New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work. Build Systems Instead.

We’re four days into the New Year.

How are you progressing with your New Year’s resolutions?

Have you even made any?

If not, you’re not alone.

According to research by the Statistic Brain Research Institute, only 45% of Americans actually make New Year’s resolutions. And of that 45%, only 8% are successful in achieving their resolution. [1]

Why?

A number of reasons: Many try to change everything at once. Make big leaps instead of baby steps. Ignore their environment. Think abstractly about their goals, among other reasons.

But none are more common than setting goals as a form of what Dr. Timothy Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, calls “cultural procrastination”.

The Problem with Goals

What a mistake – the whole idea around New Year’s resolutions. People aren’t picking specific behaviors, they’re picking abstractions.

— BJ Fogg

We’ve all been taught the importance of setting goals.

“Living without clear goals is like driving in a thick fog”, writes Brian Tracy in his book, Goals! “Clear goals enable you to step on the accelerator of your own life, and race ahead rapidly”. [2]

There’s a problem, though.

Goal setting is flawed.

Why?

1. Goals Delay Happiness
2. Goals Derail Long-Term Progress
3. Goals Lure Us Into Believing We Can Control The Future

Let’s look at each briefly.

1. Goals Delay Happiness

Scott Adams, author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, writes:

Goal-orientated people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. [3]

This is because goals are often set using arbitrary and often unrealistic metrics such as, “I will earn $30,000 in my first year as an entrepreneur”. And if we’re unsuccessful in achieving our goal, (“I only earned $15,000”), we feel disappointed. We overlook why we underperformed to begin with (over-reliance on a flawed strategy, mismanaged expectations, etc.) and fail to stretch ourselves again in the future.

Writer James Clear adds the following:

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.” The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.” [4]

The problem is, even if we do achieve our goal, we tend to remain at a relatively stable level of happiness.

This is because of “hedonic adaptation” (also known as the “hedonic treadmill”): as we lose more weight, makes more money, win more competitions … our expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. [5]

Granted, achieving a goal might temporarily affect how happy you are, but eventually, you end up back at your normal level of happiness.

2. Goals Derail Long-Term Progress

You might think that setting goals will modify your current behaviour, and, given the right circumstances they generally do, but ultimately, most goals stunt long-term progress.

Why? Goals redirect our attention from processes to outcomes.

Once you’ve achieved your goal, you can either maintain the lifestyle that was conducive to you achieving that goal, (such as writing, if your goal was to publish a novel), or you can return to your previous “normal”.

This is why so many people experience a cyclical loss and gain in weight when dieting: once they’ve achieved their goal, they return to their previous lifestyle.

Once you’ve achieved your goal, then what?

Adams writes, “If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction”.

No one knows this better than Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.

“What does a man do for an encore?” asked Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, in his autobiographical book, Magnificent Desolation. Aldrin, the second man on the moon, became depressed and an alcoholic after walking on the moon. Why? He lost his sense of purpose. “What’s a person to do when his or her greatest dreams and challenges have been achieved?” [6]

3. Goals Lure Us Into Believing We Can Control Our Future

In 1996, 15 people died trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

It was the highest recorded death toll in the mountain’s history.

Goals, when over-invested in, can jeopardise our health, our wealth – even our lives.

In his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman writes:

The more [the climbers] fixated on the end point – a successful submitting of the mountain – the more that goal became not just an external target but a part of their own identities, of their senses of themselves as accomplished guides or high-achieving amateurs. [7]

To paraphrase William B. Irvine, there are things over which we have complete control, things over which we have no control at all, and things over which we have some but not complete control. And while we might have partial control over achieving our goals, we mislead ourselves into thinking negative events are a call to action: to invest more of ourselves into them.

So, if goals are problematic, what should our primary focus be instead?

Systems.

Build Systems Into Your Life

According to Adams, “A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run”.

Specifically, a system comprises a habit, or a string of habits, that effortlessly nudges you toward a desired outcome.

Examples:

• If your goal is to gain 12 pounds of muscle, your system is to count calories and lifting heavy weights.
• If your goal is to write a book, your system is to hit a daily or weekly quota (Google Tim Ferriss’, “two shitty pages a day”).
• If your goal is to learn a musical instrument, your system is to practice the fundamentals every day.

Systems are effective because they conserve self-control.

When you systemise a behaviour by doing them consistently (counting calories, flossing, writing…), they become a habit. Once it becomes a habit, you don’t need to “will” yourself to do it. You simply do it. And the self-control you conserved can be reserved for overcoming obstacles and resisting anything that might derail your progress.

Let’s look in detail at how to build a system.

How to Build a System

The rest of this article will outline how to build a system using a simple three-step process:

1. Decide What You Want to Achieve
2. Choose ONE Habit That Will Nudge You Toward Your Desired Outcome
3. Revise Your System on a Regular Basis

Let’s look at each step in turn.

1. Decide What You Want to Achieve

This is the bridge between where you are, now, and where you want to be.

We all want to achieve. We want to lose 14 pounds, run a marathon, build a revolutionary company, learn to code … but many of us get caught in the fantasy, the ideal of how it’s going to be when we achieve it (or rather, how we think it’s going to be).

We predict what will make us happier in the future (lose weight) and use our forecast to influence how we should behave in the present (diet).

The problem, though, is our predictions aren’t accurate.

This is because of “impact bias” – our tendency to overestimate the length and intensity of our future emotions.

Granted, you might feel happier if you get things done, go on vacation, get a promotion – but not long-term.

This is why it’s important to differentiate between what you want and what you need.

You might want to lose 14 pounds (because you believe doing so will boost your self-esteem), when what you need is to practice self-acceptance and self-compassion.

So, how do we clarify what we really want?

We start with why.

In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek writes:

Very few people can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? …WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care? [8]

To find your why, use what writer Stephen Guise calls a, “why drill” (also known as “The Five Whys” technique).

A why drill invites you to ask yourself why you want what you want five times.

Asking why five times helps you identify your core motivation and differentiate between what you want from what you really want (and probably need).

Example:

“I want to lose 14 pounds”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to look good naked”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to feel good about my body”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to feel more confident”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to find my soul mate”.

“Why?”

“Because I want to settle down and start a family”.

By the third or fifth why, you should have your core motivation, the reason why you really want what you want.

2. Choose One Habit That Will Nudge You Toward Your Desired Outcome

Once you know what you want, you need to choose a suitable behaviour that’s going to move you toward what you want.

You need a “keystone habit”.

A keystone habit is a habit that matter most, a pattern that has the power to start a chain reaction and shift, dislodge, and remake other patterns as they move through your life.

“Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything”, explains Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit. [9]

Take dieting, for example.

An example of a keystone habit could be journaling.

In one study, dieters who kept daily food journals lost twice as much weight as everyone else. [10]

“I started thinking about meals differently”, one subject told Duhigg. “It gave me a system for thinking about food without becoming depressed”. (Italics added by me).

When you build a keystone habit, it creates a belief, a feeling of certainty.

You begin to communicate to yourself, “If I can change this habit, what other habits can I change?”

How to Find Your Keystone Habit

Think of a keystone habit as your “ONE Thing”.

This is the best approach to getting what you want.

In his New York Times Bestselling book, The ONE Thing, Keller invites you to ask yourself,

“What’s The ONE Thing I can do, such that, by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?” [11]

In other words, what’s The ONE Thing, you can do, such that, by doing it, your goal, what you want, becomes a by-product?

Write down as many habits as you can think of. There’s no right or wrong habit. Choose one and experiment with it for at least a month. This is going to be your ONE Thing.

Once you’ve identified your ONE Thing, you need to systemise it.

In other words, you need to specify what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it.

To do that, you’re going to use an “implementation intention”.

An implementation intention is a commitment to perform s specified goal-directed behaviour.

To habitualise your ONE Thing, you need to introduce a trigger. You want your ONE Thing to occur on schedule. “When X happens, I will do Y”. This is why implementation intentions are so powerful: they specify what to do and when to do it.

The most reliable trigger is an immediately preceding action — like an existing habit.

This could be eating, showering, waking up … any behaviour you regularly do.

Let’s suppose you want to run a marathon this year. You’ve done Step 1 and you know your why, and you know your ONE Thing is running. How do you systemise running and turn it into a habit? You choose an existing habit as a trigger and do your ONE Thing immediately after.

Example:

“After I return home from work, I will go for a run”.

To make it concrete, add specificity, particularly frequency and duration.

Here’s an expanded example:

“After I return home from work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday, I will go for a run for five miles”.

Note. If you’re a beginner, i.e. you’re new to behaviour change, focus on making the habit super simple to do.

For example, if you had never meditated before, you wouldn’t try and meditate for 20 minutes. That wouldn’t be realistic. What you would do, instead, is meditate for ONE minute. Once you were consistent in doing that, then you would graduate to the “full” behaviour. As Stanford University researcher B.J. Fogg counsels, “Simplicity changes behaviour”.

Implementation intentions can also be used to prevent obstacles.

Let’s return to our running example. Let’s suppose, one day, you’re asked to work overtime, and as a result, you arrive home late and it’s cold, dark and raining outside.

What would you do then? Would you still run? Honestly?

What you could do is write down, in advance, any potential obstacles that could derail your progress.

Then, you could write down alternative behaviours, if and when said obstacles occurred.

For example, you might write:

“If I return home and the weather does not permit, I will go running in the morning instead”.

Planning for failure is by far one of the best ways of committing to your schedule and honouring your system. You learn about yourself and what you’re most likely to feel resistant to.

So far, you’ve decided what you want to achieve and why, identified your ONE Thing and learned how to systemise it.

Let’s look at our third and final step: improving your system.

3. Revise Your System on a Regular Basis

“If you want to build a system that works, the best approach is to build a simple system that meets the environment’s current selection tests first, then improve it over time”, writes Josh Kaufman in his book The Personal MBA. “Over time, you’ll build a complex system that works”. [12]

According to “Gall’s Law”: all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked.

This is why modeling is effective.

If you want to gain 12 pounds of muscle, for example, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel and build a system for strength training from scratch. Why? Someone else has already discovered how to do it.

As James Clear writes, “Do more of what already works”. [13]

There is one caveat, though: we can’t overly rely on modeling.

Yes, in the beginning, modeling how the right person’s diet, learning style, workout regime … is extremely useful; we can model what they’re doing and produce similar results.

But if we’re to build off others’ work, we need to understand why systems work so we can improve them.

We need to identify what works, what doesn’t and what can be improved on, especially with regards to our specific needs.

One of the most effective ways to do that is to engineer a feedback loop.

How to Build a Feedback Loop

“Feedback is our first step in becoming smarter, more mindful about the connection between our environment and our behaviour” writes Marshall Goldsmith in his book Triggers: Sparking Positive Change and Making It Last. [14]

Feedback provides us with information about our current behaviour in real time.

When local authorities in Garden Grove, California introduced dynamic speed displays (or drive feedback systems) to get drivers speeding through school zones to slow, drivers reduced their speed on average, by about 10 percent. [15]

A feedback loop is comprises four stages:

1. Evidence
2. Relevance
3. Consequence
4. Action

Let’s look at each in turn using a popular example: dieting.

Let’s suppose you’re using a system of eating healthily to lose 14 pounds. You need to eat 1947 calories per day to achieve and maintain your goal weight, and you’re using a calorie counting app like My Fitness Pal.

Here’s how you would use a feedback loop to improve your system of eating healthily.

1. Evidence. You’re notified by the app that your late afternoon snack (an energy bar) has exceeded your daily carbohydrate goal.
2. Relevance. This information gets your attention because it indicates whether you’re on target or not.
3. Consequence. You realise repeating this behaviour could jeopardise your diet in the long-term.
4. Action. You learn from your mistake and replace your afternoon snack with something healthier.

Once you deconstruct feedback into its four stages of evidence, relevance, consequence and action, your system will undergo iteration after iteration and nudge you toward your desired outcome.

Summary

We’ve covered A LOT of ground in this article. To prevent feeling overwhelmed, here’s a summary of what we learned:

1. Systems are more effective than goals because systems conserve self-control, which can be used to resist temptation.
2. To build an effective system, you need to decide what you want to achieve, choose ONE habit that will nudge you toward what you want, and regularly revise your system so you can improve it.
3. If you’re not moving toward where you want to be, look for evidence that’s relevant, consider what will happen if you don’t change, and take appropriate action.

Where to Go From Here

Should you stop setting goals? No, of course not. Setting goals can dramatically improve the quality of your life – if you act on them.

The days of SMART goals might be behind us, but that’s okay. We have SMART systems instead.