Set goals and establish good habits to tackle tough things
We all have tough things to tackle.
These tough things are life’s big and small challenges—the goals and good habits we deploy to give our lives purpose. They’re as simple as getting out of bed to go to work and as complicated as recovering from addiction or patching up a broken marriage.
Facing and overcoming challenges doesn’t happen by chance. Facing challenges is a choice and the result of goal setting, habit formation, and evaluation of your progress over time.
When I was a young man I was smitten with the idea of becoming an expert at a variety of athletic pursuits, from water skiing to rock climbing. When I discovered activities I didn’t pick up easily, I applied logic I first learned as a teenage weight lifter. I built training plans that broke activities into smaller skills and put in reps until I mastered them.
This worked especially well for whitewater kayaking, which I found very challenging when I started. Faced with the choice to quit or find a way to improve, I broke the activity into a dozen different paddle strokes and on-water maneuvers and performed them repeatedly over months. I went on to become an expert kayaker and author of a kayaking guidebook.
I’ve honed my approach to tackling tough things over the years and applied the logic to a wide variety of areas in my life including overcoming injury, writing a novel, traveling to far-off places, and quitting coffee, to name just a few.
It starts with setting goals
From the simple to the absurd, things get done because people set goals. Even when our goals aren’t written, all of our lives are organized using goal-setting filters. The simple act of prioritizing your day is a goal-setting exercise.
Brushing your teeth every morning is a goal that has probably become habit for most, even if we’ve never written it down. Climbing a mountain is a more complicated goal that most people would set more deliberately.
Put simply, goal setting is the process of identifying objectives you want to achieve, and that’s first step to tackle tough things. By setting clear, well-defined goals, you can increase your focus and motivation, and increase your chances of success.
After setting a clear goal, you develop a plan and identify additional goals that will support the larger goal. Climbing a mountain, for example, might require learning to rock climb, building up endurance by jogging, or saving money for a good pair of hiking shoes.
The self-help genre of books, podcasts, and blogs has produced a dizzying array of material about setting goals. There are SMART goals, HARD goals, WOOP goals, and OKR goals—each an acronym to help identify goals that are meaningful and measurable. There are also so-called micro goals, backward goals, one-word goals, and values-based goals. The list goes on.
My point here isn’t to embrace any particular system, but to focus on the idea that setting goals comes naturally to all of us—regardless how you do it. By leaning in to our innate goal-setting instincts, we can underscore the things we want to accomplish, let go of the things we don’t, and identify the steps needed to take action.
While there’s a growing body of work pointing to the benefits of habit development over goal setting, I’ll argue that developing good habits is simply a natural and necessary component of accomplishing our goals and tackling tough things.
Good habits put your goals within reach
Forming good habits is a natural and integral part of the plan we implement after identifying clear goals. Put your habits in service of your goals, and tough things gradually come within reach.
As an example, I wrote a novel over the course of five years by nurturing a creative writing habit. From September through January, I woke at 6 a.m. three times a week to write at least 1,000 words. Over time, those repeated small efforts coalesced into a novel. First came the goal: write a novel. Then came the habit: routine writing.
Want to go to law school? Study routinely. Want to run a marathon? Jog weekly. Want deeper friendships? Set time aside to nurture relationships.
In his 2018 bestseller, “Atomic Habits,” James Clear spends 250 pages describing how nurturing small habits can have big impacts. Small, routine changes that seem insignificant will compound into surprising results if you stick with them over months or years.
The same logic applies to establishing good habits and unraveling bad habits. By applying repeated, small efforts, big challenges are achievable.
Tough things are relative
It takes courage, commitment, and follow-through to face life’s challenges, and every person’s challenges are unique.
One person may be challenged by sailing across the Pacific while a blind person may be challenged by walking a half mile across her home city. Both are legitimate tough things.
Cultural norms dictate a lot of our perceptions about the challenges we should face and goals we should achieve, and they’re often focused on wealth, self-image, and professional success. Put society’s expectations aside, however, and decide what’s important to you, your family, and your community. Climb your own mountains, and tackle your own tough things, and you’ll be making a difference for yourself and those around you.
Moreover, the significance in tackling tough things isn’t ultimately about the list of things you accomplish.
It’s about learning, growing, improving, and expanding your horizons. Set goals and establish habits in service of these qualities, and you’ll give your life more purpose and meaning and find that you become a different person than when you started.
Tackle tough things with purpose and passion
Setting and prioritizing goals is the first step toward climbing the figurative mountains in our lives. Deploying habits in service of those goals will, over time, put them within reach.
By setting clear, well-defined goals, you can increase your focus and motivation and increase your chances of success. Goal setting can also help you develop new skills, build confidence, and create a sense of accomplishment.
Whether you want to learn how to garden, overcome addiction, become more self-aware, or do what you know has to be done to make a difference for someone else, setting goals and prioritizing them will help you identify the steps you need to take and habits you need to build to put your goals within reach.
Related articles
The following articles at Tackle Tough Things detail goal setting, habit formation, or both:
Quit alcohol
Overcome grief
Reduce screen time