The negative spiral

Consider this. You set out goals for the day that makes you feel great. You start out very excited in the morning, ready to take on these goals you have set for yourself.  And yet as the evening rolls around, you still have not met them. Then next day you set more aggressive goals, partly to catch up on the lag that has been created by unmet goals from the past. You still don’t get them done. And the pile of unmet goals keeps burying you; and with it takes your enthusiasm of getting things done with it!

The negative spiral of unproductivity and guilt starts to eat yourself up. Sounds familiar? If so, don’t worry, you are not alone. I have been there, and so have countless other people.

Let me give you a specific example. I use Todoist to manage my tasks, and they tend to pile up at times. One day, I had 38 tasks to review in Todoist. I set the goal for the day to review 38 of them (not do, but review and triage). I did not do them that day! (No surprises there, given that I am using this as an example!) Next day, I had those tasks to review and I added some article to write to my todo list (need to get additional things done, you know!). And guess what, I did not get any of that done either. Eventually, by chance, I reduced to goal to reviewing 20 tasks. I still did not get that done. I reduced it further to 10 tasks the next day. And I got 20 of them done. I felt great. This success also gave me the ammunition to knock off the rest the next day.

Do more by setting bigger goals — do we have this wrong?

Going through this experience made me wonder if we were doing it wrong. The key to productivity might lie in reducing the scope instead of increasing it if you are struggling to meet your goals. I have used this idea many times by now, and I love its simplicity and effectiveness.  

The idea of getting more done by reducing your goals might not be intuitive but the advantages of this approach become very clear once you try it a few times. Here is why, I think, it works. When we say that we will do something and we actually do it, we feel good about ourselves. Psychologically, you get a sense of achievement which propels you to do more. In fact, you might find that you do more than what you had set out to do. If you do not meet your goal, the opposite is true. You feel guilty or frustrated; in either case, not positive about yourself.  So you try to do more and you fail again, which leads to more of the same negative feelings. This spiral eats away at your confidence and makes it even harder to be productive.

This is not a new idea, of course!

This is what Tim Ferriss means when he advocates writing two crappy pages a day.

It is not easy to imagine how you can write a good book writing two crappy pages a day.

But once you are on a roll and feeling good about yourself, you (1) write a lot more than two pages, and (2) write better because you think you can.  The magic is in starting and finishing the small goals. And the big goal takes care of itself

A small goal is like a small domino, whose fall leads to falling of larger dominoes, in succession if set properly!

Another advantage of reducing the scope and getting stuff done is: you feel in control when you get stuff done, however small. You get in an empowering state of mind. You view yourself as somebody who gets stuff done, not somebody who procrastinates or postpones.

This is similar to Jack Canfield’s idea of fixing small annoyances before tackling bigger life goals. By fixing small annoyances and achieving small goals, you associate with someone who does not take “no” for an answer. You ask for more and you get it! It becomes a habit.

The fine print

Of course, it is not all cake walk, otherwise, we all could do it.

First of all, it is counter-intuitive, as I mentioned earlier. Therefore, there is a lot of resistance to try it. I have seen some people who don’t even want to try this approach: they have so much to do that they cannot afford to set small goals. Very ironic if you ask me, but I can understand where they are coming from: I have come from there too!

Second, by reducing your goals, you reduce your perception of what you are achieving. And in short term, you are indeed setting smaller goals and getting less done (compared to if you had achieved the un-reduced goal). This perception is poison! The perception compares with the alternate universe where you have met the large goal, not alternate universe where you don’t meet your larger goal (which is more likely if you have been trying for a while).

Would you rather talk about doing big things and do small, or talk small and do big. The choice is yours

It is important to set your goals high to achieve big things. But only when you are feeling good can you achieve them. Big goals set in lower energy state tend to depress rather than inspire. Small goals set in higher energy state tend to empower, and inspire. Procrastination is kicked in the rear and thrown out of the window. Such small violence against procrastination is a small price to pay for great things you are about to achieve, isn’t it?