You can turn goals into habits

What day is it? It feels like January 84th already. How has January felt for you? Mine has been very busy and my brain is spinning a little bit as the end of the month is nearing.

There were a number of things to accomplish this month that should create a nice push of momentum for the year. I’m hopeful that the time investments will pay off. You’ll read more about that later in this newsletter.

Let’s talk about goals a little more, shall we? Last time I wrote about ​my goals for 2024​. This time I’m writing about using goals to your advantage in forming habits.

I always say our Frenchie feels like picking up a sack of bricks...

Don’t give up on your goals

Did you know most people give up on their New Year’s goals by February? If you really want to quit you can but maybe try one more month? It can be overwhelming to start a new goal, especially if it feels big and daunting right now. Think about why you want the goal and try harder than ever to stick to it.

If the goal feels too big, break it down into smaller pieces. I’ve said it before and that is the key.

A sack of bricks feels really heavy to pick up at once but you can always move one brick at a time.

You can do it!

You can form habits from goals

If your goal is about creating a new habit, no matter what that habit is, you can use goals to act as a catalyst for the habit formation.

It’s pretty simple. If you want to start doing something consistently then set a goal related to that habit.

That’s step one.

After that, you need to find a time in your schedule for this goal. Specifically, the tasks that work towards the goal. You can’t set a goal like, “I want to workout more this year” and just hope it will happen.

When can you make something specific happen? What is that something specific? If your goal was working out more, you could try doing something physical every day for a month. But you need to get specific. Something like, “I want to workout more this year so I’m going to get up one hour earlier and go for a walk every day for a month.”

After you accomplish that, you will have momentum to keep it going. If you learn that it didn’t work out so well for you, try something different next month.

If a month feels too long, then shoot for a week.

One key here is to not beat yourself up if you miss a day during that mini goal. Just chalk that up to life and try again the next day. Even if you miss some days, you’ll still build up the beginning of a habit.

After a while, these goals that you fit into your daily routine somehow just become part of who you are. You will just do those things because it makes you feel normal now.

3 example of how I turned goals into habits

This idea doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I’ve used this same technique over a number of years now and it works. I’ll write about 3 examples below.

I want to learn how to use oil paints.

A couple of years ago I was mostly painting with watercolors/gouache and acrylics. I had always wanted to dive into oil painting to experience the buttery smoothness that I’d heard about.

When I set this goal, I decided to try a challenge for one month. I was going to do a small 6”x6” painting every day of a single object. I set up my easel and made sure all my supplies were at the ready. Every day, I tried to find a time to dedicate to painting for at least one hour.

At first, I really wanted to get to a finished painting every day but quickly switched gears. It wasn’t about finishing the paintings, it was about putting the time in. At the end of the month, I had 14 complete paintings and a few starts that I didn’t like enough to continue with. This led to a year of painting with oil and expanding my skill set as an artist.

Now, even though I’m not painting with oils all the time, I have a grasp on the technique and feel confident when I decide to use them.

I want to write more.

I thought about this one for a second. At first, I just thought I wanted to write a newsletter. But when I stepped back to think about what the true motivation was, it was more about the writing. I’ve always enjoyed writing and used to do more of it. I’ve never considered myself a writer by any means but once I get going the words do tend to flow pretty easily.

Writing a newsletter every other week for the last 6 months has really made that a reality. I write a lot of documents for my day job but it feels different to write these newsletters. It acts as a way for me to reflect a bit, share my learnings with you, and hopefully inspire more creativity.

Now that I’ve been writing this consistently, I find that anything I need to write comes a little easier. Sure I’ll use AI to help generate ideas, first drafts for things, etc, from time to time. But sometimes the goal of that was more about the habit of getting the task finished.

It’s like the paintings. It didn’t matter that I didn’t write 100% of every single newsletter I sent out. Now I have this habit built into my life and every other week I feel like I need to get it done to feel normal.

I want to read more.

The last example happened recently. I set a goal of listening to/reading 48 books in 2023 and I hit it! I’ve never been a reader unless I was assigned some reading for school. So most of my post-school life has been lacking reading. It always lingered in the back of my head that I should read more.

To hit this goal, I hacked my existing schedule a little bit. I work out 5 days a week and normally listen to music on Spotify during that entire time. This equals roughly 10 hours a week. What if I listen to books during workouts instead of music?

I tried it and it was a little weird at first. The first book I decided to read was “Spare”, Prince Henry’s book. I’m not a big follower of the Royal Family or anything like that. I just picked a book I heard was a good read and went for it. I was trying not to be too judgy with what I chose to read so that I didn’t convince myself not to.

Well, fast forward to the part about his feelings around the tragedy with mom. I was in the middle of a heavy AF deadlift set. As I lifted the weight off the ground, he talked about the moment he heard the news… I never knew you could cry and lift weights at the same time. It was… a strange feeling.

After hitting this goal, I decided not to set another reading goal in 2024. Now that I’ve worked reading into my daily routine, I know I’ll read. I may not read as many books as last year but that was never the real goal. It was more about making reading a habit.

What I’ve been working on this month

January has been busy. The first thing I did was complete a mural proposal for a mural at the Fresno Yosemite International Airport. I’ll share the design once I find out which proposal was chosen. Proposals can be a good bit of work for a job you might not get but the budget and exposure on this one was enough to get me over that. If I get this mural, I’ll hit my 2024 revenue goal in a single project!

I’ve also been working on a painting for the Arts Alive in Agriculture show. The submissions are due on Feb 2 and I still have a good chunk of work to finish on my entry. This was the first show I was ever in 2 years ago. I’m excited to try again. The big thing that stood out to me the first time was the size of the entries. All of the paintings were rather large compared to my tiny 12”x6” piece. This time, I’m going bigger. Not huge, but big enough to not feel tiny compared to the others.

And the last thing I worked on this month was an Intro to Figma course. It’s a 6 part course that will be hosted on an online e-learning academy. I’ll share more details when it launches.

Busy, busy! But it’s all good stuff that should create momentum for the year.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,
Crawdad