“Success comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?” – Anthony Robbins

Many of us, myself included, wait around for motivation when what you really need is momentum. Anything that is worth doing requires time and effort and to do that you need momentum. Momentum in physics refers to the quantity of motion that an object has. To have momentum you need to move, to take action, to progress forward.

Establishing morning routines, losing weight, starting a business, no matter what goals you have you wish to achieve, it requires you to act on it consistently. Most of the time momentum and taking action is a chicken and egg situation. Which comes first and what can you do when both momentum and action-taking crosses the road and refuse to come back, no matter how much you plead?

In Physics, to produce a motion you need to execute a force that will move a mass at certain speed. The faster you move, the faster you get to the destination; the same result could potentially be achieved with bigger force or a smaller weight. What if you could simply get to your destination you want by executing things a lot more effectively and efficiently instead?  This is where today’s post comes in. Today we will be talking about momentum because it is needed for us to gain traction if we want to make progress in our goals at all. Yet we often confuse momentum and motivation and think that we need motivation to create momentum when in fact, it works the other way round. The more momentum you gain, the more motivation you have to keep going.

If like me, you suffer from the inability to summon up the lightning strike type of motivation then you need simpler ways to get your juices flowing.

These are 5 ways to do that:

1. Set yourself a schedule, especially at the beginning before your routine or habit take hold
2. Plan a week ahead or at least a few days ahead what you will be doing
3. Set non-negotiable standards for yourself
4. Set measurable goals for yourself
5. Be adaptable to the process– remind yourself that the same outcome can be achieved in different ways not just one.

Schedule and actually make the appointment

I am sure you have heard of the saying “what doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done” right? Well, we certainly do not find it tough to schedule and achieve something pleasurable like a nice meal out with our best mates, it is the hard stuff that gets scheduled and ignored.

To schedule something is to make it concrete and some of this we intend to make it a habit or a routine. We schedule appointments with clients because they pay the bills. We schedule appointments with our doctors because we pay their bills and of course, in return we get our illness seen to and our general health checked and parked aside till the next time we feel unwell. The value we get is certainty and peace of mind.

It seems that we are more than happy to schedule something if it concerns others because most of us are not arseholes (luckily!) and we hate to disappoint others. Mostly we schedule something if missing the appointment causes a loss to us such as clients or a forfeit on a deposit made. When there is something at stake, we schedule it and tend to keep to it.

What about treating our life-changing goals the same way? If we choose to watch TV rather than work on building a business don’t you think that there is so much at stake here? It means your life will never change, it will stay the same. You will stay the same, not much sadder but certainly not much happier neither, just same. If that is what you are looking for then by all means just disregard all this stuff here but if you are indeed one of the 8 percent of goal-setters who will achieve their goals each year then I know you are looking for a different future.

Look at your schedule today, what’s on it? Is it just other people’s expectations or have you had some part in setting your daily schedule? Think about your goals, what you dream of achieving and then refer to your schedule, how much of your time are you spending on your dreams? If the answer is none or very little, then you need to take a good look at your priorities and reschedule.

Plan a week at a time

For most us the idea of planning for too many weeks or months ahead is a massive pain in the ass. Mostly because we simply can’t envision that far ahead, clearly anyway. It is important to have long term goals and vision, but I think that a working plan or a task-oriented plan should just really be for one week at a time. Obviously, this goes hand in hand with your schedule. The idea is that your plan should entail the little tasks that you need to complete to achieve a goal or reach a milestone.

Say for example losing weight, you will need to do some workout to gain muscle and most likely this will be at a gym of some kind. Now, for your weight loss journey to gain momentum, you will need to plan to work out 3 or 4 times a week. 5 if you are hardcore. And in your plan, you will need to make sure you cover cardio, weight lifting, conditioning and stretching so that you can train every part of your body.

Being effective is more than just showing up!

There are so many people at the gym who show up and only then think about what they are gonna do that day at that moment, it is too late by then! Your envisioning superpower can only stretch that far. By the time you reach the gym, you will be looking at all the machines and be overwhelmed by the sheer task of it.

Instead of just showing up at the gym, plan for what you will do at the gym. It could be as simple as 20 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of weights, 10 minutes ab work and stretching. You will be surprised at how quickly that 50 minutes, if not an hour will go by when you are armed with a plan. Same goes for if you are an executive at a company, you will need to plan your week so that you make sure your work commitments are met as well as your personal goals.

Depending on big your tasks are is how detailed your plan needs to be but for me I work with a very high level plan for the week then get detailed on the things that needs to be. Don’t overanalyse it. Just come up with a rough plan for this week and each week you can refine it as you need.

Set non-negotiable standards

We all have things that we find unacceptable from other people. Those are the standards we impose on others and yet many do not set non-negotiable personal standards for ourselves. These are standards that you set for yourself to meet your own expectations. We know how it is to meet standards set by other people such as at work, at home, with friends and with your partner.

At work, you wouldn’t get away with being late everyday and you are expected to be on time. At home, you wouldn’t get away with being rude to your mother. When you are with friends, you have standards for what your friends should be to maintain that friendship, these could range from not stealing from you, being there when you need support, split the bill evenly when you go out, things like that. Whether small or massive, it doesn’t matter. There are standards to be met and you wouldn’t negotiate that or question it with yourself, there are some lines one doesn’t cross.

Now back to you, have you set any standards for yourself recently? We set standards about people we would never associate with or moral standards but what about work habits or lifestyle habits? Perhaps a non-negotiable standard if you were on a weight loss regime would be to hit the gym at least 3 times a week, no lesser than that. Perhaps it could be eating well 80% of the week and allowing yourself to only have a cheat meal (not weekend!). Perhaps if your goal is to build a business then a weekly non-negotiable standard you could set for yourself is that you must reach out to at least 20 prospects with the view to convert or if online marketing was the goal then a standard of one blog post a week. You need to decide what these non-negotiable standards are for yourself.

Setting measurable goals

Now, some of you will say you know this one. You have set a goal of making one million dollars this year and that is measurable. Well…it is but goals can be measured by both outcome and output. If you have a goal of becoming an author, your big vision could be making it to the New York Times Bestseller list. However, you still need to set mini goals to help you achieve the tasks required to get there in the first place. One of the goals could be something like write 1000 words per day (this could also serve as a non-negotiable standard). Or perhaps you are building an online business and your goals could be to write and publish 4 blog posts per month. Or perhaps you are saving up towards a deposit for a home, your goal could be to put aside 10% of your salary every month till you meet that deposit amount.

Before you write this off as something that some people you know have tried and it didn’t work, I would like to remind you that most big corporations do this. They estimate a forecast and they set goals for each year, each quarter. Without these goals or forecast, there is nothing to work towards.

Same with our personal goals, if you do not measure anything, how would you know whether you are closer or further away from achieving your goals? If you do not measure anything, how would you know whether anything is working, or should you change your strategy? There is a saying that goes “what gets measured, gets done”. The idea is so simple, when we don’t measure something we simply cannot see whether it has been done and if we can’t see or measure progress, most of us would choose not to do it at all.

When you sit down and set some goals for yourself, don’t just think about the ultimate outcome. It may take years for you to be a millionaire or years to be a bodybuilder so would you not measure or celebrate any milestones in between? Rather than just setting a non-measurable goal like “I will write everyday”, write down how many words you will write each day and there is no ambiguity whether you have achieved your goal.

Be Adaptable

You know there is more than one way to skin a cat right? Not that I have or would ever skin a cat but the point is that there is more than one way to do most things. Many of us are frustrated when we cannot keep inbox zero or we fail to eat the toad first and we think that because we aren’t behaving exactly in the same way that the successful people featured on Entrepreneur.com are behaving, we are doomed to lead a mediocre life, never to succeed. Even in Mathematics, you can get 1 from 1 – 0 or 2-1 or 1×1 or 0+1 or even 1-0 plus many other equations. You get 1 at the end of it, life isn’t an absolute like Maths hence why be afraid of adapting your how to get to your why.

When it comes to exercises there are so many ways to burn 100 calories, you can choose to Zumba it off, CrossFit the hell out of your butt, SoulCycle your way to a healthier you or just HIIT it up right in your home. Can’t do 4 days at the gym, what about 3 days at the gym and 1 day hiking? The process is important but what is important is how you achieve your goal at the end of it, even if you are hula hooping for your 100 calories, you do whatever it takes. Many ways to skin a cat.

And Finally

When you think about all the tasks you need to complete to achieve a goal, I am sure you get overwhelmed by it all, I mean, who wouldn’t? Life changing goals are scary and often quite tedious but they are worth all the effort because if we do not choose to make our lives meaningful, who else is going to do it for us? I am not going to lie, momentum is hard to create and stick to. Most of us live comfortably within the confines that others have set, your parents, your boss, your family and not many choose to break out of that because creating a new set of expectations of yourself is not easy but I know you can do it.

What I would like you to do today is look at the week ahead, what have you scheduled as priority for yourself, what non-negotiable standards have you set? What are your goals for this week, do they bring you closer to your dream? What do you plan to do in order to slay your goals?

How have you created momentum for yourself or what do you struggle with when it comes to building momentum? I would love to hear your thoughts on this!