If you never run a full marathon before, and I ask you to join one, you will think I am crazy and it is impossible to complete it. What if I set some goals for you, say running 1km in the first few weeks, then 2km, 5km, 7km…until 42km after a year? Do you still think you cannot complete a full marathon?

Goals Accumulation

I didn’t go to any fitness centre before because I thought it is expensive. Besides, I don’t think I have the time and the right mindset to keep it up.

Until some day I suddenly realized that I was getting old and not as healthy as before, I knew that I needed to make some changes. I immediately joined a membership of the fitness centre downstairs and found a personal trainer to help me.

At the beginning when I saw people easily lift up 20kg+ dumbbells, I thought I could never do that. My personal trainer let me try two 7.5kg dumbbells first, then 10kg and 12.5kg. After few months training, I could lift up two 15kg dumbbells without feeling too exhausted.

I know this is nothing compared to those who can easily lift up 20kg+ dumbbells without hesitation, but this is important to me because I could finally get somethings done which I couldn’t few months ago.

It is the sense of achievement that I always need.

Yes, I think we all need this sense of achievement to support us. By achieving small successes, we can finally achieve big success.

Sense of Achievement is Important

There are a lot of reasons pushing us when we are trying to achieve our goals, eg, maybe by doing something we can earn more money, learn more knowledge or build better career paths? However, even if the reasons remain there, if i am not satisfied with what I am doing, I am sure I will quit eventually.

for example, when I read some articles, I tend to find some articles which consists of different parts. If they are some very long articles, I might not be able to finish them.

Why? Because if the articles are broken down into few parts, I can obtain sense of achievement once I finish some parts, and support me to finish the rest of them.

I believe this is the way of how we live our lives.

Because of this, I can somehow understand when for most of the examinations we need to complete several papers instead of one single paper?

Take Accounting examinations as an example. In Hong Kong, we need to complete 5 papers before we can obtain the qualification. Of course by breaking down the examination into 5 papers can allow the examiner to include more examination questions. However, at the same time it may be strategically designed in this way so that the candidates are satisfied when they finish every single paper.

It is obvious that candidates will gain sense of achievement when they pass every paper. They will also be motivated to complete the rest and finish the whole examination. I believe this is the examiners’ strategy.

Manual breakdown of work

In fact we can actively apply this way of thinking in our lives, instead of doing things in our usual ways.

For example, we normally spend 2-3 hours on watching movies. Although it is so good to finish a movie at once, it might be luxury for some people (and myself) who are always busy at their work, and sometimes if the movie / TV drama are too long people might lose patient.

For me, I would actively break down my movie time into different parts instead of finishing movies at once. As such, I could have more buffer time / pause time to focus on the details of every scene.

This can also be applied at work.

Sometimes it seems efficient to work non-stop everyday, but actually we might not be able to focus after certain period of time, say 1 hour. Also if we work non-stop we might get exhausted at work easily.

Therefore, I tend to break down my day and my work into several parts, and finish small target at a time. For example, I would spend an hour working on my daily bookkeeping work, and then 5 minutes break. Then I will spend another hour on forecast work, etc.

This can ensure that I can keep achieving some work while I will not lose my interest and focus at work.

If you share the same thought with me here, I think you can also try this in your life.

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If you have any questions or have anything things to share, you can reach out to me via email learning@iamdelusionman.com.

Besides, if you want to know more about what I have learnt from other successful people, you can click the below link. This could the one of the life-changing articles for you:

Idea 016: Goal Setting