible and build momentum, and this plays very well into that strategy. Set the bar low and try to find that one thing that you’re willing to do, and that will make a positive change.
For example, we are big believers in moving your body daily, preferably outside—this can be a run, a walk, or a microworkout. Getting outside and moving your body is a great daily habit that benefits almost all areas of your life. See this as an opportunity to assess your habits and see if they’re aligned with your goals.
Until next time
Scott and Lennart