Living Life by Design

When setting goals or habits, it’s fairly straightforward and easy setting a minimum you want to hit. But what if you reach your minimum and want to keep going. While you could constantly push for growth, try setting a minimum limit AND an upper limit.

We tend to focus only on the lower bound: the minimum threshold we want (or have to) hit. And the implicit assumption is, “Hey, if you can do more than the minimum, GO FOR IT.”

But what would it look like if we added an upper bound to our goals and behaviors?

• “My goal is to close 3 loans this month, and my stretch goal is to close 5.”
• “My goal is to lose 5 pounds this month, and my stretch goal is to loose 8.”
• “My goal is to make 10 sales calls today, and my stretch goal is to make 20.”

The power of setting an upper limit is that it becomes easier for you to sustain your progress. And the power of sustaining your progress is that you end up blowing away everyone who chased success as quickly as possible.

By setting an obtainable upper limit, you make the process of getting started and sustaining your behavior much easier. Once you establish the routine of doing your behavior over and over again, you can raise the limit as needed.

It is better to make small progress every day than to do as much as humanly possible in one day.

Do things you can sustain…