Baby Steps: Why Smaller Goals Lead to Bigger Results

We're about 2 months into the new year. How is your sense of accomplishment? Are you getting things done and crossed off your list? Or do you feel stuck, frustrated, and stalled out? If so, there may be a very simple reason — your goals could be too big.

The Problem with Big Goals

Often, once we figure out what we want to achieve, we want to accomplish it yesterday! So we bite off big chunks and try to speed through the process. Unfortunately, that can backfire — when we're impatient and rush things, they can end up being done haphazardly. Things have a way of blowing up in our face. Then it's easy to get discouraged and feel defeated.

A Better Approach: Baby Steps

A helpful technique is to break tasks down into small bites that can be accomplished quickly and well. That gives a sense of success fairly easily, and then we can tackle more steps — also effectively.

Instead of: "I'm going to declutter my entire house this weekend. I haven't gone through things in 5 years and there's stuff everywhere. I should be able to get it done in a couple of days."

Try: "The house needs to be decluttered. I'd love to get it all done this weekend but that's probably not realistic. Instead, I'll tackle the garage this weekend and get the family to help. We should be able to finish in a couple of hours and then go to a movie after. Next weekend we'll start on the closets."

The second process will undoubtedly take longer but will be much more doable — and will prevent frustration. After all, the point is to get the clutter cleared out while keeping your sanity. So break things down into baby steps — enough small steps will add up to some big strides!