How do you manage yourself?

January 29, 2025
10:48 PM

I used to set goals for the year ahead and look back at the end of the year in disappointment. At one point, I even questioned whether it was worth setting goals at all if they would only make me feel disappointed about myself.

I believed setting goals was all about clarifying a vague idea in my head into a specific and concrete vision of the future I could work to build. But more importantly, I thought if my goals truly reflected what I valued, the vision alone should be enough to bring me the motivation I needed to complete it.

I didn't understand goal setting wasn't only about the vision, but also about how to make progress toward the vision. In my arrogance, I only ever questioned my ability to do something. However, it was never that I wasn't capable, but unaware of how to manage myself to make the most of my capabilities. It was one of the most important skills I took too long to realize I had to learn.

When I reflect on the most motivated times in my life, the clarity of my vision made almost no difference in my motivation to progress. While it helped me understand how to approach my goals more strategically, it failed to captivate me every morning, inspiring me to do the work I needed to do.

What I realized was my source of motivation didn't come from my goals, but from the areas of my life I spent the most time analyzing and the outcomes I most frequently reviewed. In most cases, I drew my motivation from places where others made it easier for me to feel a sense of progress.

When I worked for other companies, I received carefully organized analysis and feedback from my managers. When I played sports, I had great coaches who told me what to do and consistently compared my performance against my teammates' and competitors'. When I played video games, I would always look at the quest log and statistics to find the next thing I wanted to do.

It was easy to be at my best in these areas because I had a great support system that analyzed and measured everything for me. However, when it came to working for myself toward my own goals that no one else cared about, I had to learn to create a sense of progress for myself.

I began to think about how I was improving my career, my emotional mastery, my finances, my relationships, and my spirituality. What was I hoping to achieve in these areas? How was I analyzing my performance in these areas? How often was I measuring my performance? The results were lackluster.

If you are reading this and feeling demotivated about your goals, bring your focus back to analyzing and measuring your progress, even if you don't have a lot to analyze and measure. Allow yourself to be with your disappointments. Adapt your metrics to what's important at this stage of your growth and set healthier milestones for what you can reasonably expect to see at this point in your journey.

If you continue down this path, I promise the greatest value you will receive at the end of this year won't be what you achieve, but who you become on the journey to achieve them. If your goals don't motivate you today, consider it may not be that your goals aren't aligned with who you are, but you haven't aligned yourself with the goals you set for yourself.

Chris X

January 30, 2025
12:36 AM

P.S.
It's almost the end of January and time I reviewed my New Year's resolutions. Consider this letter as an invitation to do the same. :)