Rejecting your excuses
When you’re serious about committing to a schedule around goal hacking you’re going to internalise many excuses why you can’t commit on a given day. We’ve been well versed in this phenomenon during exam study periods at school, it’s the last thing you want to do. It makes sense, our brains and body want to preserve energy by default, it’s baked into the laws of thermodynamics with the external energy required to affect change.
Knowing this is a natural state of mind gives you more reason to get in the habit of silencing these thoughts. Accept that your body will require more energy as a result of critical thinking and creative application, you need to feed it with fortitude and determination, the energy is already there.
Let’s look at some examples of this in play:
- You committed to going for a run once a week.
This week you’re on holiday and it’s hot so you write it off as unfavourable weather and circumstances.
Get over this by finding a treadmill in a gym or go for a shorter, slower jog to keep to your plan. - You committed to publishing an artwork to Dribbble once a week.
This week you’ve been supporting a friend through a bad breakup and you don’t think you have the mental energy for it.
You don’t need your whole week subsumed by emotions, produce some work inspired by the breakup, it may help you feel better. - You committed to getting 2 sales a week on your side project.
Owing to low morale from two weeks of effort with no traction, you question the value of the goal and want to give up.
You don’t know that you’re not about to hit an inflection point of interest. You have to keep on going, sales is a numbers game, just pay close attention to objections so you’re not trying the same thing expecting different results.
Once you’ve trained yourself to overcome your inner objections and have stuck to your goal hacking schedule, you’ll not only feel a higher sense of worth but you’ll now know you can apply yourself to achieve almost anything you put your mind to.
