Quit Quitting. How to improve your follow through.
When you’ve done the work of weighing up a decision it’s time to move from motion into action. But rather than get overwhelmed and quit after a while or worse not even start, equipping ourselves with some guidelines can help us break through and build the momentum we need.
Decisions are just the start
Making a decision to make a change feels good let’s not lie.
You’ve recognized a gap in your life and you’re committed to taking the steps needed to make the shift and achieve that desired transformation.
Some of us, and I’ve been guilty of this before, will feel so good from the mental commitment of a new course of action that that alone is enough gives us the reward of dopamine that we lose the drive to actually do the real work.
Motion work is not the real work
A pretty common example of this effect is seen around January with New Year’s Resolutions.
People will make public declarations to 'lose X' or 'gain Y' and will either stop after a few weeks of trying or worse stop soon after some brand new gym gear has been purchased or a new diet plan ha been organized.
Some may consider this work, but we have to be specific.
Yes, planning, organizing and preparing are important and can be classed as work but these should be labelled as 'motions’.
Motion activities really are just supporting the real work which is the action.
Actions activities are the ones that drive the changes we want.
Action work is what makes change happen
So in a health and fitness example, the action activities are the cardio session or the weights workout.
While the motion activities are the recipe sourcing, food shopping and meal prepping.
Notice how the group of action activities have the biggest influence on our results, while the group of motion activities help us get and stay on track.
(Motion activities + Action activities)/ Time = Results
But maybe heath and fitness is an area you’ve got mastered, well whatever it is for you, we’ve all been there at some point.
What’s there?
It’s wanting to start, knowing what to do, but just not keeping up what we need to do.
So then how do we fix that?
Overcoming ourselves
Well though it is simple to take action, it’s not going to be easy.
Emotions get in the way, overriding our well placed plans and before we know it we’re having an inner dialogue of 'should we' vs 'should we not’.
But here are some ways we can stop the emotions clouding over, prevent the dialogue from taking over and actually stay on track and build towards our long term goals of change.
Think small
The chance of quitting is the highest in the beginning so giving yourself that psychological ‘win' and earning that day one streak is essential.
That means if you have to 'crawl' before you walk you do just that.
There’s no need for ego here. We all were beginners in something once. So relax, take the pressure off yourself and just take small but definite imperfect action forward.
We can worry about the quality of the actions way later.
Give yourself a realistic lower and upper bound to hit.
It’s easy to get greedy or over ambitious at the start as you don’t know what it takes to do the work and plus you’ve got that beginner’s enthusiasm.
But the key to following things through is to make them easy to do.
Make it big enough to give yourself a feeling of accomplishment but also small enough to keep you still feeling positive and enthusiastic to do it again next time.
Build a routine around it.
When the decision is made. There is no decision to make.
This means that once you have chosen a course of action then you don’t have to think about it again.
You just Nike. You just do it.
So to further cement the actions you know you’ve emotionally committed to, you build the actions into your schedule. Ideally the action is triggered by something, like an alarm and then you finish the action with an appropriate reward.
(…and no a cookie doesn’t count if your trying to lose body fat!)
Accept the first few times will be the hardest.
The learning curve at the start is always the steepest. It’s just the way it is, no matter the domain.
You’re mind and body are in data gathering mode as you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.
So then in the beginning phases you’re trying to figure out and get to grips with just how much effort it will take and seeing what capacity you have.
Celebrate finishing.
Reinforce the good. Any time you finish what you said you’d do needs to be celebrated sincerely. Finishing is a big deal and we want our brain to know it.
Any time a win is recorded no matter how small, when we celebrate it we’re sending a message to our brain to build new neural pathways around that behavior.
We want to ultimately create this dopamine loop where we begin seeking out finishes as the reward of a celebration is waiting for us when we do.
If you manage this loop effectively, then congratulations, you’re successfully gamifying the work. Nice one.
Remember why you started.
Finally, a word of recognition for all those times we don’t feel like doing the work.
(…and guess what? Those times never go away!)
When these voices begin to start and you find yourself getting dragged into a dialogue trying to defend your decision to keep going, shut it all down by going back to your original motivations to start in the first place.
Maybe you’re extrinsically motivated, no problem or maybe you’re intrinsically motivated, even better. Whatever the case we have to do the same thing to overcome the inner dialogue.
When quitting emotions get loud, we need turn up the volume on the our finishing emotions, the ones driven by our compelling reasons to keep going.
By no means is this an exhaustive list of things to equip you with to improve your finishing abilities but it’s definitely enough to be stronger than before.
Go out there, take small steps, take the pressure off yourself, accept it’ll be tough at the start, celebrate EVERY finish and remember why you started.
