Why setting goals makes you procrastinate and what to do instead

You know, the goal setting can actually worsen procrastination and kill your motivation. This was a real surprise to me when I learned this a few years ago, because goal settings are really common piece of advice out there, you know, when it comes to, you know, making sure you're working on the things that matter, making sure you're moving forward in your career and your personal life, whatever it might be. We talk about setting goals and this is something that I've seen loads and loads of programs and courses and things like this recommend, right? And it makes sense because if you don't have a goal, you don't know where to go, you don't know what direction to move in. That's why I recommend it. With patience. I find out my patience goal so I know where we're heading and I know what success and done looks like. And what's often recommended in a lot of these approaches is to make it like a really big, really inspiring goal. So, yeah, what do you want to achieve this month, this year? Okay, but what about five years? What about 10 years? What's your 20 year plan? I've even seen this, I'm not kidding, I've seen this exercise of write your own obituary, you know, write what people would say about you after you're dead. And that's a good way to think about your life's purpose, right? And there's exercises like the seven whys, the things like horizons of focus, these different approaches for helping to set goals and work out what do we want to do moving forward. And the start of the year is a time where we often do that. Right now, as we get into February, March, this is where procrastination starts to kick in. And there's a reason for that a lot of the time, because paradoxically, the bigger, the more inspiring the goal you set, the more likely you are to actually procrastinate and, and then not do anything, lose motivation and even worse, start beating yourself up for it. And that beating yourself up, you know, that shame and guilt that gets attached. I haven't done it. I haven't made any progress on my goals. It actually makes it easier to avoid them even more. We tend to avoid and hide from the goal because the goal now is the thing that we're using to judge ourselves. But here's the reason why that happens. Because in order for a goal to be inspiring, you have to be able to connect who you are right now to who you would be if you achieve that goal. You have to be able to see, yes, I can see how this person could become that person. And the bigger the goal, the bigger that distance. And if the distance is really, really far, what's going to happen is that your brain is going to go, oh, it's going to take a lot of work to get there. And you only get hits of dopamine when you're making progress towards your goal. But the further away it seems, the further away your brain thinks it's going to take a lot of work before I get that hit of dopamine. Dopamine is the reward chemical. You, it's literally the other habit forming part of the brain. If you want to be making progress on your goals, you've got to hack your dopamine system. But doing it like that, it can feel like a false start because your brain feels like it's so far away from getting that hit. It's why people have a really tough time quitting smoking because yes, the health benefits are massive and you know, the health risks are huge, but they're so far away. If you think about getting lung cancer, people picture that as 20 years away. They can't connect who they are now to who they'll be in 20 years time. So it feels like 20 years of work to get the payoff. Your brain goes, that's so far away to not get the dopamine. I can get dopamine now with a cigarette. It's the same thing with wanting to achieve our goals as well. So one of the approaches that's recommended for this, which does improve it is chunking, where you break the goal down into smaller goals. So you go, okay, you've got your five year goal, but what has to happen in the next 12 months? What has to happen in the next three months? What's to happen in the next month? In the next week you go down sort of, you know, what do you want to achieve this week to get you a step towards that? And if you can start doing that, if you do start taking steps towards that, you've basically brought the dopamine closer from your brain's perceptions. Like, oh, I'll get a hit in a week's time. Great. The problem is though, anything over a week or even a day, if it requires thinking, your brain will try and put it off. Because believe it or not, your brain doesn't like to think. It doesn't like to have to expend effort if it doesn't have to. Brains are actually quite lazy. It wants to save the effort, save, save the calories for when it absolutely has to think. And if there's any thinking involved, especially modern living now. There's loads of stuff coming at us, loads of distractions, loads of things we have to do. Loads of things on our plate is your brain will start to look for, where can I get a hit of dopamine right now? And that often means putting off anything that requires thinking, because anything that doesn't require thinking, it can get that dopamine faster. So here's how to hack that. Here's what you need to do, is you need to break down the goal smaller and smaller until you just go, well, what's the very next thing I need to do? What's the next physical action? And it really has to be the next action. It needs to involve a verb, a doing word. You know, look this up, read this, call that person, send this email, whatever it might be. It should be a single thing that you can look at and go, okay, I can do that pretty quickly and I can do that now. And I know exactly when that's done. Now you want to be careful with this because it's really easy for multiple steps to creep in. So for example, recently I got my car serviced and it would be really easy for me to get my car serviced. That's one thing. That's one step. But it isn't because I'm not servicing my car. In order to get it serviced, I've got to get it booked in with the mechanic. So I might go, okay, well step one, then book it in with the mechanic. But there's still a problem because I've got to think, what's my mechanic's number? And if I don't have that saved in my phone, the next step is to look it up. So the way to hack this is to break it down, right? I put this on my to do list, look up the number for my mechanic, find mechanics number. I know when that's done, that's one thing. And suddenly when I do that, instead of I'll put the car in for a service, I'll do that later because subconsciously my brain's going, oh, there's two or three steps we've got to think about that. I just go look up mechanics number. There's no thinking involved. I just Google the guy's name and I can do that. So I put that on my list. Suddenly now that task is attracted, my brain looks at that and goes, I could get hit dopamine from that. Yeah, and I could do that. So easy. That's a very easy way to get some dopamine. So it's going to make it much more attractive. A bit like if you wanted to climb a mountain, big goal setting. Looking at big, inspiring goals is like looking at the top of the mountain. Like, it's great to imagine it's going to be great when I'm there. But if you spend all your time looking at the top of the mountain, it starts to get intimidating. And if you were trying to climb that mountain, always looking at the top, not only should you look where you're going, by the way, but it will start to feel, I've put in all this effort and I don't feel like I'm any closer there. So break it down to the next step is literally that you don't think about, okay, well how am I going to do, how am I going to achieve that mountain goal? What am I doing? That big thing? Equally, you don't plan out every single step you're going to take along the mountain. You just go, where's the next step? And yes, smaller sub goals might be useful. Sort of like landmarks to work at. You're on track. That's a great idea. But just work out what's the very next step. Because when you decide to start walking, that's the only conscious action you take. So the really cool thing is after that first step, you don't often think, okay, step number two, step number three, step number four. What happens is the next steps start to happen automatically. So you can imagine that, you know, if I was going to book my car in for a service, I look the mechanics number up, I'm probably just going to call it there and then, because my brain's going to go, oh, that felt good. How can I get that again? Oh, I could call it. That's the next step. I can call it and book it in. So even if you have multiple steps that if you just break it down and what's the smallest one, you. You make it much more attractive. That provides more motivation, that gets rid of procrastination. And you'll find you don't have to plan out every single tiny step because that's another way to procrastinate. By the way, we get addicted to the planning and not the old thing. That's another whole topic there. But be aware of that. You planners will know this. You don't plan out every single thing. You just go, okay, where do I need to be? What needs to happen next? What's the very next step? Because when you do that, you start walking and you'll start taking more steps. So if you've got any goals you've been procrastinating on lately, give this a try. Just work out the very next smallest possible action that you could write in your list. Do that and I promise you it's going to look a lot more attractive. Your brain is going to want to do it rather than having to sort of beat yourself and whip yourself like a tired to try and make yourself want to do it. So give that a try if you think that's helpful. I have got an entire course on this coming out very, very soon. More details coming up next week, in fact, all about building professional resilience. So creating a bulletproof healthcare mindset. Because what I have found over years of coaching is that yes, teaching clinical skills, teaching communication skills, teaching patient management, super valuable stuff, but your mindset is the biggest determining factor in your long term success. So I've put together a whole bunch of strategies. This is just one part of many, many more that's coming up very soon. So if you'd like to learn more about that, keep an eye. I've got more content and a free training coming for you really soon. So I'll see you then. Take care of.