Happy New Year! I had a good relaxing Christmas break. On New Years Eve I watched the London fireworks and now 2019 is off and running. January is still the most popular time for people to try and focus on their fitness goals. The first question usually in any conversation about the year ahead is : What Do You Want To Achieve? (Your Goals).
In the health & fitness realm you should try to keep this down to ideally one goal, maximum two or three. Anything else is really pushing your efforts, especially if you have been putting the same goals down every January for quite a while. With this info in hand there are three simple questions to ask yourself to improve your chances of success.
1) What Behaviour(s) Underpin Achieving Your Goals?
We would all like different results but what behaviours do you need to do to achieve your desired outcomes? This is important to identify though you probably already know a lot of these.
2) What Micro Behaviour(s) Underpin The Behaviours Identified Above?
This is the important bit, what do you need to do to ensure the behaviours that will produce results get done.
3) What Mini-Micro Behaviour(s) Underpin the Micro Behaviours Identified Above?
Here we drop down a level once more. What do you need to do to ensure the smaller behaviours actually get done which therefore go onto to greatly increase the likelihood of the main behaviours being consistently put in place. At this level the actions are so simple you would think they are not at all important. It is not about the action but the sequence of events they inspire.
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Here is an example, say your goal is to get into that work suit or dress you have had in the cupboard for years (goal). You know to do this you need to eat better (behaviour), so you start by sorting out your dinners during the week to be healthier. To actually do this you need to get your food for the dinners on a Sunday afternoon (micro-behaviour). To make yourself actually do this you will schedule in your diary and tell your partner that you are getting food for the week ahead on a Sunday (mini-micro behaviour).
Further examples could include.
Goal – Lose Weight
Behaviour – Stop late night chocolate eating
Micro Behaviour – Have healthier snacks available in the house.
Mini Micro Behaviour – Put Snacks in obvious location every day & chocolate out of sight
Goal – Run A Half-Marathon
Behaviour – Run three times a week
Micro Behaviour – Schedule in my diary when to run.
Mini Micro Behaviour – Sort my running kit and leave by the door on days I am running
Measuring Progress –
When you are down at the lowest behavioural level I would then look to measure this statistic. When something is so simple to do, then you can almost always get it done and thus counting and measuring becomes fun as you are usually winning.
Breaking your goal down to this level can make a big difference in both viewing how manageable big goals may become and also in focusing on the actual thing that delivers results. In future emails I will talk about what is and what isn’t needed to be done to be successful.
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Photo – London’s Fireworks NYE From Blackfriar’s Bridge Where I Was Watching
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