It’s normal to feel highly motivated pursuing your goals today and then feel bored the month after. This can happen when you see a lot of initial results and when the initial high wears down, you end up feeling demotivated. This can also happen when you are distracted and when you are no longer putting in the effort to reach your goals. You take one look at your never-ending to-do list and suddenly, you don’t want to continue anymore.
You realize that you’re bored with your goals. You’re feeling stuck. Now what? Do you stop pursuing your goals? Do you begrudgingly continue? Or do you push through? Since you’re here, I know you want to push through and reach your goals and I agree with your choice.
It doesn’t matter if you’re halfway through, nearly done, or nowhere near your goals because the 5 tips we are going to share with you will help you get back on track. These are the same 5 tips that we, at Asian Efficiency, use and share with over 13,000 of our customers.
5 Tips To Get You Back on Track From Feeling Bored With Your Goals
1. Put in the hours
When you think about it, when you decide on what you want to achieve, you already know that you need to put in the hours. You need to work on it. It will take time and effort because if it didn’t, then it would just seem like a task on your to-do list.
Whether your goal revolves around your finances, career, relationship, health–you need to put in the time and effort. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. However, if you are willing to put in the time and effort, it becomes easier to address boredom.
Several months ago, I decided to join a 10-kilometer run. Not that bad, right? Here’s the kicker: the last time I ran for more than a kilometer was more than 20 years ago. The training was excruciatingly painful for me that when people would ask me if I’m joining a ‘fun run’ my initial response was always ‘running isn’t fun’. Let me tell you, running around the track was boring. But I still pushed because I had to train or else my legs and my lungs wouldn’t get used to it. I put in the hours (and a lot of effort) in my training and even if I didn’t see results immediately, the more I did it, the less boring it became.
Do you want to improve your writing skills? Write more. Do you want to improve your dancing skills? Dance some more. Do you want to sell more of your products? Market your products more. Do you want to improve your communication skills? Talk more.
We talk more about the connection between time, effort, and results in our presentation on becoming superhuman productive.
More will equate to either time or effort. It can also be both.
2. Fall in love with the process
Pursuing your goal means going through a journey on how you reach your goals. One way you can fight boredom is to like the process itself. Writing every day. Calling prospects every day. Doing coaching every day. Running every other day. Working out every day. Studying every day.
When you enjoy the process, even if it’s repetitive, you will not feel bored.
I like to write (personal blog) but it was different when it came to writing for work. I had to change my mindset since at first, it was a burden that I had to do. But when I changed my mindset into “writing to learn”, the process became so much better. I now like writing for work since I now see it as a way for me to learn something new (through research) and then putting it into words.
This is the same for pro athletes. They train day in and day out whether it’s off-season or game season. They go through the same routine of training regularly but they do it because they get better every practice.
Even if things get boring or when things do not go your way, keep doing it. You need to trust the process.
3. Know the purpose of your goals
We talk about our ‘WHY’ a lot because it could be the singular reason why you succeed or fail. When you think about your goal today, you can logically connect as to why that is your goal. Should be okay, right? Not quite.
It’s easy to say that you want to publish a book, you want to lose weight, you want to write 1500 words per day, you want to call 30 prospects each day. But then again, why? What is the emotional connection you have with your goal? What is the deeper meaning behind your goal? Why is it important?
Think of it this way. You want to lose 20lbs. Why? You want to look better. Why? You want to feel confident. Why?
Your answer to the last why would vary but whatever your answer is, that will hold more meaning to you and you reaching your goal.
You know that you have reached your emotional reason when it moves you.
4. Change your plan if necessary
It’s okay to change the process or your plan but not change your goals. What’s not okay is sticking with a plan that’s not working. This is one reason why doing regular reviews is important. How would you know if your plan is working if you don’t do any type of review? You might be going the right direction but you’re taking too many detours.
When I was training for the 10k run, I planned to train using the track and field oval/gym. I did that for several weeks. When I tried doing a 5K road run, I realized that I was babying my feet by using the gym. My feet were so sore after the 5K road run (training) even if I was already running 10k. That’s when I decided to change my training plan. I decided to do more road runs so that my feet would get used to the uneven road. My goal didn’t change, but my plan did.
Let’s say your goal is to increase your sales by $100k in 6 months’ time. You’ve been calling prospects every day but you’re not getting through to even 10% of your call list. When you did your review, you realize that a lot of the calls you made went to voicemail or they would directly drop the call. Perhaps phone calls are not the way to go. You can try email marketing. Your plan could change, but you’re still sticking to your goal.
5. Stick to your habits
Do not ditch your habits just because you are feeling bored trying to reach your goal. Again, trust the process that you have set in motion prior.
If you have it penciled in your calendar, stick to it. When I was training for the 10k run, I had my runs on my calendar and set those times as busy. Two hours before my training schedule, I get a reminder to prepare for it. Now that I’m training for the half marathon, I still have my runs on my calendar including my gym training. Just today, I was feeling lazy and I started to reason with myself that I still have time since the marathon isn’t until January 2020. Then my calendar reminded me to prepare and I reminded myself that I already set aside time for it, might as well run. And run, I did. Did I regret it? Definitely not. But I would have regretted it if I didn’t stick to it.
This is true to everything else that surrounds my goal. From drinking my supplements to watching what I eat, to the water that I drink–all part of my habits that I decided I will stick to because running my first half-marathon is important to me.
James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, said: “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way”. Let’s all be professionals and stick to our schedule. We will surely reach our goals.
Next Steps
When you are feeling bored, do a review of your current goal. Where are you? Take a look at your task list and check what needs to be removed and what needs to change. Once you are done with your review, look at your habits or your rituals and decide what you need to change. Add items to your calendar so that you make time for it.
Check back after two weeks and do another review.
Do you want to know how Thanh implemented these 5 tips? He recently did a podcast about this. You can check it out here.
