Why Setting Goals ISN'T What it's All About
By the third week of January, many New Year's resolutions wane, often due to an overemphasis on results rather than the process. How can you shift your focus from goals to building sustainable habits?

It’s the third week of January – how many of your New Year’s resolutions are still intact?
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When we can physically see positive results, we feel more motivated to continue the action that is leading to these, which probably contributes to why the most common New Year’s resolutions are fitness related – the results are tangible; that and the excess food and drink we’ve probably all consumed over the holidays. But what about for the goals we, or others, can’t see us achieving? What happens when our integrity is tested in the process of achieving the goal we have set?
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We often intend our goals to become habits at some point, because we identify the value that the action has on our lives and on who we are becoming. The dopamine fix of ‘hitting’ goals, play into our natural desire to achieve, so the goal itself - the result of the process - becomes our focus. Perhaps setting goals subconsciously limit our belief in ourselves to achieve bigger things? We may believe a habit will form naturally as we achieve our goals, but setting a habit ought to be more conscious, potentially we simply undervalue the importance of small steps consistently taken.
James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ teaches this principle powerfully:
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“It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements daily. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.
Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the maths works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”
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My suggestion is to identify the habits we want to have in our life this year and focus on building them into our day-to-day. This does not eliminate our responsibility to set goals, but to incorporate them in our visions for the habits we hope to develop this coming year. We should be more conscious of our habit creating behaviours.
To help with this, consider the way we discuss self-improvement with others; we can change the narrative by the questions we ask. The typical “what are your goals this year?” could be switched to the more profound “Who do you want to become this year?”
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Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
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Habits are a double-edged sword. Bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits can build you up, which is why consciously focusing on the process instead of the results is so important.
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Goals may help the things we do, but habits shape the person we are becoming.
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It’s never too late to readjust, and recommit, to resolutions we make to ourselves – trying to be process-focussed over results-driven will help us with this.
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