I’ve found that if I ask someone in my team or in my company how we’re doing, they’ll enthusiastically enumerate the ways we should change. We should grow revenue, broaden our customer base, become more efficient, etc. Likewise, there have been many times in my nearly 30 years of running a company or leading teams that people have come to me and told me they want to change in some important way. In both cases, it is rare that anyone puts in the work to make the change. They’ll gladly encourage others, of course.
Just to keep you from thinking I’m being judgy, I fall squarely in this camp as well. It is so hard to build up the willpower to knowingly change my habits and put in the effort to stick with it long enough to affect change.
Why do we want to lose weight but continue to eat bacon double cheeseburgers?
It might be because we are too focused on the outcomes and not the processes to get there. Of course we want the outcomes! Who wouldn’t want to dunk like Lebron, be as witty as Tina Fey, or as fit as Ronaldo?
Very few of us want to put in the work behind these amazing people’s successful outcomes. There is lots of raw effort here that we just don’t want to commit to. And that’s after we put in the work to change our habits and daily routines to make the space for the effort. Want to get up earlier? Forget about that “wake up progressively 5 minutes earlier” junk. You need to go to bed earlier! Want to go to bed earlier? Eat dinner and stop drinking earlier. Leave the party earlier. Stop watching TV earlier. Don’t check email at night.
It’s not hard, except that it’s hard.
- Being thoughtful, realistic, and deliberate about the system that will bring about the change is hard.
- Changing our habits is hard.
- Putting the work into executing the system is hard.
These three steps are hard, but they are hard in easy easier ways than just wishing for the outcome. They are aligned with how our brains work. They address the reality that we need to make space for change. Finally, they ensure our focus is on the system and not the outcome.
Trying to change without doing these three things, however, is way harder. It’s hard because we have to rely on brute force and wish manifestation (ie, magic).
So, where’s the magic?
We are rounding up to the end of the year. It is a time of looking back and looking forward. The brilliant minds who have come before us and written about the human mind and change who I’ve already mentioned this year (John Medina, John Kotter, James Clear, and Charles Duhigg) give us a great playbook for making change happen in our lives and in our companies. That playbook moves us from wish fulfillment to action. That action starts by being very clear about the outcomes we want and how our lives must change to manifest those outcomes.
Thanks to Joshua J. Cotten for his picture of a butterfly chrysalis in its cocoon.