🎮 Skin in the Game (2/4)
How committed are you?
So you have set a goal. Nice! But winners and for the lack of a better term, losers have the same goals. So setting the right goal is necessary but not sufficient. In startup terms, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything.
You can set a perfect goal but still don’t make any progress on it. Over the years, I’ve learnt the hard way that you need to have some skin in the game to follow through your goals. Here’s what worked for me:
1) Financial
This is the first thing that started showing results many years back. You can make a pact with your friend that if you don’t do something, you’ll pay them $1/$10/$100. The catch is that the amount has to be such that parting with it hurts you. With time, I became insensitive to lower amounts but a high one still works for me. There’s always a price that’ll work for you!
e.g. I was procrastinating on learning design for a long time. Then I paid for a Sketch license and that pushed me to spend time with the tool. Your subconscious mind tries to reap the rewards of your investment.
2) Social
I started using public accountability after that. Just announce to your friends / social media that you’re working on a particular thing and you’ll feel motivated to complete it. You don’t want to let your public image down. You want to uphold your public promises.
Just 2 days left in this month and I’m a whole book behind my goal! Time to get public accountability into the picture. 😹
It’s a slippery slope though! Sometimes, it doesn’t work for me. e.g. I announced that I’m working on a podcast 3 months back but haven’t done it yet. I think that announcement turned into a sense of validation, the same way you get gratification from Instagram likes. One good way that works for me is to promise something to your mentor / someone you respect. You’ll try to uphold that.
3) Identity
Recently, I’ve started aligning my goals with an identity. This has been working out well so far, but it’s still too early to tell. e.g. I’m an avid reader so I read one book every week. I’m currently writing a short story because I want to be a writer, not an aspiring writer.
I’d suggest you to try them all out and see what works. If you have some other method, let me know. I’d love to hear about it!
This is part 2 of 4 of my learning process. Next up is Timeboxing.
Until We Meet Again…
🖖 swap