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Minimum amount for goals

Stories to fuel your mind.

Should You Target the Minimum?

Some goals call for a slow and steady approach, while others can be achieved in a quick sprint.

Scott Young

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Photo by Don Farrall / Getty Images .

Whenever you set a goal, create a new habit or make some plan for your life, there’s a few different ways you can go about it

The first way is to target the minimum output. The idea here is that you focus on always doing at least a little bit, so that overall, you’ll end up doing enough to make it count. Examples: meditating for ten minutes a day, taking the stairs at work to get in shape, learning a new word every day.

The second way is to target the average output. Here, you focus on setting a goal that you don’t always achieve, but if you reach it enough, you’ll end up making a big difference. Examples: write a new blog post every week, read two books a month, go to the gym 4x per week.

A final way is to focus on the maximum output. Invest your energy in surmounting a specific, intense threshold that will pull you to a new level. Examples: one-rep maximum, deliberate practice, aiming at setting a personal best.

A huge array of different suggestions from personal development flow into one of these three types, yet I’ve rarely seen them analyzed together. I’d like to do that, and try to see if there’s a way of thinking which can make sense of when you should expect each type to be more useful.

When Should You Focus on the Minimum?

To understand where each of these strategies succeeds (or underperforms) you need to compare them to the status-quo.

The status-quo in minimum-focused projects is zero. This is the default, and what will happen in the overwhelming majority of cases.

One habit I’ve focused on in this way was doing fifty push-ups every day. (Since Jan 1 been doing sun salutes, 30 pushups, 1 min plank, 50 heel lifts. Not amazing but better than nothing).Some people critiqued this as not being ideal for fitness. But it ignores the alternative—usually I would do no push-ups in a day, so some is certainly better than none. Doing the push-ups hasn’t stopped me from going to the gym, but keeping the habit has made me stronger.

Another way I’ve used this was doing reading practice for Chinese. I set a goal to do ten minutes per day. Again, the default here was zero. Most days I did no practice, so a ten minute goal, even if I never do more than this, is going to be an improvement.

The other reason to focus on a minimum is that it assumes the difficulty is in starting. When initiating a behavior or effort is the hardest step in the process, you want to set lower thresholds for effort so that you can make starting as easy as possible. (This is another reason that I sometimes do the Pareto technique cycling through tasks.  Just to start and do 25 minutes of something on the list, even if it isn't the ideal deliberate practice.)

Minimum-targeting works very well for establishing stable, long-term habits. It also works when the status-quo is very low or zero effort. Finally it makes sense when initiating effort is the hardest obstacle to overcome.

Sudden Genius and Breaking Down of Categories

I've been reading "Iconoclast"by Gregeory Berns,a valuable book for anyone interested in unlocking creativity.  While reading it this article came over the transom.
So LSD and trauma can cause disparate parts of the brain to talk to each other.  One would think that you could turn down the volume of the left side of your brain with meditation, but it doesn't seem to be so.  There may not be enough novelty or enough oomph to do it.
Berns recommends consciously confronting categories and listing them, adding in weird ones like stupid, or hot.  I would suggest that this is also a type of "reframing".  This is something I try to do a lot with ideas I'm working on.  To try to put the project in a totally different category.  Acupuncture as a sort of "self soothing" or as a mounting of a healing response or as a form of neuromodulation, or as a proxy for exercise, or as a stimulation of ancient primordial mimic pathways of fish.  etc....

The One Thing, Gary Keller

I listened to Ferriss' interview with Gary Keller, an extravagantly successful businessman.  He had a number of valuable maxims, that are so easy to say and so hard to do.  I got his ebook from the library called "The One Thing" and will put a few of his words of wisdom here.  I will say, one of the things that he mentioned was having "a big life".  I have to admit, that is something that draws me.  He also admitted to wanting to live to 100.  Something that is probably out of our control, but perhaps a worthwhile goal?
1.Domino effect. Extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous.  Similar to compounding effect.
2. In business.  What's your One Thing?
 3. Instead of discipline set habits.  This came up in "learning how to learn"also. That often it's just the initial part of setting a task of learning.  Once in it, it takes less.  Same with habits over time.  It turns out it takes 66 days.  Then the habit is, well, a habit and it takes very little discipline.  At least theoretically.
4. Singular discipline.  Michael Phelps 7 days a week, 6 hours a day or some such.  Makes life easier because it's simpler and you needn't be disciplined in everything.  Aim discipline at the right thing.
5. Will Power is limited.  Be aware of it and use it on your most important tasks.  Time your important tasks for when you have the most energy.
6.Work Life Balance  There will always be things left undone.  If you do the most important things, there still will be other things not done.  In work issues this means giving the most important thing all the time it demands. So it will necessarily be extremely out of balance in all other work demands. In work, go long.  Long times out of balance, in personal life, go short.  Don't let things stay out of balance for long. In personal life, nothing gets left behind.  In work, it demands it. Extraordinary results demand that you set a priority and act on it.  In work, there is always one thing that matters the most, and then everything else.  It is way out of balance. Personal life requires that you constantly keep the family, friends, integrity, health in sight.  If you drop work, it will bounce back. Any of the others will not. An extraordinary life is a counterbalancing one.
We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. Robert Brault
The key to success is not in all the things we do but the handful of things we do well.

There is an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It is simple and transferable.  It just requires courage to take a different approach
"Judge a man by his questions, not his answers." Voltaire
7. The focusing question.  What is the one thing I can do.  You ask what is the One Big Thing (Where am I going? What target should I aim for?) , and then what is my one thing right now (What is my one thing I must do right now to help me get there? )

How big your life can be and small must go to get there.
When you do this one thing, something else will happen.
The first domino.  What is that first domino. The answer's potential to change your life by doing the leveraged thing and avoiding distractions.
The focusing question asks you to find that one domino and focus on it exclusively until you knock it over.
Focusing question applies to all areas of life. He does in this order.
Spiritual
physical health
personal life
relationships
job
business
finance
People do not decide their futures.  They decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.
Ask Great Questions.  Like Great Goals they are big and specific. Stretch. Framed to be measurable so there is no wiggle room with what the results will look like.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now.  Who wins the battle between our future and present selves?

Chapter 11 Living for Productivity
The most successful people are the most productive people.  Time blocking is the way to focus on your most important thing and focus.  If you do this consistently, you are focussed.  Remember, like going to a movie.  Turn everything off and work.  Work for results. Focus and time block each and every day.

There is a lot more here about finding trends and stretching.  Benchmarking and trending.  Research to get to the minimum, then stretch.  This will require that you, in a way, become more.  Not a different person, but a stretched person.

Time block your time off.  Time block your one thing.  Time block planning.
He recommends blocking off 4 hours a day for your one thing...
time block one hour a week to assess your annual and monthly goals to make sure you're on track. Lining up the dominoes.
Perseverance is not a long race.  It is a series of short races one after the other. Momentum and motivation start to take over.
If you erase, you must replace.
The key is to fully internalize the domino fall that will happen when your one thing gets done. Remember everything else will become easier or unnecessary.
"until my one thing is done-everything else is a distraction!"  Put it where you can see it
and others can see it as well.
make it a mantra
When life intervenes, which it will, simply write down, brain dump the other tasks that need to be done and put them on a list. Put it out of sight and out of mind until its time comes.
build a bunker (avoid external disruptions)
store provisions
sweep for mines (disconnect wifi etc.)
enlist support
four hours!!!

Adopt the mindset of of someone seeking mastery.
Mastery is a commitment to becoming your best. So to achieve extraordinary results you must embrace the extraordinary effort it represents.
Be willing to be held accountable to doing everything you can to achieve your one thing.
Commitments
1. Follow the Path of Mastery
2. Move from e to P
3. Live the accountability cycle

When you've chosen to master the right thing, then pursuing mastery of it will make everything else easier or no longer necessary.
Mastery plays a key role in your domino run
10,000 hours
When working in your time block have the perspective of mastery.  Mastery pays dividends.
The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best IT can be done.
From entrepreneurial to Purposeful.
When you're going about your ONE thing, any ceiling of achievement must be challenged. and this requires a purposeful approach.
When masters hit a ceiling of achievement, they look for new models and systems, better ways to do things to push them through.
As you travel the path of mastery you'll find yourself continually challenged to do new things. the purposeful person follows the simple rule that "a different results requires doing something different."

Being purposeful is often about doing what comes "unnaturally", but when you're committed to achieveing extraordinary results, you simply do whatever it takes anyway.
By taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.  Accountability is most likely the most important of the three commitments. Without it, your journey down the path to mastery will be cut short the moment you encounter a challenge.
Without accountability you can't hit through the ceilings.
Accountable people are results oriented and never defend actions, skill levels, models, systems, or relationships that just aren't getting the job done.
Accountable people achieve results others only dream of.
When life happens, you can be either the author of your life of the victim of it.
Highly successful people are clear about their role in the events of their life.  They don't rear reality.  They seek it, acknowledge it and own it.  They know this is the only way to uncover new solutions.
Don't give into the pressure to deal with all of life's other issues.  It's a thief!
The truth is, it's a package deal.  When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up.  In fact, other areas of your life may experience chaos in direct proportion to the time you put in on your ONE thing. It's important for you to acdept this instead of fighting it. Francis ford coppola warns us that "anything you build on a large scale of with intense passion invites chaos". Get used to it and get over it.
Only those who wil risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
TS Eliot
Avoid regret.
Live a life of no regrets.
"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain