Jen, a friend of mine and Chicago-based life coach, introduced me to a unique way of setting goals. Rather than picking goals and visualizing working toward them, she recommends setting your goals and then working backward through mini weekly targets to guide you toward the greater goal. Similarly, you can use the skills you’ve just built around being intentional with your Sundays and Mondays to achieve the same thing.
Take running: let’s say that at the end of next month, I really want to get to a place where I’m running three times a week. Maybe this is a long-held goal of mine, but I feel like I “never” have time, so every week I end up making excuses for why I’m not running or it seems too hard. Instead of vaguely saying to myself, “Gee, I want to run three times a week,” I decide I want to run twelve times by the end of the month, and work backward using my Sundays and Mondays. Every Sunday I might look at the week ahead and figure out which days are best for running twenty minutes. I schedule it out. I give it a go that week. Then the next week, I do the same thing—it’s Sunday, I look at my week ahead, I’m intentional about how I’m spending my Sunday in order to be successful on Monday, I make adjustments based on whatever I need, and then I do it two more times. When the end of the month arrives, it’s not a knee-jerk moment of “Oh wait, it’s already summer and I didn’t even try to run” or “Shoot, I only ran once!” I’m able to hold myself accountable.
You can apply this perspective to any goal, because when you treat the beginning of the week like a fresh start rather than a thing to be avoided at all costs, you’re more likely to garner traction on whatever you’re trying to accomplish.