Conquer your anxiety and increase performance by setting multiple little goals

Ten years ago, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi gave an excellent TED talk on the concept of "flow", or the heightened awareness and cognitive ability some people can create for themselves when working. It's a great concept, but unfortunately, I can't always go with the flow. For someone as mentally disorganized as

So...much...frustration...

me, flow comes and goes. Sometimes I'm on fire, other times I can't scrape myself away from reading articles on CNN.com or Lifehacker long enough to remember to eat lunch.

I've written in the past about the benefits of the Easy Way and using the inherent pressure of intelligently procrastinating to get more done in less time. For me, these result in a controlled (maybe even forced) flow state. Unfortunately, these tactics occasionally have undesirable side effects.

One of these side effects that I experience from time to time is a nagging anxiety when I have low amounts of deliverables due, or when I set a goal and fail to meet it. That little tick of anxiety keeps me from being productive until I can shake it. It's more distracting than a random walk out onto the weird part of Youtube. (<-- Don't click that if you are eating. You've been warned.)

A good example is this blog. I'd set a goal for myself to write 20 posts this month. This would allow me to finally build up a queue of finished articles, so that I could schedule them for publication at a regular interval. Unfortunately, I was finding myself sufficiently distracted with everything else going on. None of it was urgent; it was just more appealing that writing a dozen 500-word articles. I also wasn't making much progress on the one client deliverable I had to do this week. I AM WAY BEHIND.

I realized the goal itself was the problem, not my motivation or capacity to actually write 20 posts in March. One of my best friends likes to refer to me as a goals "extremist". Not in the sense that I want to blow up US federal buildings in the name of Allah, of course. My problem with personal goal-setting is that I too often focus on the end state details, rather than the process to get there. I'll frequently commit to something like quitting smoking, starting running 4 miles a day, pumping iron three times a week, and losing 40 pounds. All at the same time, too. Starting yesterday.

All I really would want to accomplish is getting into better shape, but I've muddied it up with an extremely high bar to clear, and specific pass/fail criteria. This is great in project management, but has less value in a personal growth context. Each time, three days in, I've failed miserably and it gives me anxiety to think about "all the stuff I'm not doing". This is why Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, says that big goals are for losers.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, try this instead:

Start Small and Vague

Instead of sweeping changes, decide on an end goal and then immediately discard it. Come up with just a handful of smaller checkpoints that, if completed, would give you solid momentum towards that end goal. Don't self-impose a specific deadline for the end goal. Let the small wins pile up at first. Be aware of the temptation to set specific success criteria on these small wins, avoid it, and stay vague.

Be Firm to Your Vague Commitments

You might be asking yourself how anyone can move forward with a task with fuzzy undefined requirements. It's really no different than moving forward on concrete tasks: you just have to do it. Be firm with yourself. In the example here, my first small goal was to "create some draft headlines and link source material or brain-dump main ideas to new posts every day".

Pretty vague. How many is some? Is it less than "several" or more than "a few"? However, note the firm deadline: every day. It's firm, but still vague. If I get anything done, I win. If I don't do anything, and don't come up with a new idea just one time per day, I lose. It's an easy game.

This is not going to take 21 days (a long-running myth), but it is similar to the concept of hanging a pull-up bar in your bedroom door. Do one every time you walk under it, and in a few weeks there should be no reason you can't do pull-ups.

Look for the Tiny Incremental Tasks

These should be the foundation of your small vague goals. In my case, it was posting story ideas with limited research, or limited content. I didn't actually have to write the posts, I just had to think about writing a post, and jot down what it would be about. Tiny, but an incremental step towards building a better buffer of content and posting more often. Identify these tasks that require little preparation and little time to execute, and make sure they are the foundation of your small goals.

Ideally, these tiny tasks should be roughly 3% of the project. In other words, if you worked at that pace for a month, you would complete the project. Why so small? Simple: this article is about getting the stuff done that you just can't seem to get done. If my recommendation was to sit down and do a quarter of it at once, I might as well also recommend Gunnery Sergeant Lee Ermey as a life coach for Private Pyle.

Have Fun Making Progress

Remember, this technique is for avoiding performance anxiety, not creating it. This process should be fun. Part of the reason for starting so small, and so vague, is to reward yourself for progress, rather than completion. Have fun getting there. Earn a work break or something. In fact, I've made so much headway on this post that I think I am going to reward myself with a breakfast burrito...

Commit to Finishing and Crank out a Product

...Mmmmm...tasty. You know, I'm so close to finishing this post (and moving one notch closer to my end goal) that I'm just going to sit here and commit to getting it done. I've already done all the prework, and it won't take that much time at all.

Once you've built the momentum, you'll find it much easier to "ride the wave" and get it done, even if you are the laziest person on the planet. You'll find it so much easier to work on the last 20% of a task in one sitting when you've already earned the rewards of having done 80% without really trying.

If you struggle to maintain self-direction, try these steps. Make firm commitments to your self to do something, anything that makes progress. Do it every day or every chance you get, until you either build a habit or routine, or complete so many 3% chunks of progress that the end is in sight. Once you can see the end of the road, you'll probably be so motivated to finish that you will be able to do so.