Execution Strategy – Kick-Start a Routine by Practicing More Often than Necessary
When you are trying to implement a new goal often you are really trying to implement a new routine in your life—something that you will eventually do by rote without really thinking much about it. In order to get to that point, however, you will need to practice your new skills repeatedly.
One way to fast-track this process is to practice your goal skill more often than necessary. I learned this last fall when I was exercising every day for 20 minutes. Generally, most fitness experts don’t advise that you exercise every single day. Rather you hear something more like 3-5 times per week as a recommended guideline. But if you are trying to learn how to fit exercise into your life, forcing yourself to do it every day means that you are going to learn quickly how to exercise when you are tired; how to exercise when some life event has turned your world temporarily upside down; how to exercise when you don’t feel well; how to exercise when you are injured, etc. You also gain the fitness benefit of making a rapid change to your endurance and muscle strength.
I found that when I made an everyday commitment, a routine began to fall into place. When I backed off the everyday commitment, it became so much easier to say, “Well, I didn’t get to it today but that’s ok because I only have to do it 3 times a week and I can just do it tomorrow.” That then backslides into a pattern of delaying and delaying until the goal doesn’t get done at all.
Another way to think about this strategy comes from a medical experience I had in law school. As a stressed-out law student, I managed to give myself a silly Q-tip injury (Tip: never leave a Q-tip in your ear and then do something else like brush your hair.) that required some not so silly (but still minor) attention from an ear surgeon. To prepare for the quick procedure to remove a scab from my eardrum, the surgeon prescribed ear drops to be administered 3 times a day. Now, asking a law student to do anything other than study is just about impossible. In between classes and exams and projects, it was hard to remember to use the ear drops at all. When I went in for the procedure, the surgeon asked if I had been using the drops. I confessed that it was not to the prescribed dose.
“Well, did you use them at least once a day?”
Yes. I could say that I had. “Well, that’s good enough,” he said. “Sometimes, doctors prescribe a course of treatment more often than necessary to account for patient noncompliance.”
“Noncompliance” is the norm for most of us when we are taking on a challenging goal. While it is harder for us to trick ourselves to do more than required to meet a minimum standard, sometimes we can make this strategy work. Some ideas include:
- Take your normal goal and cut it down into smaller tasks or chunks of time that convert it to an everyday goal. (For example: the way I was exercising 20 minutes daily rather than one hour.)
- Schedule your goal and announce your overly-ambitious goal publicly (to a group of friends, your family, your spouse or children, on your Facebook wall, your personal blog, etc.). It’s like a “prescription” to yourself with others serving as the “doctor” monitoring your progress.
How do you institute difficult, new routines in your life? Have you tried any of the above strategies? Please share in the comments.