I'm by no means an expert on goal setting. I've failed at it more times than I can count. But something clicked for me this past year, enough that I built a whole app to help other people do the thing I finally figured out how to do. Building that app, Jettie, was hands down the hardest goal I've ever pulled off. And in the middle of building it, researching, and talking to people who set goals — the ones who hit them and the ones who don't — I started to see the same three things trip everybody up. Not motivation. Not discipline. Three specific things. Here they are, and here's what finally breaks the pattern.
Just because you have a goal doesn't mean you have a plan on how to accomplish it. Think about it like driving across the country. It sounds fun (well, not to me, but to someone!), but do you have a map or GPS? Where are the resting spots along the way? What about snacks, supplies, stuff for emergencies? You better. If not, then you'll probably end up lost, confused, and turned right back around, headed back where you came from. Our goals are just like that. You want to write a script? You want to lose weight? You want to start a side business? Cool! But what's the plan?
Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer found that simply intending to do something often doesn't lead to action. It's making a specific "if-then" plan that dramatically increases follow-through. So intention — your stated goal — isn't the problem. Vagueness is.
After conducting dozens of user interviews in preparation to build Jettie, I found that many people give up during the planning phase, before they've even begun. And that's because the planning part sometimes causes analysis paralysis. Don't let "plan" scare you. It doesn't have to be a ten-page, highly detailed document. It could be a few bullet points outlining your next steps. And once you've accomplished those, you can write a few more. For example, if your goal is to write a book, you don't have to know every character arc or plot point planned out. Maybe it's just five bullet points on what the character does first. That way you're not facing "write a book." You're facing "flesh out scene one" or "figure out why my character makes that choice."
A plan is what converts intention into action.
Willpower is the term we like to throw around. "You can change your diet, you just need willpower!" "You can do anything with enough willpower!" Well, yes, sure, BUT willpower runs out. Systems don't. Instead of relying on willpower to carry you through to your goal's end, build a small habit that doesn't require motivation. It just requires showing up.
Personal anecdote: Last year I had a hard time writing a script. No amount of willpower was going to make me write it. I knew I needed something else. So I challenged myself to write "one shitty page per day." No, that doesn't mean I was intentionally trying to write horribly. It meant that if I did, on a particular day, that was ok, as long as I wrote ONE page per day. One page per day did not seem daunting. So I did it. Every single day. It formed a habit. Even when I didn't want to do it, or didn't feel like doing it, I did it because the habit had been formed and deeply grooved into my mind and daily routine. It became muscle memory. Plus the stakes were so low (only one page and it could be shitty?!) that skipping it felt weirder than doing it. Spoiler alert: I ended up writing more than one page per day and completing my goal. And I believe it's some of my best work.
Habit beats willpower. Every time.
Even when we have the dream, even when we can see the whole thing playing out in our minds, sometimes we just don't believe it can actually happen for us. Maybe it's trauma. Maybe it's because it's never happened for us, or for anyone we personally know. So we decide it's not realistic. We're too old to start. The industry's too crowded. There's not enough time to get it done. People will laugh at us. Once that voice shows up, and once you keep listening to it, you've already failed at the goal before you even started.
And you know what feeds that voice more than anything? Comparison. You look at somebody who already did the thing, somebody with the finished book and the successful launch and the business that actually works, and you measure your messy beginning against their shiny ending. You're comparing chapter one of your story to chapter twenty of theirs.
I'm not going to give you some woo-woo advice on strengthening your belief by repeating mantras, manifestation, and visualization (even though I believe in them and they totally work!). To strengthen your belief, you're going to look to someone you admire. Pick one person who's done the exact thing you're trying to do. Just one. Then go dig up their story from back when they were in the beginning or middle of it. Find the old interview or podcast. Somewhere in there you'll find the part where they almost walked away. Where they thought it was stupid.
The only difference between the ones who made it and the ones who didn't is that the ones who made it believed and kept going anyway.
That's it. You need a plan to start, a habit to keep you moving when the excitement wears off, and belief to carry you through. That's not a theory for me. That's how Jettie got built. And that's how you're going to accomplish your goal.