By Ville Helenius

Setting goals is easy when you feel enthusiastic and things are going well. The difficult part comes later. Progress slows down, everyday life takes up your time, and the initial excitement fades. The goal may still matter, but working towards it starts to slip behind other things.

In my own experience, the best ways through these situations have often involved finding a different way to approach a challenge or a task. As silly as it may sound, many things have worked out this way. I have spent time trying the same method and expecting a better result, until I finally changed how I did things.

Weight management is one example. When I was trying to lose weight, I kept telling myself at every meal that I should eat sensibly and choose healthy food. I knew what I wanted, but little actually changed. Every meal meant making the same decisions again.

Things changed when I planned the whole day’s meals in advance and followed the plan strictly. I no longer had to keep thinking about it. Managing my weight became much easier for as long as I followed the plan.

Unfortunately, I am now back where I started. I am not sharing this as an example of how I solved the problem permanently. But I do know what worked for me. Now I need to work out how to keep that approach going when my attention moves to other things.

Research also supports making specific action plans in advance. Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s 2006 meta-analysis combined findings from 94 independent tests and found that if–then plans helped people achieve their goals. The idea is to decide how you will act in a particular situation. For example: if I am too tired to study properly in the evening, I will review something for five minutes. My meal plan was different, but I recognise a similar practical benefit: I did not have to decide what to do each time.

Sometimes the obstacle is the size of the task. Thinking about all the work ahead can make starting difficult. Choosing one small part gives you something manageable to do today. Reviewing one topic or drafting one paragraph may be enough to get started. On a difficult day, doing less can help you continue instead of leaving everything undone.

Other days call for rest. If you are tired day after day, simply making tasks smaller may not help. A plan needs room for recovery too. You want to be able to continue next week as well.

Keeping a record can make progress easier to see. A calendar or a few notes can remind you of the work you have done over several weeks. Otherwise, it is easy to focus only on how much is still left.

When a plan falls apart, it helps to look at where that happened. Was the schedule too tight? Was the task unclear? Did something more important need your attention? Sometimes talking to another person helps you notice an option you had not considered.

It is also worth asking whether the goal still matters. If it does, look for a way of working towards it that fits your life. You can change the original plan as you learn from doing the work.

With my own weight, I know one approach that helped. Now I need to return to it and understand why I stopped following it. That gives me a more concrete starting point than promising to try harder tomorrow.

The same question applies to other goals: if things are not moving forward, could I approach them differently?

Reference

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1