Goal Setting 2023

Welcome to yet another post about how I pretend to have my life together. The Goal is that you believe me okay?

So, it’s the beginning of the year, and, if you’re anything like me, you’ve decided you’ll start your diet as soon as you get back to work (2 weeks ago). You’re excited about your new gym membership and obviously, your brand-new wardrobe that doesn’t quite fit – yet. 

Let’s face it – in a month or two, you’ll be run down and burnt out because you’ve been living on salads and self-loathing. You won’t have the energy to work out. Monday’s start will turn into next Monday, which will lead to the first day of the new month. In the end, you’re lucky if you go five days in a month, let alone five days in a week.

This was me 3 years ago. At the start of the year, I’d devour videos and articles on how to set the goal and come up with a plan before the plan. But I’d never reach the goal. 2020 things started to turn around for me. Lazy Girl Hack for Life and Essentialism were the starting blocks of real and hopefully permanent change.

I think I’ve figured out where I previously went astray.

Let’s talk about my goal setting strategy.

Set The Goal

What do you want? The goal is the destination. At any particular point in time, are you travelling toward your destination? Or are you actively moving in the opposite direction?

Make the goal clear, because that is what you’re going to whisper under your breath every time you’re about to give up.

What you Think is setting the goal

If your goal is to lose weight and you write “lose weight” on your to-do list every day, you’ll end up with a pretty useless list. You need to break it down into small habits that you can do every day.

Plan

Pick a lane. If you want to lose weight, do you want to simply restrict calories, or try keto; High Protein, Low Carb? Is banting still a thing? Do you want to increase your activity level by lifting weights, doing cardio at home, at the gym, or through sports?

One of the things that always got me down when creating a plan or schedule was the what-if scenario. What if I was on the treadmill and we had loadshedding (actually happened – did not die). What if I was in the shower and there was a delivery at the door? (Also actually happened.) I always needed to be available. I realised if I was to get anything done, I just needed to do it.

Model your behavior on someone’s success

Do your research. Google, YouTube, books… and yes – you’re too old for TikTok. Ask someone. Seek professional help.

If you follow a bodybuilder’s diet and training schedule, try to find their off-season plan as well, so you can manage your expectations. We all know bodybuilders normally cut for competitions, yet we train to look shredded all year. That’s just not sustainable.

Avoid “Best”

I googled “best time of day to take probiotics”. Turns out, it is first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I would remember to take them maybe twice a week. When I started taking them after a workout it turned into 6 times a week.

Create The Habit

First, what is the bare minimum you would be satisfied with? When would be the best time for you to do it? If 10 minutes on a Thursday is all you have, then on Thursdays only do 10 minutes. The habit is the thing, not the when, or the how long.

At the start of 2021, my goal was to get to zero. But more and more I’ve realised that I need to love the process. The act of doing a little bit every day. And it’s hard for me not to just spend 3 hours doing it and getting it done and then sitting down after months and having to relearn a system or create an entirely new one. It actually is Day 1 every day.

Avoid over planning

It’s a good idea to have a general outline of the goal. But only focus on the next step.

I also started categorising my to-do list. And instead of just writing Pretty Perfekt, I would distinguish between blog post writing, social media planning, website maintenance, etc… so now I can see how much time I am spending on not only writing a blog post ( which is the easy part). But editing, creating/finding media, SEO is the hard part for me. And I might spend hours on my blog, but if I am not dedicating enough time on the other components of a blog post, there will be nothing published. Perfektion is the enemy of progress.

Focus on 1 Goal

My goal for 2020 was to get a breast reduction. In order to get the reduction, I needed to lose weight, find a way to pay for it and not get sick – or covid for that matter. So while the end goal was a single operation, the things that needed to be done were far-ranging. In a sense, 2020 created the perfekt circumstance.

My running goal for 2020 was to be able to run 10k without stopping or walking. After months of false starts, injuries and just falling off the wagon, I eventually reached my goal in September. Immediately after reaching my goal, I suddenly wanted to be faster, but because the ultimate goal was weight loss, for the surgery, I knew that if I pushed myself too much too soon, I would run the risk (get it) of injury or burnout, I decided to push my ego aside and continue to run slow, very slow, embarrassingly slow 10ks for the rest of the year.

Switch Tasks As A Break

If I’ve been writing for a few hours and feeling mentally drained, I would go for a run. If I’m exhausted from a run, I’ll look for media for my post i.e., scroll through Facebook. You’ll be amazed at just how much you can get done when you’re procrastinating.

Start Before You Are Ready

Only once you start, will you know when something doesn’t work. It is impossible to account for every possible scenario. You’ll figure out the best way to do it. Think of it as practice.

I had been trying to set up systems and to-do lists and planning and sorting but not actually doing. Not actually making progress.

When I saw a dietitian, she gave me a meal plan. I remember trying to figure out how much cereal to have. Started with 100g and couldn’t finish it. Checked the recommended serving size: 50g. Turned out to be the perfekt amount. Started having the recommended serving for all my meals. Had I not started, I would never have gotten to where I am. I would still be of the opinion that I can’t eat in the morning. Would still be training fasted and would probably still be starving and binging and generally being inconsistent. 

Be Consistent

I created a structure for my day, instead of a schedule if this makes sense. The problem with a schedule is if I miss an alarm, I feel rushed throughout the day. Bear in mind these are self-imposed “deadlines”.

I want to shift focus from time-driven to outcome-driven goals. I can absolutely spend an hour every day writing. But the goal is to publish a blog post, not have 10 posts in my drafts folder.

When circumstances change, so will the structure of my day. I noticed when I had my morning coffee, I would have all these ideas for my blog, and when I eventually sat down to write – crickets. Now, I try to write down these ideas while I have my coffee in the morning.

Focus on the process

Something I only recently discovered about weight loss. Even though I was only training once a day for about an hour, I was eating to fuel my runs, meal prepping, getting a good night’s rest, not drinking, and making sure my running clothes were clean. I was constantly “working” on my goal.

I aligned my weight loss goal with my running goal. That shifted my focus from losing weight to running. I incorporated strength training because runners needed to. Runners needed to stretch, so yoga was the logical choice. I started weighing myself once a month rather than every day or every Monday. My unit of measurement shifted from kg to km. I stopped obsessing about losing weight and focused on how to make running easier.

Create a conducive environment

How many times have you planned to do something, actually sat down to do it and then… you need the pen that you like or a highlighter but where did you see a highlighter…? And then 15 minutes after you’ve sat down to start and have everything you need, you think you need some coffee or lunch break! 

Have a space conducive to the purpose you need it to be. Need a space to think, a space to work or relax. Often if a space does too many things, it doesn’t allow you to do 1 thing properly.

Quit while you’re ahead

I hadn’t realised how my guilt over not doing something in 1 area of my life was affecting my overall productivity. Once I committed to spending just 10 minutes a day on the thing that I continually postponed, it cleared my conscience.

I also feel a tiny bit of you needs to hate your problem. It’s hard being overweight, it’s hard being broke. And just the freedom to buy something without doing mental gymnastics of what you’ll have to go without to afford this, or the freedom to wear something without having to tug at your clothes or take a picture at an angle to hide the various bumps.

Reaching a goal gives you the confidence to set more ambitious goals. Rest if you must but don’t give up.