How To Execute on Self-Help
Reading advice is one thing, taking action is another. Here's how you can get started!
The “Self-Help” writing genre is evergreen, and as long as we’re still human, it will persist.
The fact is, we’re all looking for ways to make our lives better, and we’re almost always looking for easy ways to do this. Shortcuts, life hacks, whatever you want to call them: human nature demands that we want life to get better with as little work to be done on our part as possible.
Of course, few of these shortcuts to success ever work reliably. If such a shortcut existed, we’d all presumably have taken it!
The reality is that whatever path you take will require hard work, resilience, and discipline. These things have no shortcuts and are the true virtues that are most likely to lead you to success. You still may need to get lucky, but by doing these things you increase your chances of getting lucky with each additional step you take.
So that all said, let’s examine what you should do once you decide to lean into any given life advice or career path. Whether we’re talking about executing a new diet or starting your own business, the steps you need to take are surprisingly similar.
Translate a Vision into Tactics
The vision is what inspires you, whether it’s independent wealth, losing 30 pounds, running a marathon, becoming famous, or just living a nice life with a family you love.
That’s great, and don’t lose it, but just sitting there and thinking about it won’t get much done. Your vision is the output, you need to decide your inputs to make it happen.
Your first step needs to be to break that goal down into a few immediate and quantifiable steps that you can take.
Want to grow your business? Post at least 3 marketing videos each week.
Want to run a marathon? Start by going out and running at least 4 days a week.
Want to lose weight? Make sure you skip dessert at least twice a week.
And so on.
Set Some Intermediary Goals
Assuming your vision is big, you’ll likely need at least a couple intermediary goals to get there. These can be celebrated as mini-milestones on your longer-term journey.
Intermediary goals are crucial to satisfy you and ensure that you don’t get discouraged by the enormity of whatever you are trying to accomplish.
Want to buy a home? Set a goal for saving up the first $10k.
Want to run a marathon? Sign up for a 10k and a half marathon first.
Want to build a business? Build a basic proof-of-concept first.
By focusing on the small goals, big goals become more attainable as a series of small steps rather than one giant leap. Now it’s time to…
Hold Yourself Accountable!
Okay, we won’t lie: this is the hardest part. Think about it:
Everyone is out there selling you a vision, they are a dime a dozen.
Nowadays, plans to get there are as well. Want to lose 30 pounds, run a marathon, start a business? There’s 800 playbooks out there for each of those.
Why then do so few of these big goals get accomplished?
It’s a simple answer: humans like the easy path, and self-rationalization is the easiest path of all!
Did you tell yourself that you were going to run 4 times a week? Well, I mean, you couldn’t last week because you had guests in town, but you were close. But then you know in your head that you can cheat on your goals. What’s next? Well you were sick this week, so that doesn’t count. And so on.
As one excuse slips into another, we fall off track. Eventually, we self-rationalize this too! “Well, I’m just not really a runner/business owner/fit person, anyway” is what we tell ourselves. Even if we know that doesn’t have to be true, we’ll buy into it because it’s better than admitting to ourselves that we are a quitter.
That’s a long way to say: you need an ironclad system to hold yourself accountable. If you have a goal, you should make sure you achieve it, come hell or high water.
Let’s talk about how to do it.
How to Enforce Accountability
Say you are bought in to all this above. What should you do to reach your goals?
Write down what you are committing to - it should be spelled out in black and white, whether on paper or on a computer, you should have easy access to it.
Tell at least one person - having one person to help hold you accountable will do wonders.
Track your efforts objectively - if you say you are going to run 3 days a week, keep track. Don’t lie to yourself. Here again, use a paper calendar, Excel, or app to quickly record what you actually do.
Celebrate the little milestones - hit your target for five weeks? Celebrate! Reach one of your intermediary goals? Celebrate! With there being nothing easy about this journey, it’s perfectly fine to celebrate the little wins, as long as you are being true to yourself!
Start Moving Forward
I’ve looked around for systems to support holding myself accountable for over 20 years without success.
That’s why I’ve built Forward. Forward let’s you set habits and targets to hold you accountable on the input efforts (e.g. running miles shown below). With Forward, you can set targets for any habit, and adjust it as you improve or drop it if you do need to make it a little more attainable.
We then rely on weekly streaks to help motivate you. Weekly targets build in some flex and prevent you from applying too rigid a routine, but motivate you to focus your efforts. After 5 weeks hit, your habit reaches bronze status, 10 weeks for silver, et cetera!
All of these habits can then be tied to your broader goals, which are visible on the main dashboard. For instance, here are my Health & Fitness goals for 2024:
That’s one of the main things that is so powerful about Forward is having the seamless merger of the big broad goals with the nitty-gritty week-in-week-out tactics that it takes to get there.
I’m obviously biased, but you can give Forward a try at www.theforwardapp.com.
Here’s a video for you to get a sense of how the full app works:
And we are adding new features regularly to make it even better. But even if you don’t, I hope the structures that I laid out here will help you reach more of your goals!