Goal-Stringing
James Clear popularised "Habit-Stacking".
An idea helping thousands of people supercharge their systems and ditch 'bad' habits for new positive ones.
Habits are essential to reach your goals, but what happens once you've accomplished them?
That's where GOAL-STRINGING comes in:
So the idea behind habit-stacking is that our behaviour is controlled by a simple 4-step process:
Cue -> Craving -> Response -> Reward
A bad habit might follow the pattern:
1. Come home from work
2. Need for a cold drink to relax
3. Grab a beer
4. Sit on the sofa, drink cold one
That then leads to the next cue: sofa -> TV -> snacks, etc
Being aware of the cue is essential if you want to break the cycle, so you would start choosing a different drink to signal a new activity, such as reading a book instead.
In a similar fashion, we often see people pursuing massive goals, changing their lifestyle to support it, but then falling back to their old traits once it's done.
A common phrase in the iron-man community is, for example, "one and done".
People have achieved what they set out to do and are starting to feel lost after they've achieved it.
Now this is applicable for any big goal in your private or professional life.
I've had this happen to me several times after completing a big fitness challenge and even after my PhD. Because I didn't "goal-string".
That is to identify one goal you want to pursue, but already knowing what the next goal is, which requires you to complete the first.
An example for me was the past two weekends:
I'd worked up towards running a 32-mile race up and over the tallest mountain in the UK. Months of preparation.
But it served another goal, which was to walk 15+ hours this weekend over 7 mountains with my toddler on my back.
I'd have not achieved the latter without the prep for the former.
And now I have my sights set for the next goal in the series for the end of the year, then one in April, etc.
The point being, we don't want to be one of those "one-and-done" people.
What's the point in working hard to achieve a big goal, to then just waste all the effort?
The way to avoid it is to string one goal to the next.
What goal are you working on right now and what comes after that?
