Meet Your Learning Goals by Breaking Them into Habits
March 1 • Written by Kathryn Olson
This week, we’re giving you a glimpse behind the scenes of our Tangram team goals. See the deliberate habits we’re implementing this year, and get inspired by different ways to make your own goals stick.
Well, the good news is that we made it through most of the first two months of the year.
The great news is that if you haven’t managed to achieve that goal you dreamed about on January 1st . . . you just need to adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset is about taking the long view. It’s about being realistic, expecting setbacks, and doing things to set yourself up for success. For example, our team has been thinking about reaching our goals by building new habits. This week, we are sharing those new habits and the tips we’ve implemented for success.
Julie, a plant enthusiast, is currently developing the skill of outdoor gardening with a new habit of learning one small thing weekly: “This year I’m choosing one thing to learn and/or do in my yard every week (which is easier for me since I’m in San Diego). This learning experience will take me on a journey through the different seasons. Instead of worrying about making a long list now, I’m watching for ideas as I go and then letting each week sort of organically (pun intended) inspire the next week. This week, I was inspired by a neighbor’s yard and decided I want to plant wildflowers on one side of my yard, so I did some research about California wildflowers and went and got some seeds. Next week I will plant them!”
Tip #1: Follow Julie’s lead of approaching a long-term goal with a habit of learning and doing something small — anything! — to get closer to the goal each week.
Anna, our fabulous designer, knows the barriers that stand in the way of her most efficient workflow and has made a plan: “I find that the final product looks better if I educate myself on the subject matter in parallel with building the content, as opposed to investing too much time in research upfront and getting overwhelmed. My new habit is to get in there and start building right away — taking more of a rapid development approach — and make time along the way to explore and dig deeper into the content.”
Tip #2: Weather-proof your new habit with an implementation plan: “If x happens, I will do y.” If Anna starts a new project that seems daunting, her plan is to dive right into the design and research where needed as the design unfolds.
Isa, our visual design guru, has a new habit of using a visual tracker in a bullet journal to track her movement. “I used to move my body 6 days a week. I got out of the habit after a big move and a new baby and was never able to find a good rhythm again. This year, I'm getting back into exercising after a 6-year hiatus. To help rebuild the habit and strength, I'm starting small with just 10 minutes a day and then celebrating those small wins. Sometimes it's a light 10 minute yoga session or a walk outside, other times it's 10 minutes of strength training. As long as I'm moving my body in an intentional way that day, I count that as a win. And on the days where I don't, there's room for imperfection.”
Tip #3: Track small progress visually to give immediate feedback for a new habit with inherently delayed feedback. The hit of dopamine Isa gets by seeing her consistency will tell her that she’s progressing, will motivate her, and will deepen the grooves of that habit she’s forming.
Then there’s me, Kathryn. I’m known for tackling life’s challenges by developing an attack strategy. I have a large list of habits I want to form that I know will help me reach several goals. I have a plan to bundle some of them into my morning, but it would mean both waking up earlier and going to bed earlier than I currently do. Going to bed early and waking up early are both hard things for me. I’ve decided to start with exerting the effort to go to bed early, and to do this I need a new habit. Drinking tea and washing my face is a natural cue to my body that it’s bedtime, and those are both easier actions for me to carry out than actually dropping everything and going to bed. By cuing my body with a few senses - touch, smell, and taste - I can tap into those instinctual cues that already exist. I will be setting an alarm on my phone to remind me at a certain time to make some tea and wash my face while it steeps to begin the going to bed process.
Tip #4: Increase your amount of available willpower in order to implement more strenuous habits. I’m starting with training my body’s rhythms to be earlier and stacking trigger behaviors that instinctually engage my senses.
Jay Shetty says, “Work becomes harder and more stressful when we’re not growing or learning at work or about work. . . . Look at the work you’ve got going on right now and ask yourself not ‘How do I just deal with this stress,’ but ‘What skills don’t I have that would make work easier?’” (“6 Scientifically Proven Ways,” emphasis added).
So here’s our Tangram Challenge: set a learning goal for work and then create habits to help you reach it.
References
“6 Scientifically Proven Ways to Improve Work-Life Balance & Reduce Stress.” On Purpose with Jay Shetty, 20 January 2023, https://on-purpose-with-jay-shetty.simplecast.com/episodes/6-scientifically-proven-ways-to-improve-work-life-balance-reduce-stress-bL1fYjuo.