“In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.”

makes something khatzu has been saying begin to resonate. The aforementioned grandiosity of typical New Year resolutions fails to provide any detail about how the resolution is meant to be accomplished. Mixing that with khatzu’s \’small goals\’ mantra gives you something like “Get fit this year.” => “Stand outside wearing trainers.”

I think the idea of small goals makes two important points. It reduces the level of grandiosity to that makes the task feel less onerous and it provides a level of detail that is sufficient to get the shaping up started. Both of these qualities seem to me to make the goal feel more tangible if only at a subconscious level.

This is also where the desirability of the process is important. The act of achieving a small goal leaves you in position to begin the fun activity that will inevitably result in the desired goal. The \’activation energy\’ of achieving the goal is thus reduced and, depending on the intensity of the desire to engage in the process, may even be negative. I think this is the point of “Starting with the crack”.

So instead of resolving to do something, maybe we should consider where we’d like to be and let our environments take us there (of course implying that you’ve suitably prepared your environment). It seems more and more like this blog is a guide to responsible stewardship of our subconsciouses. We know what we like. We know what buttons to push. We just have to design our environments such that our buttons push themselves!

Good on you, khatzu. I just had my little epiphany.