Big goals vs small goals

And reframing success

Hello and Happy Wednesday! 😀

This is Sarah from TBOI, a newsletter that explores the psychology of everyday life, from fitness, to mental health, to relationships, and career change in your 40s.

If you are new to this newsletter, then welcome! Here are a few posts that I wrote last year to give you a flavour of what the TOBI is all about:

• A post about my love for resistance training (yes, I am a convert and will wax lyrical to anyone who wants to listen):

My body and me (part 2)

• Glory to gaming and play:

Why I enjoy gaming

• What is your ideal workplace culture? Some thoughts here from a workplace training session that I participated in a few years back:

Lessons from Shakespeare

And if you were already a subscriber, then you may have noticed a minor design changes to this newsletter. Nothing too crazy, I fancied a revamp but I hope that you like what I have done and enjoy today’s piece.

This is a lengthy post, so it may appear truncated on your email.

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Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash

I have been thinking a lot about goal setting lately - ‘tis the season and all that given that it’s January. And here on Substack I read a number of pieces about making resolutions, as well as anti-resolution pieces, and some things that lay somewhere in between.

I am terrible at keeping new year resolutions beyond a few days or weeks, and even behaviours that I want to make habitual such as sticking to a consistent exercise regime requires some serious incentives to keep me invested. But having said that, I particularly enjoyed

Hannah Ashe

‘s video about hope over resolutions. It reminded me that we can hope to do things, but if we have some grace with ourselves if things don’t quite work out the way we planned, then that’s ok too. HA’s piece also reminded me of a podcast I listened to before Christmas that discussed the impact of shifting our thinking from big goals (such as setting annual new year resolutions) to small goals (to making those smaller behaviours more like habits), as well as how we measure that tricky beast known as success in meeting those goals (big or small).

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Back in mid-September last year, I signed up for my first National Novel Writing Month, or what is more commonly known as NaNoWriMo, where aspiring novelists aim to write 50,000 words in one month.

I even had (have) an idea!

It wasn’t a new idea, just the bare bones of one that lived mostly in the chaos of my mind, along with a few early scenes typed out on a Word document.

So, along with however many other people who had signed up across the world, I eagerly anticipated the start of November by getting my teeth stuck into the bumper pack of resources that were emailed. I even added a calendar notification in advance, so that for each day during the month, I would be reminded that it was NaNoWriMo!

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

Fast forward a little bit…

It was November 7^th, and I hadn’t written a thing.  

Well, I still had the bare bones, and had made a half-hearted stab at some background work for the central characters, which was worthwhile stuff, but there wasn’t much to show for it on the page. And of course, the longer I left it, the more guilt I felt, especially with the notification staring at me each time I opened my calendar. By the middle of the month, when I had added another 1000 words give or take, it was time for me to admit defeat.

I assumed that by giving myself this big goal that I would have been blasting out 1500 words-plus a day as what some writers can do, or even more during the NaNoWriMo challenge. And then (ta-dah!) by the end of November I would have some semblance of a 50,000-word manuscript.

But this was my first mistake.

My view of success with NaNoWriMo was whether I hit a prescribed word count, and as soon as it became clear that I was not going to meet this, instead of being kind to myself and just doing what I could, when I could, I doubled-down and beat myself over the head with my laptop¹.

My second mistake was linked to the first.

My view of success more broadly, but particularly when I was working as a teacher, was measured in ensuring that I hit certain external markers that contributed towards a broader sense of ‘what’s next?’. The markers acted as key drivers for many of my behaviours, decision-making, and led me to saying yes (as well as acquiescing) to things that I believed would help feed the ‘what’s next’ (monster):

This promotion is next ✅

That new school is next ✅

Signing up for that course is next ✅

Developing that curriculum is next ✅

Agreeing to that additional meeting about X is next ✅

Say yes is next ✅✅✅✅✅✅

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I am not saying that the choices that I made during my teaching career were mistakes, or even misplaced, as looking at what might be next and the goals set (certainly, work-wise) can be one way to put a bit of fire in your belly and provide direction, but it did seem that whatever was going on in my head was insatiable. I never seemed to learn from what came next or put much thought into whether I wanted to do whatever that next thing was. (It seems little wonder that I experienced burnout).

Yet, something else has dawned on me in recent months. I have begun to question if my response to the demands of work and often with life more generally also contributed to the burnout, and I may have been consciously and not, sowing the seeds of my own burnout. For example, it wasn’t like someone was forcing me to apply for the new job, accept the additional meeting, or register for NaNoWriMo. But at the same time, I rarely considered:

Do I actually want to do this? Am I ready to do this? And what exactly did I think was going to happen when I achieved this next thing, was I going to feel successful?

The shift in my thinking is new to me, and frankly it feels like a bit of a revelation. And by acknowledging my own role in my burnout, I have experienced another revelation (can they come in twos?), I have found my mind to be clearer, and less bogged down with intrusive thoughts related to what’s next - rather than constantly looking towards a distant point in the future, it feels more like what’s next as in ‘for right now’.

It is certainly something that I need to reflect on more, as it probably involves picking apart a heap of learned behaviours (deep sigh), as well as taking a closer look at some of the messaging I have internalised from society about what success is, or what it should look like (huge sigh).

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I have found a great deal of comfort and relief from reading pieces from those who have shared their own experiences of burnout here on Substack, and in the comments. So, thank you to everyone.

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Although I didn’t have much/any success with NaNoWriMo last year, the idea for the book I have in mind is still percolating. But to help keep this project alive, I have decided to set some small goals. Although one of these is a mini-project in of itself…

Shortly after setting up my Substack last year, I introduced a weekly cultural update entitled: Friday Treats (here if you are vaguely interested). It was a place where I added some books that I had been reading, stuff I had been watching etc… but for now, I have decided to retire this. There were a few reasons behind my decision, which boiled down to - I didn’t enjoy putting the posts together as much as I thought I would.

Instead, I have a new offering that I am really excited to share with you. I picked up a copy of Louise Doughty’s A Novel in a Year book from my library before Christmas, and immediately knew that it was something that I wanted to take a stab at. The intention of a ANIYA is not necessarily to write a novel (that might be a nice bonus), but the 52 exercises may help provide some raw material. And as Doughty says in the introduction:

If you do the exercises I set, what you will end up with will not be a novel, it won’t even be the first draft of a novel, it will be a body of work, the raw material, which you may one day be able to shape and work on until it becomes a book.

Rather than posting weekly about these, I will put my efforts into a monthly post.

If you are interested in joining me with these exercises, please get in touch and we can share ideas.

1. I didn’t do this obvs… and I assume that the creators/advocates of NaNoWriMo won’t beat you around the head either if you fail to write 1500-words a day/50,000 for the month, but the word-counts are meant to act as targets.