One Thing at a Time

How many new years’ resolutions are you taking on this year? If you’re like me, you want to do all the things. New things are exciting to do, and it’s easy this time of the year to want to start doing them all now. Unfortunately for us, planning to start multiple things at once is a pretty good way to fail at all of them.

You may know that multi-tasking slows progress, reduces focus, and weakens results. While usually applied to literal tasks (e.g., responding to emails while also internet shopping and cooking a meal), this can also be said of your goals and resolutions. If you want to be successful in achieving what you want in the new year (or at any time of year), the key is to only do one new thing at a time.

From an evolutionary perspective, we are hard-wired to avoid change. Firstly, we want to conserve energy, avoid pain, and seek pleasure. The types of goals and resolutions we set, such as exercising, seeking a promotion at work, or starting an advanced certification class, will go against all three instincts.

Secondly, doing new things is risky, in the sense that what we’re currently doing now hasn’t killed us yet, so if it’s not broke, why fix it? The parts of our brains that keep us alive will attempt to self-sabotage our new goals and resolutions in its efforts to keep us safe from danger.

Given change is hard for us humans to do, choosing one thing to do at a time allows us to apply our limited resources of focus, energy, and willpower.

I encourage you to write down all the things you want to take on this year. And then pick one to focus on for now.

It doesn’t matter which one. Seriously. Spending time thinking about which one is better or more important is another way of avoiding starting.

Have faith that the other things you want to do will get done eventually, or they won’t, and that’s ok too.

But if you allow yourself to focus on your one goal, you are stacking the deck in your favor of actually achieving it.

That is the power of constraint. 

In 2023, I am focusing on one goal per quarter. This blog is my focus for Q1.

What is your focus? Bring it to my free webinar on January 14th and we can workshop it together.