Identifying the Steps to Reach Your Goal

Let's say you have a goal, a result you want to reach. To get there from where you are, you will have to identify the action steps to take.

For example, if your goal is to improve at tennis so that you win at least half of your games you might identify steps like the following.

• Practice one hour three times a week with someone as good as or better than you are
• Take a tennis lesson once a week
• Do specific weight-lifting exercises twice a week to strengthen your backhand swing
• Always use the stairs at work to increase cardio endurance

If you see no improvement after a month, revisit the steps to see which need adjusting. (Disclaimer: I don't play tennis, so take this example list with a grain of salt, not as real tennis advice.)

If your goal is to lose weight, as mine was, these might be some of your steps.

• Do a cardio workout at least four times a week for 60 minutes each
• Decrease sweet treats (cookies, cakes, name your weakness) one day at a time, eventually cutting back by 95%
• Lift weights twice a week (not randomly, but with a plan)
• Gradually move from whole milk down through the range to skim milk, with a set date for each change
• Eat more fish and less butter, and have salad at least 4 times a week

These are not all the steps, and other steps would work better for someone else, but you have the idea.

Some goals will be easier to identify the steps for than others. Remodeling your kitchen or learning a new language—easy to identify; changing career fields and finding a great job in the new field—not so easy, but still possible. The key is to break the process down into very specific steps, identifying which ones need other ones accomplished before they can start, e.g., getting a passport comes before practicing your new language in another country. (For more info on this, check out the jargon of project management, especially dependencies and precursors.)

To track my process goals, I needed a checklist of some sort. For me, an Excel spreadsheet works well. There is a row for every date, and columns for weight that morning, cardio time, other exercises I track, and a set of columns for what I eat each day. This design makes it easy for me to spot correlations between what I eat, how I work out, and my weight (the actual goal).

Being a visual person, I don't skip days because they leave a gap in the colorful graph I run periodically to see my progress. The graph also makes it easier for me to see that, although my weight goes up and down daily, the trend over time is clearly in the right direction.

In the past I have used bright colored stars on my calendar as a reward for tracking process goals. While that is fun and very visual, I got better results with the spreadsheet. The key is to find out what works for you. Perhaps it's a daily check-in with a specific friend, or posting your workout progress on Facebook, or putting a quarter in a jar for every "good choice" you make (and perhaps taking one out for each "bad choice" as well). What you measure is where your attention will be, so set yourself up with a process that works with your goal and your personality.

The Real Purpose of My Treadmill

There are people I know who don't like using a treadmill because walking ought to get you somewhere, not just wear you out going nowhere. I never had a good counter-argument until this week. I realized that if I sat on the couch listening to my favorite music with headphones, people would think I was doing nothing and interrupt me. If I listen to the same music with my earbuds while on a treadmill or any other exercise equipment, no one bothers me; they assume I am busy!

The epiphany here is that the purpose of the treadmill might be just to get you uninterrupted time alone with your favorite music. And THAT would be worth it even if it didn't make you healthier on the way there! (But it does, and that's even better.)

Let the playlist begin!

Result Goals and Process Goals

First let me clarify from my last post that yes, I did meet my weight loss goal by September last year. Part of how I did this involves a distinction between goals about the results I want and goals about the process to achieve them.

When I can picture the result I want to end with—whether it's a new job, a new weight, my first cruise, or finishing a master's degree—I call that a result goal. Sometimes the result I want seems so far away, I don't know how to get from here to there. That's when I break it down into action steps, and create a process of steps that will get me where I want to end up... if I follow the process. In the case of last year's weight loss, I focused on getting to my fitness classes as often as possible, usually 5-10 times a week, and eating a little more carefully. I paid attention to the process, and the result took care of itself.

I think I learned this method from my children. They wanted good grades in school, and the way to achieve that goal was to do the homework and the classwork and all the reading and taking notes. When they worked the process, they achieved the results. The success of this method does depend on identifying the right steps for your process. Studying four hours a day does not ensure weight loss, and dancing ten hours a week does not help you get an A in Chemistry.

From another perspective, you can double-check that your result goal is realistic (see SMART goals) if you can identify the steps that you could take to achieve it. If you can't find the steps that could get you from where you are to your goal, perhaps it's not a real goal, just a ticket to take a guilt trip for not meeting it. For example, if I were to set a goal of becoming a professional football player, no amount of steps could get me to that goal, starting where I am today. Professional chef, maybe. Calculus teacher, lots of steps but probably. I'm not actually interested in cooking or calculus, so motivation to work the process would be my big problem.

Summarizing, identify your result goal, determine the steps it will take to achieve that and use them to create your process goal. Then keep your eye on the result goal for motivation but work through the process goal to get there.

Setting SMART Goals

Several years ago, I did a few projects with a corporate trainer named Maria, who taught me about SMART goals. She did not originate the concept, but she taught it well. SMART stands for criteria your goals should meet if you want them to work.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Action-oriented
• Realistic
• Time-bound

The more specific you can be in your goal, the better. Think of the GPS in your car—it wants to know exactly where you want to go, not just a general direction. "I want to be rich" is not a goal, but "I want to have $100,000 in my savings account" is a good start on one.

To know if you have met your goal, it has to be measurable. "Rich" is not measurable; specific dollar amounts are. "I want to lose weight" is not measurable; a specific weight to reach, or inches to lose, or a specific number of calories or carbs per day...all measurable so you know if you reached them or not.

SMART goals must be phrased in an action-oriented way. "I want to win the lottery" does not qualify, but "I want to win the lottery by buying two tickets a week until I win" does. "I want a new job" is a nice vision, but it needs more to become a goal. Better: "I will find a new job by looking at several sources daily and attending one networking event a week." This is the "how" of your goal, and sometimes the steps will need to be more detailed (outside the one sentence goal statement).

So far, a goal of "I want to have $100,000 in my savings, from buying winning lottery tickets" meets the first three criteria, but will fail on the fourth: realistic. Setting goals you can't possibly meet is setting yourself up for failure. There is no problem with some of your goals being a stretch, and not easy to achieve. In fact, some should be like that. Others are easier to reach and just need the other four criteria to make them effective and not just wishes. Wanting to look more proportioned in your figure by getting taller, not realistic; by getting more toned or slimmer, realistic.

Time-bound is the last criteria that separates a wish from a goal. That $100,000 in your savings, when do you want to have this? "I want to move to California." OK, when—next year, when you retire, before you die? Choose a time-frame that allows for the action-oriented stage to work effectively. Alternatively, if the time is set by outside events, adjust your action steps to better meet the deadline.

Putting all this together, last year I had a goal. I wanted to weigh 150 by my high school reunion in September, by burning more calories and eating more carefully. Given that I started at 183 in January, this was realistic, as well as specific, measurable, action-oriented, and time-bound. When the first four months of the year were not producing results at a rate that would meet the goal, I changed the action steps to "kick it up a notch" (as Emeril would say). When I have had SMART goals in the past, and stuck with them, they worked for me.

Good luck with your SMART goals in 2012!

Goals or Guilt Trips?

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the inspiration trap, based on my horoscope that day. Today I am seeing the same words from a different direction. Here's the horoscope (from January 2, 2012). 

One person's perceived perfection can inspire another person to feel flawed. It's a trap that can be avoided through honesty, modesty and a down-to-earth attitude.

Today's perspective shifts the pronouns — My own goal of perfection can inspire me to feel flawed. I have been beating myself up for several days for not getting my weekly blog update done "on time." Suddenly this morning I realized that I need to let go of meeting the perfect schedule (on this, anyway). After all, is my goal to get the blog done or to feel guilty?

It occurred to me this morning that sometimes we set our goals just barely out of reach. It's true that this makes us stretch and grow to reach them, and that's good. But what's up with consistently setting some of our goals high enough that we are almost guaranteed to miss them? Could it be our actual goal is a guilt trip? Do we feel "better" somehow because we feel guilty for missing a goal? Is guilt easier to live with than success (Ooh! I see a future blog in that!)? What if it's necessary to miss some goals to meet others?

Now we apply the "cure" my horoscope listed — honesty, modesty and a down-to-earth attitude. OK, being honest sometimes means waiting until I actually have something to say before I write anything. In all modesty, we're not talking about world peace here. And down-to-earth...why do I expect to be perfect when I don't expect anyone else to be?

I think I have just arrived home from this particular guilt trip. Not only was the guilt identified and faced, but the blog also got written. Not a bad start to the day, and the week. 

Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is what you give up to get something else you want. For example I wanted to lose a significant amount of weight in 2011. Some of the things I gave up to have this result were money, time, sleep, and a few things harder to categorize. I changed what and when I ate, but I definitely did not give up eating.

In January 2011, I started tracking what I weighed every day, because a spreadsheet made it easy and because you pay attention to what you measure. It's also easy to stand on a scale and harder to haul out a tape measure and measure body parts. Having had little success in prior years, I had the modest goal of losing 10 pounds by May 1. I got on the treadmill a few times a week, more walking than running. By the end of April I had lost 8 pounds. Some friends invited me to the Zumba fitness class they attend (Chakaboom Fitness in Franconia, VA  www.chakaboomfitness.com), and I went on May 2. I loved it, and was hooked immediately, even before I realized how effective it was. Digression for statistics here: I lost 8 pounds January-April, and another 25 pounds from May-August, in time for my 40-year high school reunion. September-December I lost (and gained back some of) 10 pounds (Thanksgiving and Christmas are high calorie, but predictable and recoverable). OK, that is the context for the discussion of opportunity cost that comes next.

The "opportunity" to lose weight and get more fit cost money, both spent and not earned. Not only was I paying for Zumba dancing classes — and Kangoo jumps, and toning once they were offered — I was also losing income by taking time off work to attend classes. At the beginning I went three hours a week, outside of work hours; by August I was attending every class they offered. They added more classes and in early November I attended 13 classes in one week.  (The instructors gave me a gift certificate for more classes to mark the accomplishment.) To do this, I rescheduled my part-time work around my fitness schedule, going in as early as 6 AM some days, and staying late others. I was giving up some sleep to keep the income from getting too low.

In addition to sleep, there are other uses of time that became opportunity cost for choosing the fitness first. What each person chooses to give up depends on how they spend their time otherwise. I gave up reading for pleasure almost entirely, reading fewer than five fiction books in 2011, and reading had been my best escape in 2010. I cut down on the number of dinners eaten with my family, because evening classes are at the time we usually eat. We had family dinner two nights a week (no classes offered those nights), and that worked for us. Missing dinner was also a great way to eat less, because I had a snack before class instead and nothing after class. Another activity I gave up was trying to keep up with my new blog. I am choosing not to give that up in 2012, so here I am, writing.

Time and money are not the only considerations in evaluating opportunity cost. The phrase "guilty pleasure" comes to mind here. I absolutely love my fitness classes, and occasionally do feel guilty for what I am skipping to attend them. I sent my daughter to pick up the neighbors at the airport so I would not have to miss class. I sent my husband to retrieve the same daughter at college so I could attend classes. I stalled on decorating for Christmas to attend classes. There's more, but you don't need the whole list to get the point. There's a way to decrease this guilt. You need to "own" your choice. You need to consciously acknowledge that you've looked over the trade-offs and actively made your choice, accepting both the upside and the downside as your choice.

Owning my choice has also helped with food choices. It's easier to pass up cookies and pastries at work when I remember my goal. It's easier to stop at a smaller portion and not take second helpings. Timing is involved too, when I choose to take more than one fitness class a day and still work part-time and still keep my household functional. A smaller meal about an hour and a half before Zumba dancing works best for me, and slightly longer before a Kangoo jumps class. I'm sure I'll have more to say about food choices in a later blog, but I don't want my readers sitting still too long reading this, so I'll stop here for now.

In short, think this week about what you want and what you are willing to give up to have it. That's your opportunity cost. Then choose to live with your choice, or modify it and try again. Have a great week!

Avoiding the "Inspirational" Trap

Strange coincidences often look like serendipity to me instead. Here's my horoscope from the Washington Post (Holiday Mathis) for today.

One person's perceived perfection can inspire another person to feel flawed. It's a trap that can be avoided through honesty, modesty and a down-to-earth attitude.

That's what I will be about for a few weeks here, trying to reconcile being "inspirational" with honesty and modesty. And I want my children to notice that this quote from a major newspaper did not use the "Oxford comma" -- same as I usually don't. (Yes, we do discuss things like that at home.)

Until next time, keep your eyes open for coincidences that are really the universe trying to tell you something.