Transcript: 

Everyone is making New Years Resolutions these days, but not me. 

Please forgive me but I just have to brag about myself today – I didn’t need to make any new years resolutions this year because I am actually doing so well on some old resolutions that my only goal is to keep up the ones I already have going.

I took some of my own advice and it has been working extraordinarily well. It’s kind of a dumb trick, but you know, we are dumb people, so dumb tricks can work really well.

What is my trick?

This is Shaun 정주성 McMillan, and this is the Best Class Ever.

Set small daily goals.

Set small daily goals. Rediculously small goals. For example, my goal for learning a new language is I only study for 15 minutes a day. Why only 15 minutes? Because that’s the smallest frame of time you can create on Google calendar. In reality I only study about 5 to 10 minutes a day, and I don’t study every day, but I try to. But that is no small feat because

1. I don’t like learning language. I’m not good at it, and it isn’t fun for me.
2. 5 to 15 minutes every day, or let’s say 10 minutes to average out the days when I don’t get around to studying adds up to at least an hour a week.

I also attend Korean class for two hours every Sunday night. So that’s 3 hours a week. And it’s a full 3 hours, because I’m really studying during those small windows of time. 3 hours a week for a month is 12 hours. Do that for a year and that’s 144 hours, maybe more, of serious learning.

The trick is to set really low daily goals. I mean really low. Take a reasonable goal, like studying for 30 minutes every day, then cut it in half. It can be as small as, I’ll just get the file out and look at it. Open, look, sigh, then quit. Goal accomplished. But you do that everyday and eventually you will actually engage and really do something. Do this and you will make real progress, and you will feel good about yourself. You like feeling good about yourself, so after a night’s rest you begin a new day, and hey, hey, I’d like to feel good about myself so let’s try it again. You open the file, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so intimidating. Check it off your list of daily goals, pat yourself on the back, and go gorge yourself on some dark chocolate and organic peanut butter spread over toast cause you’re living an awesome life.

What does a typical work day look like for me?

I wake up every day at 3:30am. I wake up and pray. During prayer I often get inspired to make big plans for myself. So I write those down on my notes app to revisit later.

Then I go for a quick 30 minute exercise session instead of eating breakfast before going to work. This achieves three goals, 1. It helps me to get some exercise 2. It improves my soccer skills cause I juggle a soccer ball while running around and 4. It helps me skip breakfast in an attempt to lose this pandemic weight.

I get to work an hour early so that I can beat traffic and accomplish my next three goals. I set aside 15 minutes to prepare for classes cause I’m a full time teacher. I set aside 15 minutes to push some weights in the weight room. And I spend 15 minutes memorizing Korean vocabulary.

Later on in the day if I have time, I will also set aside 15 minutes to read a book, 15 minutes to come up with new ideas, probably ones that I was inspired about when I prayed that morning, and lastly, if I have time, I’ll spend 15-30 minutes looking for a new job on Linkedin.com. I like the job I have now, but it would always be nice to have a better one should a great opportunity come along. Or I might spend 15 minutes writing an article, writing my book, or doing some art for any game or comic I’m working on. At this point I’ve already made progress towards all my goals so I can pretty much do whatever I want with my spare time for the rest of the day, guilt free. Or I can make myself available to help someone else.

Be Sure to Schedule Your Goals

There is one aspect of this that makes or breaks the technique. You have to schedule the goals. Early on in the day I set time on my google calendar to achieve each individual goal. Top priority tasks get done first. Once it’s time to do it, unless I have something more important to do, I just do it. No discussion. No waiting around until I feel like doing it. No procrastination. Again, all I have to do is look at the files, the checklist, or work on it for like 5 seconds. But you must set a time. For me, I have energy in the morning to do difficult tasks. So I schedule time in the morning to study Korean. If I don’t do it in the morning, I don’t do it that day. I just schedule it and try again the next day.

Achieve 3 Goals and Consider the Day a Success

If I achieve at least two or three of these goals, then I consider the day a success. As the year passes by I look back and I can see that I have made real progress. At least twice a week I write a list of 10 things I’m thankful for, and this progress I’m making almost always ends up on the list. This feels really good. And noticing the progress ends up being a positive feedback loop. The same kind that addictions cause, except you know, without all of the guilt.

This works long-term

I would be too scared to brag about this because I wouldn’t want to jinx it, except I’ve been doing this ever since the Pandemic started and it really works. And not only does it work, but I’m getting better at it. In 2020 I read ten books. Last year, 2021 I read twenty-eight books! And all of that while working full time. I’m no longer afraid that I’ll jinx it. 

So please consider making small goals, and don’t punish yourself for not accomplishing them. But reward yourself even if all you manage to do is look at them each and every day. Starting is half the battle. Little victories can turn into big wins. Break big dreams into little goals, and then make tiny progress towards those goals every day. Trust me, it adds up.