Those who have seen my self-help articles or had coaching sessions with me know I go on and on about having multiple small goals and adding up to accomplishments with baby steps.
But the reason I keep talking about them is because they work for me, and a lot of people don’t even TRY this method of personal growth.
The Method In Brief
In a nutshell, the method is “Set small goals that you complete regularly.” It’s not exactly rocket science, and I think the simplicity puts people off. If it were that obvious, that simple… we’d all be doing it. I explore this more over on my self-help site Rooted Reinvention, if you’re interested in more details.
But the main point of this post is to talk about how this is impacting my reading and writing goals.
Setting up a System
For the last 2 weeks, I’ve been going to bed an hour early, and reading a book in bed. I haven’t done this every night, and some nights I only read 2-4 pages before tiredness sets in. This is not a daily habit I have to check off. But having finished reading my first book of 2019 at the end of MAY, being able to feel that I am making progress is a motivator I have needed.
Instead of putting a success/fail criteria on my reading goal each day, i’ve been asking myself at 9pm if I want to go to bed yet, and if I feel drawn to it, I’ve been getting into bed and sitting my pillows up; a system that minimises my chance of just going from the computer to pillow, and picking up the book.
On a couple of occasions I have had the book on the bed and a cat has joined me, and I haven’t ended up reading. This is why setting up the system of making reading an accessible option instead of a hard and fast rule works for me: I’m not challenging myself to push through exhaustion, not feeling pressured to keep a chain of reading a certain pages or nights a week… Yet, in 3 weeks I’m 50% done with my Advanced Reader Copy of Everything is Figureoutable. Since I went 5 months without completing a read, 6 weeks for a self-help book with written exercises I’m completing feels like pretty good progress.