It seems everyone everywhere promises these ridiculous outcomes like weathermen. The average Internet user, while they peruse, faces a downpour of claims like "10x Your Investment With This 1 Weird Trick" or "Dermatologists Hate This New Product That Shaves Off 10 Years!"
Why doesn't anyone keep it real anymore? A better advert would read: "Unhappy? Here's More Dramatic Escapism!" Call me a cynic, fine. The truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off.
This remains the problem for many. We would enjoy improvements in any regard: increased profit, thinner waistline, better endurance or even more fashion sense. Yet, we do not enjoy the absence of linear progress or the trials of repetition.
Alwyn Cosgrove, c.s.c.s. is a coauthor of the The New Rules of Lifting series. His comments parallel the thoughts of James Clear in his title, Atomic Habits.
"My best coaching technique is to establish process goals as opposed to outcome goals. An outcome goal is 'I will lose ten pounds' or 'I will run a 5k in 25 minutes'. A process goal is 'I will exercise 20 times by February 1st' or 'I will have 1 cup of vegetable soup every night before dinner.' Emphasizing the process takes your focus away from success and failure and shifts it to punching the clock and completing the small steps necessary to improve. I once used this strategy to do 240 workouts in a year."
"Emphasizing the process takes your focus away from success and failure and shifts it to punching the clock and completing the small steps."
I repeat this line and then transition to some of the thoughts James had.
If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?
James holds that you would. After reading his book once, I must agree. Goals give direction, but the systems take you in that direction. James has four problems with focusing on goals over processes and systems. I want to share the issue I find the strongest.
Goals restrict your happiness. Goals create an "either-or" conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful OR you fail and you are a disappointment. If you're someone like my mother, I might be a disappointment regardless, but that's my personal issue.
Success takes many forms and goals isolate that opportunity to congratulate yourself for any accomplishments.
While I enjoy waking up to grind games with the guys or get with my girl to eat and watch our TV shows, a man's gotta have ambitions. I might have too many, so here's a short list of some:
I tried to stick to the advice of these books in 2023 and didn't succeed. I think because, while I appreciated the language, I was still focused on finishing the book or writing out notes on all the chapters; I decided on arbitrary goals. Let's look at the results of improving certain processes.
