None of us should expect to be 100 percent motivated every day. If you get a lousy night’s sleep, are stressed over a personal situation, feel discouraged over a work problem, or it’s just a stormy, dreary day, you may want to roll over when the alarm goes off and pull the blanket over your head.
But, motivated or not, you can be disciplined every day.
The key to that discipline can be found in micro steps—small, consistent steps that you take day after day. And while immediate results are unlikely, over time, with consistency, micro steps are a pathway to success. Self-discipline means committing to those steps—regardless of the stormy, dreary day.
If the most exercise you get is walking from your desk to the coffee machine and then you decide to run a marathon, you’re not going to lace up tomorrow and run 26.2 miles. As with any goal, you will break it down into manageable chunks. You’re going to look at the target date of your marathon, and then work backwards, creating a training regimen that will start with brisk walking, then a little jogging, some rest days, eating properly, running short distances, then medium distances, then a half-marathon.
Each day, you would take micro steps—incremental improvements and goals to aim for.
You cannot rely solely on motivation to get you to your goals. Instead, you must lean on discipline. Think of how many people over the years who have told you they were going to write a book, create a start-up, climb Kilimanjaro, go to law school, become a senior vice president, or any so-called “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.”
Many will not follow through. They start, and it might look promising, but inevitably they get off track. Here is where micro steps come in. Seeing your goal and finding the incremental changes necessary—an athlete training—to get you where you want to be.
The big goals are great for inspiring you. Maybe that goal is your heart’s desire, or something you have always wanted to achieve. For me, early in my career, I knew I wanted to push on that glass ceiling and reach the C-Suite of a Fortune 500 company.
I have achieved that—as a first-generation American! But micro steps are what got me there. Discipline day in and day out, even on those occasions when I wasn’t feeling too inspired.
Face it, if motivation was the only factor in reaching your goal, we would all be millionaires because we want to reach that financial goal and we feel motivated to achieve it from Day One. But very few people maintain motivation—and because they don’t have discipline, they cannot rely on micro steps to generate momentum.
Motivation is your why. I wanted to achieve my goal because I like being challenged and I wanted to be where the action is—in the boardroom. You have to figure out your why because it’s deeply personal. Discipline, on the other hand, is the how. The how and the what. How are you going to achieve that Big Hair Audacious Goal or idea you have? What are the specific micro steps you need to do each and every day?
Microsteps are the bite-size chunks to make your goals achievable over the long term. They are the pathway to success—yes, even on those gloomy, stormy days!
Forbes.com
