An Absent Constitute in Performing Your Goals: Efforts

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At around 2:30 in the morning, after a night of Talking Heads and brainstorming article ideas, I admitted defeat and went to bed. Shortly after, in my half-asleep stupor, an idea finally came to me. I hesitated for a few minutes, rationalizing if getting out of bed was worth my potentially silly idea.

And Opened my Notes in Mobile. This is what came out:

Article Idea: EFFORTS - THE YEAST OF A GOAL

I’m going to cut right to what you’re thinking. Yes, I’m talking about bread. No, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.. at first. But let me explain. In baking bread, yeast is an active ingredient that causes the dough to rise. Without yeast, there is no loaf. And in creating goals for ourselves, the effort is the essential ingredient that turns a goal into an accomplishment. Without effort, there is no result.

Let’s put the bread analogy away, for now, and break it down a little further.

So, what is the goal?

Merriam-Webster defines a goal as “the end toward which effort is directed”. Quintessentially, common definitions center around having the desired result that you envision and then plan to commit to achieving. Once this happens, intentions are set, creating a “goal”. Thereafter, attention and action are directed towards its completion. Eventually, one of two things will happen: the goal will be achieved, or it won’t be.

Here’s a basic example. Let’s say Raj wants to make a lot of money. This would be considered a value, as a value is a judgment of what is important in life. To Raj, having a lot of money is of high importance. This value creates a desire to want to make this idea of wealth a reality.
The next question Raj should ask himself is “well, how can I make a lot of money?” That answer is ultimately up to him. Maybe he decides to become an entrepreneur and start his own business. This is what would be considered Raj's “goal”. The ideal outcome, in this situation, would be that Raj becomes wealthy.

But something is missing. Unfortunately, setting a goal to accomplish is the easy part. It’s even easier to dream of positive outcomes. First, the goal itself needs accomplishing. So, what’s the missing “x” factor here?

Now, I hear your voice in the corner. “It’s effort. That’s obvious.”

Yes. But, in a way, it strangely isn’t obvious. And as humans, we come up with a lot of excuses as to why we aren’t achieving our goals when it really boils down to lack of effort. There have been many articles written on this like Just 8% of People Achieve Their New Year's Resolutions If you don’t believe me, look it up. These articles are chock-full of advice to help us keep our goals, including:

• Recognizing when you’re procrastinating and putting an end to it

• Being specific in your goal-setting (S.M.A.R.T goals come to mind)

• Having a support group & believing in yourself

A University has done research that in a group of 200 goal-setters studied over two years, only 19% kept their goals by the end. People who accomplished their goals owed their success to employing “stimulus control and willpower”. In the same University, 81% of people did not commit to their goals. Why? The biggest reasons were “paucity of willpower” and “failure of stimulus control”. So, with deductive reasoning, we can conclude that implementing the above strategies really does work.

But there’s still that pesky “x” factor: effort. An effort has to be put in to teach yourself the skills necessary to accomplish your goal. Even more importantly, effort needs to be actively put in on accomplishing the goal itself.
Let’s loop back to Raj. Raj has no idea how to start a business. But he has an idea that he thinks is profitable. In order to turn his idea into a reality, he needs to actively put effort into educating himself, networking, and getting funding. Not to mention the effort needed to start the business itself. But, let’s say Raj doesn’t want to put in the work of doing any of this. That’s fine, but his dream will stay a dream. And it always will be a dream until he commits to the effort involved to make it a reality.

“Hope is wishing for a thing to come true. Faith is believing it will come true. Work is making it come true.”— Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Got it. What does this have to do with bread?

Photo: Jasmin Schreiber/unsplash.com

This concept of actively placing effort into a goal is where the bread analogy arises from (see what I did there?). Think of it like this: First comes the idea of baking bread. After deciding you want to bake bread, you choose which kind of bread to bake. From that, you assemble all of the ingredients, mixing them in one at a time. Once combined, the yeast actively causes the dough to turn into a fully-formed loaf of bread.

Goal-setting begins with wanting to achieve a goal. Once you figure out which goal you want to achieve, you assemble your ingredients (steps that need to be done to achieve this goal) and combine them into a goal-setting plan. This could be done in many ways, I enjoy using a calendar and making lists in Note pads. From that, once the effort is actively placed on achieving the goal, an outcome will be produced. This is your loaf of bread.

The biggest step, though, in accomplishing your goals is just doing it. And it’s not easy, by any means. Start small, and remember that the only thing that is stopping you is yourself. Once you accomplish one, who says you can’t accomplish them all?

Feel free to strike up a conversation with me in the comments, and thank you very much for reading.

Cheers Rajiv