Why do some people reach goals and others don't?

I’ve been reading a lot lately about why some people reach goals and others don’t. A group of people may have a similar goal, identical even, but not all of them will make it. This could be to do with diet, starting a business or building a fence. It’s applicable to all goals in all facets of your life. So it’s super helpful to understand why.

If you fail on a diet you may feel you have no willpower, fail at a business and you may feel a failure. But, ultimately success or failure is not down to the goal itself or your willpower or business acumen – it’s down to your ‘systems’ that are in place to support your goal. The dieter may have not filled the fridge with healthy alternatives or made a routine for some exercise, whilst the business developer may not have a business plan or did not budget correctly. The ‘goal’ is still in place but the support system was lacking. So they were set up to fail from the start due to poor planning.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says ‘You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems’. I read that many times and it is so concise, true and obvious that you wonder how we all miss it. But miss it we do. Even if we’re great at support systems in one area of life, generally we are lacking in others. We can be an awesome athlete and have our training program (support system) mapped to a tee, but bring on the need to seek work, or prepare a business plan and due to lack of experience and proper planning that goal may go by the wayside.

What is the way forward? Definitely write down your goal! That’s a given! A very clear, measurable goal with a deadline. Then, build your scaffolding on how you will achieve that. You need to create the path of least resistance and remove any potential obstacles that you will encounter and have Plan B in place.

A few ideas are :

· Have an accountability buddy/coach to monitor each milestone of your goal with a penalty for non-achievement.

· Set up a reward for yourself for each milestone achieved – this will help the dopamine kick in and give you further forward momentum.

· Tell everyone what you are going to achieve – make it very public.

· Set up systems, people, equipment and resources ahead of time to ensure they are ready to support your journey.

We ALL procrastinate about areas of life we are fearful of, disinterested in, believe we may fail at or feel we don’t have the money, looks, charisma or intelligence to be successful at. Many times this stems from childhood, but many times it simply grows on us at a compounding rate throughout life by judging ourselves against social media high achievers or the beautiful people. Sometimes we start out like a million bucks, then life beats us down and we have responsibility and we are scared to ‘go again’. At its heart procrastination can therefore often be fear based.

BUT as human sometimes we like to overanalyse, and sometimes it isn’t FEAR, it really is as simple as laziness OR having a disorganised mind, which are kind of the same thing because if you inject energy into organisation you will reap the rewards. Sometimes it has nothing to do with past hurts or traumas – you just don’t have a system! And sometimes you have a condition whereby you need help developing those systems. We are not all good at everything.

The NUMBER ONE thing that keeps me from procrastinating these days is having a productivity sheet. It’s so simple! It’s not just a ‘to-do’ list. It goes deeper than that. It is tight. It has steps. It keeps me incredibly accountable to myself. (And I tell some of those closest to me what I want to achieve.) I don’t have to constantly worry I’ve forgotten something. It’s much like my ‘path to market’ - but the product is me. It’s on paper – not in a digital format. I’ve tried many apps, but it’s either age or simply preference – I like the physical-ness of crossing jobs off. And scientifically it’s proven that the act of writing implants information in our brains in a stronger way conceptually and gives rise to more critical thinking. Plus – I love the beauty of a well-made diary – the smell, touch, the sensory experience of turning the pages. And I love the dopamine hit.

The bottom line is that no matter WHY you procrastinate and whether or not it’s fear based, personality based or learned, by the time we are adults it’s time to accept it, put scaffolding in place to attack your goals and be accountable to yourself.