Why You Keep Failing at Achieving Your Goals

On New Year's Eve 2022, a group of my friends all made some New Year resolutions.

We made 9 resolutions on cute little bingo cards, it was fun. I was so sure I would achieve them all because I wanted to do all of them.

I want to focus on 2 of these and why I did not achieve them.

I wanted to read more fiction so I resolved to read 12 books that year. One Book a month, is easy, Right?

Guess how many I had read by this time last year.

Zero.

Okay by the end of September, I am a teacher I must have found time over the summer holidays to read. How many had I read?

Zero.

31 December 2023 rolled around and I had not read 1 book for fun. I have read many articles and non-fiction books mainly about education.

I enjoy reading. I found no time to read in a whole year.

Over 365 days, I did not find any time to read, something that has always brought me joy.

What was the other resolution? Writing.

I wanted to write a book. So I resolved to write a fantasy novel. I had been thinking about it for years and I already had some ideas.

Guess how many words I had written by April, by September, and by 31 December 2023?

Zero. Not a single word or idea made it onto a page.

I wanted to write for years. Yet over 365 days I found no time to sit down and even write one sentence.

Why did I fail

Look at those goals again what do they have in common?

Well, they are both about books but that's not the issue. The first issue is the size of each goal. They were gigantic tasks.

The second issue is the timeframe. Yes, I need to read 12 books but it's only April/ I have weeks off in the summer, so I’ll just do it then. By summer the goal is forgotten.

12 books in a year doesn't seem like a lot but when the books are all lined up in a row. That’s a lot of pages. It’s a daunting task.

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. It had similar problems and similar excuses.

I need to build my world mythology first. Oh, and I need to decide on the name and favorite color of my main character. And I cannot start today because I can’t write 1000s of words today I don't have time.

Lots of excuses but one root problem.

I was afraid of failure.

I did not want to start any task that I was not sure I could finish.

If I don’t even start I haven’t failed. Right?

Wrong. By the end of the year, I certainly felt like I had failed.

And I had.

I failed on 31 December 2022 when I set those goals. The goals were the problem.

So how do I not fail?

I already knew the solution to this. I teach it to my students every year when we look at revision. They can’t revise everything at once there is too much to remember.

We break the subject down into the main topic areas. Then we break each topic area down into its parts and in some cases, we break those down too.

What we are left with is lots of small easy-to-digest topics that can be tackled one at a time in little 5 to 10-minute sessions.

So I applied this to my goals.

I don’t have a goal to read 12 books this year.

I have a goal to read 1 chapter of a book a day. That means I only need 5 to 15 minutes depending on the book I choose and I have succeeded.

I have read 9 books this year already and one of them was over 500 pages long.

Usually, I don't read just one chapter I read more. Once I have started and I am enjoying it I usually continue for a while. On those days I am really tired or busy I just read 1 chapter before going to sleep and end the day one a win.

I applied the same process to writing a book. Write 1 scene of 500 words each week. That’s not even 1 chapter.

This is harder than the reading to get started and I tend to not write my book on weekdays. But I have a full story mapped out and 40,000 words written as of yesterday.

I have achieved infinitely more in this first chunk of the year than in the previous 12 months.

So if you have a goal you are not achieving just ask yourself these questions.

Is the goal too big to tackle in 1 chunk of time?

If the answer is yes.

Can I break this goal down?

Or alternatively, ask.

What steps do I need to take to solve this problem?

Keep following this process until the answer to that first question is no. Now you hopefully have a collection of small goals that you can achieve in 1 chunk of time.

Losing weight is hard but if that is your goal can you do 100 extra steps a day? Great just do that and when that becomes the new normal can you do 100 more? Can you cut out or replace 1 high-calorie item?

Don’t focus on endpoints focus on the actions that will get you there. Make your goal to do one of those actions.

Any progress is better than no progress. Be realistic with your goals and break them down into smaller more achievable steps.

Don’t focus on the finish line focus on that first step, then step two, then step three and eventually, you will have won.