Process Goals vs Progress Goals

Most people, when they think of a goal they want to achieve, think of doing some great thing that takes a lot of work and skill. "Progress goals" like running a marathon or earning a doctoral degree might come to mind. But of course, feats like that don’t happen because the people doing them took one big leap. How did they get there? Simply put, they had solid daily process goals that allowed them to achieve a really big, impressive progress goal over time.

What is a process goal? A process goal is a goal that you achieve by doing a simple daily task, day after day. Process goals should be easy to achieve, and you should have a reminder in place to ensure you do it each day, like a sticky note on your bathroom mirror. Remember that a process goal is only helpful if you do it each day, except if there’s a good reason to take a day off. Going back to the marathon example, it is a good idea to take a day off from running each week to let your body rest and repair itself; just remind yourself that you’re taking the day off for that reason, not because you’re giving up on the process.

One thing that will help you stay motivated to continue daily process goals is to keep the larger progress goal in mind. Why are you doing what you do each day? You have to remember that accomplishing anything meaningful requires a lot of practice leading up to it. Tying your shoes isn’t a big deal today, but only because when you were five years old, you practiced the process everyday with determined focus on being able to tie your shoes like a grown up. The challenges you seek to conquer today are much greater, but the basic way to reach your goals is the same as back then. Be like a little kid in your willingness to keep trying again and again until you get it! Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. 😊

An important thing to note about process goals is that they should be much more manageable and less overwhelming than a progress goal. This is what makes them helpful for ultimately achieving your progress goals. Do your simple process each day and then give yourself a pat on the back for that day, knowing you did that day’s work to reach your bigger goal later.

Even if you don’t have any progress goals right now, building a habit of completing process goals will help you be more successful in whatever you want to do in your life. Consider the process goal challenges mentioned below if you don’t have one in mind already:

-          Process goal challenge #1: do 20 pushups and 20 squats per day for a month.

-          Process goal challenge #2: floss your teeth once each day for one quarter.

-          Process goal challenge #3: make your bed each day for a year.

Having a dedicated time of day to do these things can also help. If it’s brushing and flossing, make sure you do the evening brush and floss at a time before you get too tired. If it’s making your bed, do it the moment you get up for the day. Doing your daily process at the same time each day will help you build a “muscle memory” that will further ingrain the habit of doing that process each day. It will also help you to focus on doing a quality job completing your process goal, which is essential for getting benefit from daily practice.

While having a daily reminder is great, even that can succumb to distraction if you receive it at a time when you can’t pause long enough to complete your daily process. Be thoughtful of when you’ll receive your reminder each day and plan it so that you are available, energized, and in a motivated state of mind when it comes. Part of this includes not overloading yourself; have a maximum of three process goals for at least the first quarter while you build this habit, and each of those goals should be doable in five minutes or less.

Imagine yourself going on a hike or going for a walk around your block. It’s not just one big, easy leap. When you set out, you have a mindset that the walk is going to take some time, and you’ll gradually get to the end of your walk step by step. You’ve done it so many times before that you accept this process and it’s not stressful. Setting and pursuing process goals to accomplish a progress goal should be no more difficult or stressful than that.

Process goals are steppingstones to accomplishing big things and being successful. The key to making them work is to be patient, persistent, and realistic. Don’t try to do too much too soon, remember the larger purpose of your daily process, and don’t oblige yourself to so much work that it just ends up draining you. If you can follow this recipe and work little by little without being in a rush, you’ll be accomplishing big things sooner than you expect!

The Value of To-Do Lists

For the third post in the Accelerated Learning series on getting things done, following the importance of being organized and using the right level of planning, it’s time to talk about your basic, daily go-to tool for organizing and planning: the daily to-do list. Two important rules for anyone’s to-do list are:

1.       Write down what you want to accomplish today

2.       Keep the list in a place where you’ll see it frequently throughout the day

Life is full of distractions. You might make plans to do something but then get distracted by one thing, then another, and next thing you know, there’s no time left for what you originally wanted or needed to get done. If you write down what you want to do and keep the list in front of you, most things on your to-do list won’t be that hard once you actually start them.

Feeling unmotivated to do anything on your list? On your daily lists, write a reminder to yourself to just try working on one or two items for just fifteen minutes each. Set a timer to reassure yourself that fifteen minutes will pass by soon. Then, get as much of your task done as you can for 15 minutes. Sometimes, you’ll be ready to stop when the timer sounds. But other times, you’ll find that working for fifteen minutes got you into a rhythm and now you want to keep going!

To-do lists can help you with several things – in addition to the list below, can you think of any reasons why a to-do list can be useful? A to-do list helps you:

-            Stay focused and better resist distractions

-            Reprioritize and be flexible as things change

-            Figure out if you need an outline for your goal or a more detailed plan

-            Ensure daily actions support your larger, longer-term goals

-            Understand what’s really important to you – that’s how you spend your time

Don’t feel bad when you only get half of your list done by the end of the day – that’s normal. Even successful people do that fairly often. Those people aren't successful because they’re perfect, they’re successful because they do what they can today and then they keep on going tomorrow. Besides, you still get more done by accomplishing half of your to-do list than you would have gotten done without a list at all.

It's simple. Just get a piece of paper and something to write with and write down what you want to do today (or tomorrow if it’s already evening). For your first month, write down one or two easy things to do each day so that you can build the habit of writing a daily to-do list and acting on it. Choose things that you know take less than five minutes. The most important thing when starting this is to build the habit, not to accomplish big things. Then, when you’re more uncomfortable not writing a daily to-do list than you are writing one, that’s when you’ve ingrained the habit enough to use it for more ambitious tasks.

One last thing: use a sticky note on your bathroom mirror or a similar daily reminder to make your to-do list, especially when it’s not something you’re eager to do each day yet. If you don’t have a reminder to help you get into the habit every day, it’s easy to forget for a few days and then start forgetting altogether.

Writing a daily to-do list will help you get more done – a lot more. You’ll think more about how you’re spending your time and what activities are really important to you. A to-do list is your daily exercise in staying organized, clear, focused, and productive to get results.

Planning in Proportion

In my previous post, It All Starts with Organization, I recommended near the end to make a plan for any effort of more than very minor complexity. But if you spend forever planning and never take action, what good is making the plan?

Planning to the right level of detail for the task at hand is important for success, but so is knowing when you’ve planned enough to prevent being mired in “analysis paralysis”. In this post, I present three basic types of planning that can be used to accomplish your pursuits more effectively: the outline, the picture, and the detailed plan. With a little practice, you’ll quickly get a feel for which of these is most helpful for any given situation.

Make an Outline

If you’re not exactly sure how to do something right off the bat, or if you want to give yourself some flexibility to decide on details later, writing an outline is an excellent way to help you think ahead and set up the right tools for the job before you begin your work. While you eventually need to get the details figured out during work time, you have the peace of mind of knowing you’re probably at least headed in the right direction.

An Outline for Tying Your Shoes

Make a Picture

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.”

                                                                                  ~Arthur Brisbane

“One look is worth a thousand words.”

~Fred R. Barnard

A picture is worth a thousand words. Making a picture, whether drawing one or snapping a photo, is a great way to convey a complex idea at a glance. To express the same nuance and thoroughness of an idea through text would require a long, tedious explanation that would be hard to visualize anywhere near as well as just looking at the picture. Imagine if you asked several people to read a complex text description of a picture and then had them each draw a picture of it without seeing what anyone else was drawing. Assuming they all had roughly the same drawing aptitude, do you think they would produce the same, or even similar looking results?

Tying Your Shoes from Left to Right

In addition to the traditional picture, ideas can be conveyed in picture form by specific types like flowcharts, maps, or work breakdown structures. There are all different types of pictures beyond those, and it would take too long to mention every possibility.

Make a Detailed Plan

If you have to complete a really big project, drafting up a simple outline or drawing a picture of what you want to make may just not be enough. There might be several different small projects that come together as one big one, better and more impressive than the sum of all the smaller projects. This is the situation where you need to create a detailed plan for what you want to accomplish, and the more work you put into making a smart plan, the less work you have to do when it comes time to act.

Some things that are good to keep in mind when considering if a detailed plan is needed:

-            Only write a detailed plan when it’s really necessary for getting your project right

-            A detailed plan requires the most up-front experience and expertise to do well

-            A detailed plan is easiest to write if you have a template to copy and edit as needed

If you’re unsure whether it’s worth the trouble to make a detailed plan, consider starting with an outline first. An outline that ends up not detailed enough can easily be modified into a picture format or a detailed plan as needed. And if you need a detailed plan but aren’t sure how to go about it, look around for someone you trust who might be willing to mentor you. Don’t be afraid to ask, because if you don’t ask, it’s a 100% chance that the answer is “no”.

A Detailed Plan for Tying Your Shoes

Conclusion

Successful endeavors are often about finding the right balance between planning and acting. Too much planning and your dream never gets off the ground. Act too soon and you spin your wheels, and soon enough you run out of resources to work with, including the motivation to keep going. Learning this balance is an art, and you need to be patient with yourself as you spend many years slowly getting the hang of it. Practice these planning strategies on simpler things in your life to build experience using them and to get some “quick wins” to prove to yourself that you can do this.

Put process over progress and call it a success if you’ve made an honest effort to balance planning and doing, even if you fall short of your original goal. Success over a lifetime is built one day at a time, and that’s how you should view your own learning and accomplishments.