Incremental Goals

In the last several years I have been struggling with burnout. This January, I had been doing so much better, but was struggling with motivation in a lot of areas. One area was waking up! I was trying to wake up at 6:30 every morning to have time to journal in the mornings, but I just kept pressing the snooze button. I was so frustrated at myself for doing so, but I just couldn’t seem to kick the habit. I didn’t have a pressing reason to get up in the morning, other than the fact that I wanted time to journal, and I think this “optional” activity made my sleepy brain overtake my motivated brain and convinced me that I could just sleep in.

Maybe my goal of getting up at 6:30 in the morning was just too much for my capacity at the time. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to motivate myself to do it. This is when I came across the idea of incremental goals. 

I decided that I was going to take four months to get myself to wake up at 6:30, the first month I set my alarm for 7:15. This was the time that I usually snoozed my alarm until; so it was the time I was usually getting out of bed anyways. My only goal for the month of January was to just get up when my alarm rang. I asked my sister to keep me accountable, so I knew someone would be checking in on me to make sure I was doing what I said I would.

I was quite easily able to just get up when my alarm rang. I had been used to snoozing it for 45 minutes, so it was a little bit of a treat to get to sleep that extra 45 minutes and I was out at the same time every day. This started me on the habit of getting out of bed as soon as I heard my alarm.

I did this for the month of January, then, once this habit was settled it for a month, I set the alarm 15 minutes earlier at 7:00. By now I had the habit of whenever my alarm rang, I just got out. Simple as that, no snoozing allowed. In February, I was able to successfully get out of bed every morning at seven. By the time March came around I felt like I was just chomping at the bit to wake up at 6:45. I was very motivated by my level of success and was excited to have more time in the mornings. Now, halfway thought March, I can’t wait till April comes and I get to wake up at 6:30! I feel like it is doable and even relatively easy because I have made the habit of just getting up when my alarm rings, and it has been slow and incremental.

I have been shocked at the difference it has made in my life to just get up when my alarm rings. I feel more accomplished and motivated for my day, I feel like I am more focused over the course of the day, and I feel a sense of congruency with myself because I am no longer beating myself up for snoozing the alarm!
To be honest, I had been trying to wake up at 6:30 in the mornings for over a year, but now with incremental goals I have quite easily reached my goal, and I might even keep going for another two months till I’m waking up at 6:00!

Most people don’t want to do incremental goals because it feels too easy, or it feels like it will take them too long to get to where they want to go, but what they don’t realize is that when you use incremental goals you get a sense of momentum behind you and sometimes you can actually accomplish your goals much faster.

A lot of us make New Years Resolutions, but statistics show that we end up quitting halfway through February because the goal we set was just too high or too much outside of our capacity. With incremental goals you can slowly build yourself up to be able to achieve the goal, you can feel good about yourself for accomplishing it, and you can quiet the critical voice in your head that tells you you’re a “loser” because you can’t do it.

You want to go to the gym for 30 minutes three times a week. How about making a goal to go once a week for the first month, then twice a week for the second month and then finally three times a week. Or alternatively, you could make it your goal to just show up at the gym three times a week, even if you don’t work out, then the next month you could try to work out for ten minutes each time, and then 20 minutes, and then finally 30 minutes. There are multiple ways that you can do incremental goals, but they can be a lot more effective than goals that don’t give you the space to build your capacity. This is especially if you are struggling with burnout!

There are many of my clients whose expectations for themselves are way too high! Because of this, they try over and over, and may succeed for a while, but in the end they continue to fail. This breaks down their confidence and destroys any sense of motivation. When we are able to set incremental goals for them, we try to set a goal that is so easy there is hardly any way that they couldn’t accomplish it, and then we slowly build it from there. The hardest part about these goals is keeping them super simple and easily doable.

Incremental goals are slowly pulling me out from the last remnants of burnout. I am really excited with how they have worked in my life, and I hope that if you try them, they can be as beneficial to you as they have been for me!