Episode 231 - Aim Lower - The Secret to Hitting Big Goals Is Targets So Easy You Can't Miss Them with Roland Denzel
March 26, 2024
"Give yourself an expiration date, usually shorter than the one that's like a long term goal. So let's say seven days, because most people can do something for seven days, and seven days is a good 'taste test.' I'm going to try this for seven days and re-evaluate. Do I like it? Is it working for me? And here's the language that I prefer: is it serving me?" —Roland Denzel
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Roland Denzel discusses AIM LOWER - THE SECRET TO HITTING BIG GOALS IS TARGETS SO EASY YOU CAN'T MISS THEM, including how big goals teach bad habits, how tiny dopamine hits mean the world to your habits, how habits need slack and an expiration date, and his advice: One at a time, please.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
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Roland Denzel created The Indestructible Author in 2015 to help authors just like him be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane. You might know Roland as the author of numerous health, fitness, and nutrition books, a health coach, and a restorative exercise specialist, but the truth is Roland has always been an author first. He has written over ten books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and articles, and at least one poem, all while raising a family and working a sixty-hour a week day job.
Links
Roland's Links:
https://indestructibleauthor.com
instagram.com/indestructibleauthor/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndestructibleAuthorGroup/
https://www.youtube.com/@rolanddenzel-authorcoach
Roland's Previous Podcast Appearance:
Episode 155 - The Benefits (and Costs) of Membership with Roland Denzel
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://indestructibleauthor.com
instagram.com/indestructibleauthor/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndestructibleAuthorGroup/
https://www.youtube.com/@rolanddenzel-authorcoach
Roland's Previous Podcast Appearance:
Episode 155 - The Benefits (and Costs) of Membership with Roland Denzel
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Roland! Are you going to make changes to your approach to goal-setting based on his advice? In what way have you broken down a big goal into the smaller goals that he recommends?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
AI-generated Summary
The main topic discussed was Roland Denzel's philosophy of setting small, achievable goals to build positive writing habits, rather than aiming for overly ambitious targets that can lead to failure and burnout.
Denzel argued that big writing challenges like NaNoWriMo teach bad habits by requiring unsustainable word counts and grueling writing schedules. This can make writing feel miserable and result in associating it with negative emotions. Instead of 50,000 words in a month, he advocated for much smaller daily goals, like writing for just 1 hour per day 5 days a week. The key is making the targets so easy that you simply cannot fail to meet them.
This provides frequent small "dopamine hits" and rewards for accomplishing achievable tasks, reinforcing the habit in a positive way. Denzel emphasized the power of things like checking off to-do items, calendar markings, or little celebrations to provide psychological satisfaction. He also stressed giving yourself "slack" - permission to be imperfect and making goals flexible enough to account for disruptions.
Trying to stack too many new habits at once is a recipe for failure according to Denzel. He recommended introducing just one new positive habit at a time, mastering it through repetition until it feels easy, and then layering in the next habit. This helps avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Habits should also have defined expiration dates, like a 7 or 10 day "test run", to evaluate if they are truly serving you well before committing long-term. If not, you can adjust or scrap the habit without it feeling like a failure.
The ultimate aim is to find an enjoyable, sustainable process for writing and accomplishing goals, rather than resorting to white-knuckle grit and ultimately burning out. Tiny successes and dopamine hits build positive momentum over time.
Denzel's own experiences illustrated these principles. He built a writing career around the constraints of a day job and family by carving out 30-60 minute sessions whenever possible rather than trying to force long dedicated blocks. The key was shaping his process around his life, not the other way around.
In summary, Denzel advocated setting tiny, easy-to-achieve goals that provide frequent positive reinforcement as the secrets to building productive, sustainable writing habits over the long-term. His overarching philosophy centered on an enjoyable, low-stress approach to slowly layering in success after success.
Denzel argued that big writing challenges like NaNoWriMo teach bad habits by requiring unsustainable word counts and grueling writing schedules. This can make writing feel miserable and result in associating it with negative emotions. Instead of 50,000 words in a month, he advocated for much smaller daily goals, like writing for just 1 hour per day 5 days a week. The key is making the targets so easy that you simply cannot fail to meet them.
This provides frequent small "dopamine hits" and rewards for accomplishing achievable tasks, reinforcing the habit in a positive way. Denzel emphasized the power of things like checking off to-do items, calendar markings, or little celebrations to provide psychological satisfaction. He also stressed giving yourself "slack" - permission to be imperfect and making goals flexible enough to account for disruptions.
Trying to stack too many new habits at once is a recipe for failure according to Denzel. He recommended introducing just one new positive habit at a time, mastering it through repetition until it feels easy, and then layering in the next habit. This helps avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Habits should also have defined expiration dates, like a 7 or 10 day "test run", to evaluate if they are truly serving you well before committing long-term. If not, you can adjust or scrap the habit without it feeling like a failure.
The ultimate aim is to find an enjoyable, sustainable process for writing and accomplishing goals, rather than resorting to white-knuckle grit and ultimately burning out. Tiny successes and dopamine hits build positive momentum over time.
Denzel's own experiences illustrated these principles. He built a writing career around the constraints of a day job and family by carving out 30-60 minute sessions whenever possible rather than trying to force long dedicated blocks. The key was shaping his process around his life, not the other way around.
In summary, Denzel advocated setting tiny, easy-to-achieve goals that provide frequent positive reinforcement as the secrets to building productive, sustainable writing habits over the long-term. His overarching philosophy centered on an enjoyable, low-stress approach to slowly layering in success after success.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to "The Indy Author Podcast." Today, my guest is Roland Denzel. Hey, Roland, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Roland: Hey, good morning, Matty. I'm doing great.
[00:00:08] Matty: That's great to hear.
Meet Roland Denzel
[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Roland Denzel created "The Indestructible Author" in 2015 to help authors just like him be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane.
You might know Roland as the author of numerous health, fitness, and nutrition books, a health coach, and a restorative exercise specialist. But the truth is, Roland has always been an author for us. He has written over 10 books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and articles, and at least one poem, all while raising a family and working a 60-hour-a-week day job.
And Roland previously joined me in Episode 155, which was "The Benefits and Costs of Membership."
The Power of Aiming Lower
[00:00:42] Matty: This was a while ago. I can't remember the context where this came up, but I heard Roland talking about something and invited him on the podcast to recap it. This is great because normally now I'm playing with ChatGPT to come up with an intriguing title, and you did this for me.
So the title of what we're going to be talking about is "Aim Lower: The Secret to Hitting Big Goals Is Targets So Easy You Can't Miss Them." Roland even gave me a little teaser for what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's writing a book in a month or setting the same resolutions year after year, the big goals we set for ourselves often come with unsustainable habits.
But what if the secret to reaching your big goals is to build habits so small you simply can't fail? I just love this. Roland was also kind enough to send me some bullet points for what he wanted to cover with this topic. He did all the work for me; this is so great.
Big Goals Teach Bad Habits
[00:01:30] Matty: The first one we want to talk about is big goals teach bad habits.
Talk a little bit about that.
[00:01:38] Roland: As an author, we've probably all tried to do NaNoWriMo, for instance, National Novel Writing Month, and you get all mentally prepared for it. You say, "I'm going to get up in the morning, or work at lunch, or all of the above," and you aim to write 1,666 words per day. It's 30 days, so you just knuckle through, and you get it done.
What happens is it's such a challenge. There are good things about challenges like this; it can prove to you that you can do it, but the downside is that it doesn't teach you any good habits. In fact, it probably teaches you some bad habits because if you have to knuckle through something, that's not sustainable.
If you have to force yourself to do all these things, and then you're dreading it or regretting it, then at the end of that month, it's very unlikely you will continue the same way. You're going to tone it down or you're going to change your process. So many people crash at the end of National Novel Writing Month and take the next month or two or three off, and they don't look at that book again or any book for a long period of time.
So what did that teach you? It taught you that you can do something hard. You can physically do something hard, but it also taught you that writing is hard and it's miserable on a subconscious level because we have to give our subconscious minds a lot of credit for doing things to help us and also to hurt us.
Our subconscious is there to protect us, and it's not always the protection we want.
[00:03:16] Matty: Yeah. I have never done NaNoWriMo, nor have I ever used word count as a measure of my writing because my fear is that if I had to write 1,666 words a day, I would get to 1,500 and then just write 166 words of nonsense, because I would feel like I had to. It's like when the assembly line starts moving too fast and you're just slapping the pieces on because the goal becomes more important than the quality.
[00:03:49] Roland: Exactly. Is that a bad habit? Yes, it's like, do you want to write words just for the sake of words? What's the point of that, right? You're just going to have to delete those words the next time or when you're editing you'll be like, "What was I thinking here? This is nonsense." So that's definitely a big part of it. There's also the thing where, let's say, you take a day off and there are all these fancy spreadsheets that people use for National Novel Writing Month. So you get to a certain point, and it's Thanksgiving. You're traveling that day, dealing with family, and traveling back. No writing that day, which should be fine, right? But the spreadsheet auto-adjusts. So now, the next day, you have to write, say, 1,754 words, and it feels overwhelming.
If you're sick, or there's an emergency, or your laptop crashes, and it takes a while to get it back, then the next day, you're up to 1,900 words. Pretty soon, all of this pressure mounts because you have a goal of meeting this arbitrary 50,000 words in a month, right? Hopefully, you finish it because then you'll get a dopamine hit knowing you can do something hard when it comes to writing. But if you fail, you get the opposite effect. You've told your conscious and subconscious mind that you've failed before.
So next November, or the next time you decide to write a lot in a month, even if you consciously think you can do it, subconsciously, there's a part of you that's reminding you it didn't work out last time. Last time it was really hard, wasn't it? You felt your body tense up so many times. Is it really worth it? Then you either decide it's worth it and make it harder on yourself, thinking, "I'll be more strict this time, so I know I'll succeed." Which, if you fail, it's even worse. You're really piling it on yourself. Or you think the solution is to work harder, which isn't true. What you need is a sustainable, enjoyable way to write, one that continuously gives you little rewards, little successes. You want those kinds of positive outcomes to build habits and to tell yourself you're on the right track.
[00:06:52] Matty: Yeah, if I were in charge of the world, the two changes I would make to NaNoWriMo are not to do it in November because the only worse month they could have picked would be December. Why not do it in January when nothing else is going on? And the other thing is, I think it would be cool to aim for thirty 1,500-word short stories because then at least at the end of the month, you could say, "Well, I didn't get thirty 1,500-word short stories, but I got fifteen 1,500-word short stories." You have an actual finished thing. Even if your schedule totally goes out the window, you might have three substantial stories, and at least you can say, "Look, I finished these three things," not, "I didn't finish this one ginormous thing."
[00:07:43] Roland: But for people new to short stories, it could take hours of mental thought and energy to come up with the idea for a short story, right? So now, if you have to do that every day, you might be even more exhausted by the end of the thirty days. Some people might do better, but some could be like, "Oh, I could never write a short story," and that could just ruin them.
Goals Should Be So Small You Can't Fail
[00:08:08] Roland: So, the next bullet I gave you is that goals should be so small you can't fail, fail-proof, right? Think of a goal that you want to do, like writing short stories. Your goal should not be to write thirty short stories. That's like a long-term goal and it's very arbitrary, just like 50,000 words. Your goal is to write a novel, right? Great. So put that off in the distance. Then you say, "What are the things I need to do? What are the habits or what are the systems I need to put in place to write a novel or to write these short stories?" Then drill them down to the very smallest elements.
These are the things you can set your daily little goals or your daily little systems in place for, but they need to be easy. Let's take National Novel Writing Month. We'll pretend it doesn't exist, but someone says, "I want to write a novel," which is the same goal as NaNoWriMo.
So I want to write a novel. So you can say, "Well, I need to write more. I need to write regularly. I need to keep my story moving." So what can I do that I think is sustainable, that I can absolutely accomplish every day or most days, and that I will feel good about once I'm doing it?
For me, I would say, back before I did NaNoWriMo, I generally have about an hour a day where I can spend some time writing. It's broken up throughout the day. So I would say, "You know what, I think I can write for an hour a day."
Then think about how likely you are to accomplish that on a scale from 1 to 10. If it's a 6, that's a 60 percent chance. No, that's not very good. It's too hard. The goal needs to be smaller. Think of an even smaller goal that you know you can achieve. So say, "Can I do an hour total throughout the day?" Okay, that's better. Instead of an hour in the morning, I can spread my hour throughout the day. Maybe that's a 70 or 80 percent chance, 7 or 8 out of 10. Then ask, "Does it have to be every day?"
[00:12:34] Matty: Well, no, but it has to be maybe five days a week. Six days a week is too hard. So it's only like a seven. Five days a week, an hour a day of writing, and I'm going to qualify writing as sitting in front of my computer and doing nothing else but putting words on my digital page.
I think that's a nine. I think that's pretty achievable. A nine or ten. Because I can find a way to get that, you know, five days a week. That's the kind of goal you need to have, right? And for short stories, if you're really good at them, you might think, okay, I want to work on a short story every day.
It doesn't have to be the same short story because especially at the beginning, if you haven't written one, it could take a lot of not just time thinking. Whenever you're learning something new, it not only takes mental energy but also what I call emotional energy. Because if something frustrates you, it's not just a matter of, "Oh, it's frustrating and my CPU is spinning." It's frustrating, and I feel it viscerally in my body. Like, "This is so frustrating." And then these subconscious things, "I can do it, I can't do it," all these things come up. It's like emotional energy. And for authors, especially, that can be so draining that they burn themselves out very quickly.
So you might want to think, "I'm going to work on my short story for an hour a day." And then list off or make the tiny little things that make up creating a short story—coming up with an idea, a character, a setting, sitting in front of my computer and typing, outlining—it doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you, in your agreement with yourself, know that those are the little things required to meet your goal.
Tiny Dopamine Hits Mean the World to Your Habits
[00:12:54] Roland: Exactly. So, you probably know who Jerry Seinfeld is, the comedian. He had a challenge for himself to write a joke a day. It didn't have to be a good joke, a long joke, or a great joke. Just a joke. He had to spend time writing a joke per day. Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour. But when he got it done, he would just put an X on his calendar. It doesn't sound like much, but an X on your calendar creates a dopamine hit. Just like if you have a to-do list and you check it off, it feels good. You should always put things on your to-do list that you know you can do. It gets you started, right? And then as your list goes up, you feel those dopamine hits every day. Those are positive reinforcements that you're doing the right things with your habits. And the reverse is true.
If you can't meet those things, if you can't get that little hit, you don't get that dopamine hit, then you have a slump that day. So that's why it's important to find something that you know you can do, that you feel very confident that you can achieve. And there's a little bit more to that.
[00:15:13] Matty: There are more protective measures we can put in place that will mitigate the effects of missing a day, like I talked about before, maybe five days out of seven, not necessarily every day per week. That's one way. That's common.
These tiny little dopamine hits can be like a check on the calendar or like when little kids use happy face stickers, right? You could make your own to-do list, you could make your own chart. Like Austin Kleon—I don't know if you know who Austin Kleon is—he writes books like "Steal Like an Artist," "Show Your Work," right?
He has a thing on his website with a form you can print off, and it's like a 31-day calendar, right? It's just a fun calendar in his special handwriting, and he says do whatever you want. Type at the top, write at the top, and put like a sticker, draw something.
It just gives you something that gives you that little feeling, that little hit that feels good every day. They're super tiny, but don't underestimate how powerful something small can be.
[00:15:13] Matty: In your experience, is there a difference between making those kinds of checkoffs physically on a document versus in an online task management thing or a spreadsheet or something like that?
[00:15:25] Roland: There probably is. For a while, I used a to-do app, and all of my apps on my phone have the sounds turned off.
So when I click a to-do, nothing happens. It doesn't vibrate, it doesn't do anything, right? So there's something to be said for that ding, for that noise, right? So you have to find what works for you. Does it feel satisfying? Like, does your to-do list make a flash, or does it make a ding, or does it vibrate in your hand?
Does it send you a message or a notification that feels good? Because that's another thing, like, I think it's Microsoft To Do, every time you check it off, it'll send you an email, or something at the end of the day saying you've done something. So that could be enough to get that email. So, unless you're sure that the digital works for you and makes you feel good when you click it, find something here in the real world, tangible, like those little silver bells that hotels and restaurants used to have, right? Ding, ding, ding, right? Get one of those and keep it on your desk or next to your door, so like when you see it and you get there like, "Oh, I did that today," ding, and hit it.
But it's something, so that's why, I mean, other things like that, stickers are inexpensive. You can have a calendar, like I have a big whiteboard calendar over here, and just checking it off with a different color pen is really nice.
[00:16:54] Matty: I realized that the task management software I use is Trello, and in Trello, if you can put a checklist attached to an item, and so I have one, like my daily tasks, the things that I do every day, check scribe count and check my promotion calendar and things like that. And I've added an automation so that on my daily calendar, once I've checked everything off, first of all, if you check everything off, when you check off the last thing, all the little checkboxes vibrate in a happy way.
[00:17:24] Roland: Oh, that's good.
[00:17:25] Matty: And then it clears out all the checkmarks and it moves the task to the next day. So it is sort of like what you're saying about the stickers. It is oddly satisfying to have a little happy dance from the checkboxes.
[00:17:37] Roland: Isn't it? Yeah.
[00:17:41] Roland: Yes, other things you can do is, if you have... this doesn't really work if you're not very active on social media because you can post things on social media. For example, "Hey, I achieved my goal for the day." It might be super annoying to your Facebook friends if you post every day that you achieved your goal, but if you have, maybe, one thing like, "Here's my goal for the week," and every day you update that post to say you've done it that day, that could be different. You have to see if that is satisfying for you, and if you have enough friends or followers who are engaged, you're going to get responses, people saying "good job," and things like that. So that could be another way to do it.
Habits Need Slack
[00:18:22] Matty: I want to move on to the next bullet, which is "Habits need slack."
[00:18:26] Roland: Yes. So, I learned that not everyone knows what the term "slack" means. You have to have slack, which is just like relaxing. It's like you give yourself a break. That's why I think it's funny. But habits need slack too. I already talked about one type of slack, but I didn't use the term at the time. It's like, instead of committing to seven days per week, I'll aim for five days a week. That's one way of building slack into the habit you're trying to form because it's unsustainable to do something seven days a week forever. Something can happen. So, you either have to make the task easier, or you have to cut yourself some slack and say, "Hey, I'm not going to be super strict with myself."
The key here, with all of these things, is you have to give yourself slack, make the goals small, and define the rewards before you start building the new habit. You have to set these rules before you begin, because if you adjust them later, even for a good reason, I guarantee somewhere deep down, in your soul and in your bones, you'll feel the tiniest bit like a failure. For example, "Oh, I've gone 12 days and I realize that I can't do this seven days a week, so I'm going to do five days a week." That's good, it's good that you're flexible, but having set that expectation ahead of time would have been much more positive. Because now you're not changing the rules. When you change the rules, you subconsciously feel a bit like a failure, and that's what you want to avoid. You want to continue moving forward with positives and not have to take a step back with negatives. So, cutting yourself some slack is crucial.
[00:21:38] Matty: That feels more comfortable to me based on my writing style.
[00:21:41] Roland: Yes, so that's a different kind of slack. Slack can be anything, but it essentially goes with giving yourself permission to not be perfect. The key is to ensure that you grant yourself this permission ahead of time.
[00:21:57] Matty: I like the idea of setting goals ahead of time, not only because it sets you up to feel good when you achieve them, but also because it's a method of triaging what you think you want to accomplish. You might be considering participating in NaNoWriMo, and as you plan out how you'll manage your time and allocate your attention, you may conclude that there's only a 20 percent likelihood of following through. Deciding whether you truly want to commit to NaNoWriMo ahead of time allows you to thoroughly consider your decision. However, I did have a question about slack. There's the slack of, "I intended to write for an hour a day, but I'm just not feeling it," or "I was going to write for an hour today, but my car broke down and I'm dealing with that." These are instances where you need to accept that writing seven days a week isn't feasible, and aiming for five days a week is much more realistic.
Then there are times when you're ill and can't write at all for a week. Do you manage these kinds of emergency situations differently?
[00:23:04] Roland: That's a great point because there are definitely unexpected events that can disrupt your routine. The good news, if it's significant—like your car breaking down or falling ill, as I did with COVID a couple of weeks ago, which prevented me from writing for a few days—is that you know you had a valid reason for missing those days. It's also beneficial to remind yourself that if something drastic occurs, it's understandable, and it's not a point of failure. There are simply times when you cannot do what you planned.
[00:25:28] Matty: I think another way to handle those catastrophic moments is to set such small goals that you can't fail. Habits need slack because, let's say, you start feeling unwell on a Monday and you think, "Okay, this is a catastrophic moment for my writing goals. I'm going to feel terrible today, I'll try to get back to it tomorrow." Then, if the next day you still feel bad, you might think, "Today is another catastrophic day. I'll get back to it tomorrow." However, if you realize you're getting sick and you know it will last a week, you could say, "I'm going to take a week off because I know that's how long it takes." And then, if you get back to it on day five, you feel good about returning to your habit sooner. The key is not to plan too aggressively after a setback, which could further a sense of failure.
[00:26:24] Roland: This is one of the barriers. That's a great point, but it also reminds me of the issue where we tend to start things on New Year's Day, the first of the month, Mondays, or our birthdays. These are real days on the calendar, and I understand why we choose them, but they're quite arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, even saying "I'm going to do this for the month of November." It's also arbitrary. So you could say, "I'm going to do it for 30 days," and if you need a sabbatical, you pick up where you left off after you're well. Right? So, do you feel like you have to start over a little? You can either start over again or pick up where you left off, depending on what's better for you. If you were already in the groove, give yourself some slack and say, "Hey, it's going to take a couple of days to ramp back up to where I was."
[00:27:57] Matty: But I just want to continue. It's going to feel good for me to pick up where I left off and say, "Hey, I did 30 days of this." Yes, there was a sickness there. I had some sick days in between. When you link it to November or December or January, right? You can't get that back. You can't say, "Well, I'm going to finish NaNoWriMo in December," because that's not NaNoWriMo anymore. NaNoWriMo is an official thing, and it's in November, so even though you mean well, part of you is going to say, "Well, it's not quite NaNoWriMo."
[00:28:18] Matty: Well, every time NaNoWriMo comes up, I explain why I don't do it. I feel like to give equal time, I'm going to have to get a NaNoWriMo person on the podcast to represent the other view, but maybe not in October because I'm sure they're all booked up with podcast interviews in October. But, it obviously works well for some people, just consider whether it works well for you or not. Habits need to have an expiration date.
[00:28:24] Roland: Yeah, this one's big. This is all part of Slack, if you think about it. When you're trying to build a new habit, if you say, "I'm going to do this forever," and you don't like it, then eventually you're going to feel bad because you're abandoning it. So, if I'm trying to write 1,666 words per day and I don't like it, at the end of the month, whether I did it or not, if I hated it, I've learned nothing. All I've learned is that I don't like it, but I haven't learned that positive habits can help me. So, if you give yourself an expiration date, usually shorter than a long-term goal, let's say seven days, most people can do something for seven days, and seven days is a good taste test.
I'm going to try this for seven days and see, reevaluate. Do I like it? Is it working for me? And here's the language that I prefer: Is it serving me? If I continue with this habit, is it serving me well? Because if it's not, if I have to cringe and force myself, then I'm not going to be able to continue it forever, and I'm wasting my time.
So, giving it that seven days, for instance, as an expiration date, and saying, "Hey, at the end of seven days, if I reevaluate and I don't like it, I can either make it easier, change the rules, or stop doing it and replace it with something I do want to do." Because who here hasn't tried something for 21 days to build a habit, which is totally fabricated? There's no science in that at all.
[00:30:18] Matty: But you should know within a few days whether you like something or not. And giving yourself an expiration date means that you do not have to abandon it. A realistic expiration date, it's hard to say, so yeah, for seven days, ten days, whatever, if you realize, "Oh, it's not working for me," it's part of that slack and it also saves you from wasting time.
[00:30:47] Matty: Yeah, I like that idea of asking if it's serving you because I think that there's also the less common but still possible problem where you've successfully incorporated a habit into your life. It was serving you well for a while and now you're doing it without really thinking about it.
[00:31:17] Roland: Yeah, exactly. And if you have both an expiration date and a check-in date to say, "Okay, I've been doing this for a month, a year, two years, or a decade," you can assess whether it's still a valuable way to spend your time and if it's providing the benefits you were looking for.
One at a time, please
[00:31:19] Matty: And, the sixth bullet you suggested was "one at a time, please."
[00:31:24] Roland: Yeah. We have a tendency to dive right in. "I'm going to write my novel, so I'm going to write 1,666 words, I'm going to write for an hour, I'm going to get up early, I'm not going to watch Netflix." You pile all these things on at once, which all sound really good. "This is what it would take for me to finish my novel. I'm going to do all of these things." Well, that's a lot to try at once, and it's a lot to process mentally and emotionally. Giving yourself the space to try something new is important. So when you're trying five or six new things at a time, or even three, each one becomes more difficult to experience, to try, and to test, to see whether you like it.
If I try all those things at once and after a week I hate my life, my new life that I've built for myself as an author—no more Netflix, getting up early, writing an hour every day—I don't want that, right? But if you try one at a time, each one is more likely to succeed, and each can be fine-tuned to be a habit that you'll not only keep up but hopefully enjoy. You've heard of habit stacking, right? I prefer the term habit layering. Habit stacking is like piling everything on at once—Netflix, getting up early, etc. But habit layering is when you've semi-mastered a habit, it's on cruise control, like writing for an hour a week for seven to ten days, and you have the mental and emotional space to add a new one on top of it, to layer it. Something that doesn't conflict. Not writing for an hour and a half, but keeping that one and building on it. Habits take 21, 30, 90 days to build, so you keep going with that one. Then you say, "I feel I could write better if I got up a little earlier," and now you try that. You have to start small again, asking, "How much earlier can I realistically get up?" And then you consider all the factors—will I disturb my family, do I need to grind my coffee beans, etc. Then, once you're on a really good track with that second habit, you can consider layering the next one, and so on. We don't have the emotional strength to compartmentalize multiple habits at once, especially when they're all directed towards one goal. When we fail, it feels like we've failed at everything, which can be overwhelming. This is like what happens when people decide, "On Monday, I'm going to start the keto diet and go to the gym five days a week."
And, I need to start going to bed earlier because I know that's going to help me go to the gym. They do all of these things, and then after two or three weeks, they look back and realize they've stopped doing all these things. What a failure. So they give up everything, and because it was all tied together, it was one thing that they were doing.
They give up everything, and then, how long does it take to start again? Because every time you have a failure, it's that much harder to start again. No matter what it is. If you've ever been on a diet, you think, "I was on a diet last year. It didn't really work. I'm going to try it again." But you could try it right now, you could try it on Monday, but you just keep putting it off because consciously and subconsciously, last time you tried, you failed, and this time, it's probably going to be the same. So the way to mitigate that is to go through these steps: smaller dopamine hits, cutting yourself some slack, give yourself an expiration date, and do one thing at a time, and then layer them as every time you succeed.
[00:35:47] Matty: It's interesting because, as we've discussed before, I have a challenge with getting enough movement in my life, and I've talked to many guests about this. A couple of months ago, I was at a book club, and this topic came up. Someone asked me what my day was like as a full-time author, publisher, and podcaster, and I described it, mentioning how it was a very sedentary lifestyle.
Afterwards, one of the women in the book club introduced herself as the executive director of the local YMCA. She said, "I don't know if you've ever been to the YMCA, but here's my card. If you'd like a tour, give me a call, and I'd be happy to take you through it." I thought, why not? I hadn't been to the YMCA, even though it's six minutes from my house, because I had a probably decades-out-of-date idea of what they were like. But I went for a tour, and it was a very nice place with a lot of appealing features.
So, I signed up and started going. One of the things I really liked about it, illustrating many of the points we've discussed, was the app that allowed you to sign up for classes the day before. I loved that I wasn't committing to 10 weeks of yoga. It was like, "I'll do aqua aerobics, and then when I go out to the car, I'll open the app and think, 'Oh, chair yoga, that sounds like fun, I'll do that tomorrow.'" So, I had a lot of flexibility in what I was signing up for, and if I decided I didn't like aqua aerobics, I didn't have to go, and I wasn't wasting any money.
I was sticking with it and found that on the days when I went to the YMCA, I was also more likely to take the dogs for an extra walk because I was already out and about. So, one good thing led to another good thing. Then at the end of December, I got the flu and obviously didn't go to the YMCA.
[00:38:59] Matty: And then after I was over the flu, I still had this chronic cough, and nobody wants to be around someone who's coughing a lot these days. So I wasn't going to the YMCA then. And then I was on vacation, so I wasn't going to the YMCA, and I got back from vacation about a week ago. The earlier part of the story is, I used to have an item on my calendar from 10 to 11:30, which was when I blocked off time for going to the YMCA. But when I got into the habit, I took the calendar entry off because I thought I didn't need the reminder anymore. However, when I got back from vacation, it had sort of fallen off my mental radar. It wasn't that I was thinking about going to the YMCA and deciding not to, it had just disappeared from my conscious mind as something I needed to include in my day.
I realized that I should have put it back on my calendar as a reminder and kept it there until I no longer needed it as a reminder. That illustrates, in my own life, all those things about goals being small, like "yes, tomorrow I'm going to go to the YMCA," and the dopamine hit of saying "today I went to the YMCA," and all those good things. So, this is a good reminder to me to get that back on my calendar and on my actual schedule.
[00:38:59] Roland: Oh, good. I mean, there is some benefit to changing that reminder on your calendar too, because after a while, it just becomes another calendar reminder every day. You sort of tune it out.
[00:39:11] Matty: I think the benefit is that it blocked my time. So, like, I do have events that get scheduled automatically through Calendly, and it was a reminder to me, but it also prevented other things from showing up in that time block, which was important.
[00:39:25] Roland: Yeah. I like that.
[00:39:27] Matty: So, I do have to say, when I was reading over these notes ahead of time, and you were talking about the power of small and things like that, and then I look back over your bio, which ends with raising a family and working a 60-hour week day job. So, in closing, I just want to ask, personally, as someone who has achieved the things described in your bio, is there any contradiction there that we need to discuss? Like, did you say "I am going to not only raise a family but I'm going to work a 60-hour week day job, and then I'm also going to do all the things you're doing on top of that"? How does that all mesh together? How does that work logically together?
[00:40:03] Roland: Well, my goal is not to be a full-time author. My goal is just to write books that people enjoy. Yes, I do want to make some money from my books, but that's not my primary goal. Making money from my books is a good goal, right, and it's a strong part of my goals. But I have no illusions about being a full-time author. I wrote books that I really wanted to, mostly they're health and fitness books. I have some urban fantasy coming up, but right now, they're health and fitness, and I had a message that I wanted to get out there. So putting it out there, I knew that I had a family, which was important, and sometimes I've had a full-time job, and sometimes I've had jobs that, you sort of... I was a health coach and an author coach, and I did consulting for printing and publishing companies.
[00:41:58] Roland: So, it all adds up to those things, but that was where I was primarily making my money. So I had to say, "Here's what I'm doing. This is my life. I have a family. I can't neglect my family, right?" And I also have these jobs, this work. So I looked at how I could build a writing career around that foundation. That's where I came up with the idea that I could write for an hour a day. Luckily, I've trained myself over time to be able to write without needing a solid block of time. Sometimes I can write in the morning, or if I have a longer lunch break, I can take half an hour of my lunch and write then. If I have the energy after work, I can write a little bit there. So over time, it's become like sometimes it's an hour and a half of writing, sometimes it's half an hour, but it's built around my life, rather than my life being formed by it. Yeah.
[00:41:58] Matty: That's so cool. It's always lovely to speak with you and so helpful to be reminded of these things that make so much sense when you describe them but are sometimes hard to remember in the moment when you get all caught up in whatever the latest thing is that you want to do.
[00:42:11] Roland: I do have a freebie that people can download if they go to indestructibleauthor.com/habits. They can download this thing; it's got a poster you can print off, stick on your fridge or your desk, and it will give you all these habits. It goes into a bit more detail on how to set your goals, how to set your habits, and all the ways to get your little dopamine hits. And I think signing up for my email list is a dopamine hit in and of itself.
[00:42:37] Matty: Perfect. Thank you so much, Roland.
[00:42:39] Roland: You're very welcome.
[00:00:06] Roland: Hey, good morning, Matty. I'm doing great.
[00:00:08] Matty: That's great to hear.
Meet Roland Denzel
[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Roland Denzel created "The Indestructible Author" in 2015 to help authors just like him be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane.
You might know Roland as the author of numerous health, fitness, and nutrition books, a health coach, and a restorative exercise specialist. But the truth is, Roland has always been an author for us. He has written over 10 books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and articles, and at least one poem, all while raising a family and working a 60-hour-a-week day job.
And Roland previously joined me in Episode 155, which was "The Benefits and Costs of Membership."
The Power of Aiming Lower
[00:00:42] Matty: This was a while ago. I can't remember the context where this came up, but I heard Roland talking about something and invited him on the podcast to recap it. This is great because normally now I'm playing with ChatGPT to come up with an intriguing title, and you did this for me.
So the title of what we're going to be talking about is "Aim Lower: The Secret to Hitting Big Goals Is Targets So Easy You Can't Miss Them." Roland even gave me a little teaser for what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's writing a book in a month or setting the same resolutions year after year, the big goals we set for ourselves often come with unsustainable habits.
But what if the secret to reaching your big goals is to build habits so small you simply can't fail? I just love this. Roland was also kind enough to send me some bullet points for what he wanted to cover with this topic. He did all the work for me; this is so great.
Big Goals Teach Bad Habits
[00:01:30] Matty: The first one we want to talk about is big goals teach bad habits.
Talk a little bit about that.
[00:01:38] Roland: As an author, we've probably all tried to do NaNoWriMo, for instance, National Novel Writing Month, and you get all mentally prepared for it. You say, "I'm going to get up in the morning, or work at lunch, or all of the above," and you aim to write 1,666 words per day. It's 30 days, so you just knuckle through, and you get it done.
What happens is it's such a challenge. There are good things about challenges like this; it can prove to you that you can do it, but the downside is that it doesn't teach you any good habits. In fact, it probably teaches you some bad habits because if you have to knuckle through something, that's not sustainable.
If you have to force yourself to do all these things, and then you're dreading it or regretting it, then at the end of that month, it's very unlikely you will continue the same way. You're going to tone it down or you're going to change your process. So many people crash at the end of National Novel Writing Month and take the next month or two or three off, and they don't look at that book again or any book for a long period of time.
So what did that teach you? It taught you that you can do something hard. You can physically do something hard, but it also taught you that writing is hard and it's miserable on a subconscious level because we have to give our subconscious minds a lot of credit for doing things to help us and also to hurt us.
Our subconscious is there to protect us, and it's not always the protection we want.
[00:03:16] Matty: Yeah. I have never done NaNoWriMo, nor have I ever used word count as a measure of my writing because my fear is that if I had to write 1,666 words a day, I would get to 1,500 and then just write 166 words of nonsense, because I would feel like I had to. It's like when the assembly line starts moving too fast and you're just slapping the pieces on because the goal becomes more important than the quality.
[00:03:49] Roland: Exactly. Is that a bad habit? Yes, it's like, do you want to write words just for the sake of words? What's the point of that, right? You're just going to have to delete those words the next time or when you're editing you'll be like, "What was I thinking here? This is nonsense." So that's definitely a big part of it. There's also the thing where, let's say, you take a day off and there are all these fancy spreadsheets that people use for National Novel Writing Month. So you get to a certain point, and it's Thanksgiving. You're traveling that day, dealing with family, and traveling back. No writing that day, which should be fine, right? But the spreadsheet auto-adjusts. So now, the next day, you have to write, say, 1,754 words, and it feels overwhelming.
If you're sick, or there's an emergency, or your laptop crashes, and it takes a while to get it back, then the next day, you're up to 1,900 words. Pretty soon, all of this pressure mounts because you have a goal of meeting this arbitrary 50,000 words in a month, right? Hopefully, you finish it because then you'll get a dopamine hit knowing you can do something hard when it comes to writing. But if you fail, you get the opposite effect. You've told your conscious and subconscious mind that you've failed before.
So next November, or the next time you decide to write a lot in a month, even if you consciously think you can do it, subconsciously, there's a part of you that's reminding you it didn't work out last time. Last time it was really hard, wasn't it? You felt your body tense up so many times. Is it really worth it? Then you either decide it's worth it and make it harder on yourself, thinking, "I'll be more strict this time, so I know I'll succeed." Which, if you fail, it's even worse. You're really piling it on yourself. Or you think the solution is to work harder, which isn't true. What you need is a sustainable, enjoyable way to write, one that continuously gives you little rewards, little successes. You want those kinds of positive outcomes to build habits and to tell yourself you're on the right track.
[00:06:52] Matty: Yeah, if I were in charge of the world, the two changes I would make to NaNoWriMo are not to do it in November because the only worse month they could have picked would be December. Why not do it in January when nothing else is going on? And the other thing is, I think it would be cool to aim for thirty 1,500-word short stories because then at least at the end of the month, you could say, "Well, I didn't get thirty 1,500-word short stories, but I got fifteen 1,500-word short stories." You have an actual finished thing. Even if your schedule totally goes out the window, you might have three substantial stories, and at least you can say, "Look, I finished these three things," not, "I didn't finish this one ginormous thing."
[00:07:43] Roland: But for people new to short stories, it could take hours of mental thought and energy to come up with the idea for a short story, right? So now, if you have to do that every day, you might be even more exhausted by the end of the thirty days. Some people might do better, but some could be like, "Oh, I could never write a short story," and that could just ruin them.
Goals Should Be So Small You Can't Fail
[00:08:08] Roland: So, the next bullet I gave you is that goals should be so small you can't fail, fail-proof, right? Think of a goal that you want to do, like writing short stories. Your goal should not be to write thirty short stories. That's like a long-term goal and it's very arbitrary, just like 50,000 words. Your goal is to write a novel, right? Great. So put that off in the distance. Then you say, "What are the things I need to do? What are the habits or what are the systems I need to put in place to write a novel or to write these short stories?" Then drill them down to the very smallest elements.
These are the things you can set your daily little goals or your daily little systems in place for, but they need to be easy. Let's take National Novel Writing Month. We'll pretend it doesn't exist, but someone says, "I want to write a novel," which is the same goal as NaNoWriMo.
So I want to write a novel. So you can say, "Well, I need to write more. I need to write regularly. I need to keep my story moving." So what can I do that I think is sustainable, that I can absolutely accomplish every day or most days, and that I will feel good about once I'm doing it?
For me, I would say, back before I did NaNoWriMo, I generally have about an hour a day where I can spend some time writing. It's broken up throughout the day. So I would say, "You know what, I think I can write for an hour a day."
Then think about how likely you are to accomplish that on a scale from 1 to 10. If it's a 6, that's a 60 percent chance. No, that's not very good. It's too hard. The goal needs to be smaller. Think of an even smaller goal that you know you can achieve. So say, "Can I do an hour total throughout the day?" Okay, that's better. Instead of an hour in the morning, I can spread my hour throughout the day. Maybe that's a 70 or 80 percent chance, 7 or 8 out of 10. Then ask, "Does it have to be every day?"
[00:12:34] Matty: Well, no, but it has to be maybe five days a week. Six days a week is too hard. So it's only like a seven. Five days a week, an hour a day of writing, and I'm going to qualify writing as sitting in front of my computer and doing nothing else but putting words on my digital page.
I think that's a nine. I think that's pretty achievable. A nine or ten. Because I can find a way to get that, you know, five days a week. That's the kind of goal you need to have, right? And for short stories, if you're really good at them, you might think, okay, I want to work on a short story every day.
It doesn't have to be the same short story because especially at the beginning, if you haven't written one, it could take a lot of not just time thinking. Whenever you're learning something new, it not only takes mental energy but also what I call emotional energy. Because if something frustrates you, it's not just a matter of, "Oh, it's frustrating and my CPU is spinning." It's frustrating, and I feel it viscerally in my body. Like, "This is so frustrating." And then these subconscious things, "I can do it, I can't do it," all these things come up. It's like emotional energy. And for authors, especially, that can be so draining that they burn themselves out very quickly.
So you might want to think, "I'm going to work on my short story for an hour a day." And then list off or make the tiny little things that make up creating a short story—coming up with an idea, a character, a setting, sitting in front of my computer and typing, outlining—it doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you, in your agreement with yourself, know that those are the little things required to meet your goal.
Tiny Dopamine Hits Mean the World to Your Habits
[00:12:54] Roland: Exactly. So, you probably know who Jerry Seinfeld is, the comedian. He had a challenge for himself to write a joke a day. It didn't have to be a good joke, a long joke, or a great joke. Just a joke. He had to spend time writing a joke per day. Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour. But when he got it done, he would just put an X on his calendar. It doesn't sound like much, but an X on your calendar creates a dopamine hit. Just like if you have a to-do list and you check it off, it feels good. You should always put things on your to-do list that you know you can do. It gets you started, right? And then as your list goes up, you feel those dopamine hits every day. Those are positive reinforcements that you're doing the right things with your habits. And the reverse is true.
If you can't meet those things, if you can't get that little hit, you don't get that dopamine hit, then you have a slump that day. So that's why it's important to find something that you know you can do, that you feel very confident that you can achieve. And there's a little bit more to that.
[00:15:13] Matty: There are more protective measures we can put in place that will mitigate the effects of missing a day, like I talked about before, maybe five days out of seven, not necessarily every day per week. That's one way. That's common.
These tiny little dopamine hits can be like a check on the calendar or like when little kids use happy face stickers, right? You could make your own to-do list, you could make your own chart. Like Austin Kleon—I don't know if you know who Austin Kleon is—he writes books like "Steal Like an Artist," "Show Your Work," right?
He has a thing on his website with a form you can print off, and it's like a 31-day calendar, right? It's just a fun calendar in his special handwriting, and he says do whatever you want. Type at the top, write at the top, and put like a sticker, draw something.
It just gives you something that gives you that little feeling, that little hit that feels good every day. They're super tiny, but don't underestimate how powerful something small can be.
[00:15:13] Matty: In your experience, is there a difference between making those kinds of checkoffs physically on a document versus in an online task management thing or a spreadsheet or something like that?
[00:15:25] Roland: There probably is. For a while, I used a to-do app, and all of my apps on my phone have the sounds turned off.
So when I click a to-do, nothing happens. It doesn't vibrate, it doesn't do anything, right? So there's something to be said for that ding, for that noise, right? So you have to find what works for you. Does it feel satisfying? Like, does your to-do list make a flash, or does it make a ding, or does it vibrate in your hand?
Does it send you a message or a notification that feels good? Because that's another thing, like, I think it's Microsoft To Do, every time you check it off, it'll send you an email, or something at the end of the day saying you've done something. So that could be enough to get that email. So, unless you're sure that the digital works for you and makes you feel good when you click it, find something here in the real world, tangible, like those little silver bells that hotels and restaurants used to have, right? Ding, ding, ding, right? Get one of those and keep it on your desk or next to your door, so like when you see it and you get there like, "Oh, I did that today," ding, and hit it.
But it's something, so that's why, I mean, other things like that, stickers are inexpensive. You can have a calendar, like I have a big whiteboard calendar over here, and just checking it off with a different color pen is really nice.
[00:16:54] Matty: I realized that the task management software I use is Trello, and in Trello, if you can put a checklist attached to an item, and so I have one, like my daily tasks, the things that I do every day, check scribe count and check my promotion calendar and things like that. And I've added an automation so that on my daily calendar, once I've checked everything off, first of all, if you check everything off, when you check off the last thing, all the little checkboxes vibrate in a happy way.
[00:17:24] Roland: Oh, that's good.
[00:17:25] Matty: And then it clears out all the checkmarks and it moves the task to the next day. So it is sort of like what you're saying about the stickers. It is oddly satisfying to have a little happy dance from the checkboxes.
[00:17:37] Roland: Isn't it? Yeah.
[00:17:41] Roland: Yes, other things you can do is, if you have... this doesn't really work if you're not very active on social media because you can post things on social media. For example, "Hey, I achieved my goal for the day." It might be super annoying to your Facebook friends if you post every day that you achieved your goal, but if you have, maybe, one thing like, "Here's my goal for the week," and every day you update that post to say you've done it that day, that could be different. You have to see if that is satisfying for you, and if you have enough friends or followers who are engaged, you're going to get responses, people saying "good job," and things like that. So that could be another way to do it.
Habits Need Slack
[00:18:22] Matty: I want to move on to the next bullet, which is "Habits need slack."
[00:18:26] Roland: Yes. So, I learned that not everyone knows what the term "slack" means. You have to have slack, which is just like relaxing. It's like you give yourself a break. That's why I think it's funny. But habits need slack too. I already talked about one type of slack, but I didn't use the term at the time. It's like, instead of committing to seven days per week, I'll aim for five days a week. That's one way of building slack into the habit you're trying to form because it's unsustainable to do something seven days a week forever. Something can happen. So, you either have to make the task easier, or you have to cut yourself some slack and say, "Hey, I'm not going to be super strict with myself."
The key here, with all of these things, is you have to give yourself slack, make the goals small, and define the rewards before you start building the new habit. You have to set these rules before you begin, because if you adjust them later, even for a good reason, I guarantee somewhere deep down, in your soul and in your bones, you'll feel the tiniest bit like a failure. For example, "Oh, I've gone 12 days and I realize that I can't do this seven days a week, so I'm going to do five days a week." That's good, it's good that you're flexible, but having set that expectation ahead of time would have been much more positive. Because now you're not changing the rules. When you change the rules, you subconsciously feel a bit like a failure, and that's what you want to avoid. You want to continue moving forward with positives and not have to take a step back with negatives. So, cutting yourself some slack is crucial.
[00:21:38] Matty: That feels more comfortable to me based on my writing style.
[00:21:41] Roland: Yes, so that's a different kind of slack. Slack can be anything, but it essentially goes with giving yourself permission to not be perfect. The key is to ensure that you grant yourself this permission ahead of time.
[00:21:57] Matty: I like the idea of setting goals ahead of time, not only because it sets you up to feel good when you achieve them, but also because it's a method of triaging what you think you want to accomplish. You might be considering participating in NaNoWriMo, and as you plan out how you'll manage your time and allocate your attention, you may conclude that there's only a 20 percent likelihood of following through. Deciding whether you truly want to commit to NaNoWriMo ahead of time allows you to thoroughly consider your decision. However, I did have a question about slack. There's the slack of, "I intended to write for an hour a day, but I'm just not feeling it," or "I was going to write for an hour today, but my car broke down and I'm dealing with that." These are instances where you need to accept that writing seven days a week isn't feasible, and aiming for five days a week is much more realistic.
Then there are times when you're ill and can't write at all for a week. Do you manage these kinds of emergency situations differently?
[00:23:04] Roland: That's a great point because there are definitely unexpected events that can disrupt your routine. The good news, if it's significant—like your car breaking down or falling ill, as I did with COVID a couple of weeks ago, which prevented me from writing for a few days—is that you know you had a valid reason for missing those days. It's also beneficial to remind yourself that if something drastic occurs, it's understandable, and it's not a point of failure. There are simply times when you cannot do what you planned.
[00:25:28] Matty: I think another way to handle those catastrophic moments is to set such small goals that you can't fail. Habits need slack because, let's say, you start feeling unwell on a Monday and you think, "Okay, this is a catastrophic moment for my writing goals. I'm going to feel terrible today, I'll try to get back to it tomorrow." Then, if the next day you still feel bad, you might think, "Today is another catastrophic day. I'll get back to it tomorrow." However, if you realize you're getting sick and you know it will last a week, you could say, "I'm going to take a week off because I know that's how long it takes." And then, if you get back to it on day five, you feel good about returning to your habit sooner. The key is not to plan too aggressively after a setback, which could further a sense of failure.
[00:26:24] Roland: This is one of the barriers. That's a great point, but it also reminds me of the issue where we tend to start things on New Year's Day, the first of the month, Mondays, or our birthdays. These are real days on the calendar, and I understand why we choose them, but they're quite arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, even saying "I'm going to do this for the month of November." It's also arbitrary. So you could say, "I'm going to do it for 30 days," and if you need a sabbatical, you pick up where you left off after you're well. Right? So, do you feel like you have to start over a little? You can either start over again or pick up where you left off, depending on what's better for you. If you were already in the groove, give yourself some slack and say, "Hey, it's going to take a couple of days to ramp back up to where I was."
[00:27:57] Matty: But I just want to continue. It's going to feel good for me to pick up where I left off and say, "Hey, I did 30 days of this." Yes, there was a sickness there. I had some sick days in between. When you link it to November or December or January, right? You can't get that back. You can't say, "Well, I'm going to finish NaNoWriMo in December," because that's not NaNoWriMo anymore. NaNoWriMo is an official thing, and it's in November, so even though you mean well, part of you is going to say, "Well, it's not quite NaNoWriMo."
[00:28:18] Matty: Well, every time NaNoWriMo comes up, I explain why I don't do it. I feel like to give equal time, I'm going to have to get a NaNoWriMo person on the podcast to represent the other view, but maybe not in October because I'm sure they're all booked up with podcast interviews in October. But, it obviously works well for some people, just consider whether it works well for you or not. Habits need to have an expiration date.
[00:28:24] Roland: Yeah, this one's big. This is all part of Slack, if you think about it. When you're trying to build a new habit, if you say, "I'm going to do this forever," and you don't like it, then eventually you're going to feel bad because you're abandoning it. So, if I'm trying to write 1,666 words per day and I don't like it, at the end of the month, whether I did it or not, if I hated it, I've learned nothing. All I've learned is that I don't like it, but I haven't learned that positive habits can help me. So, if you give yourself an expiration date, usually shorter than a long-term goal, let's say seven days, most people can do something for seven days, and seven days is a good taste test.
I'm going to try this for seven days and see, reevaluate. Do I like it? Is it working for me? And here's the language that I prefer: Is it serving me? If I continue with this habit, is it serving me well? Because if it's not, if I have to cringe and force myself, then I'm not going to be able to continue it forever, and I'm wasting my time.
So, giving it that seven days, for instance, as an expiration date, and saying, "Hey, at the end of seven days, if I reevaluate and I don't like it, I can either make it easier, change the rules, or stop doing it and replace it with something I do want to do." Because who here hasn't tried something for 21 days to build a habit, which is totally fabricated? There's no science in that at all.
[00:30:18] Matty: But you should know within a few days whether you like something or not. And giving yourself an expiration date means that you do not have to abandon it. A realistic expiration date, it's hard to say, so yeah, for seven days, ten days, whatever, if you realize, "Oh, it's not working for me," it's part of that slack and it also saves you from wasting time.
[00:30:47] Matty: Yeah, I like that idea of asking if it's serving you because I think that there's also the less common but still possible problem where you've successfully incorporated a habit into your life. It was serving you well for a while and now you're doing it without really thinking about it.
[00:31:17] Roland: Yeah, exactly. And if you have both an expiration date and a check-in date to say, "Okay, I've been doing this for a month, a year, two years, or a decade," you can assess whether it's still a valuable way to spend your time and if it's providing the benefits you were looking for.
One at a time, please
[00:31:19] Matty: And, the sixth bullet you suggested was "one at a time, please."
[00:31:24] Roland: Yeah. We have a tendency to dive right in. "I'm going to write my novel, so I'm going to write 1,666 words, I'm going to write for an hour, I'm going to get up early, I'm not going to watch Netflix." You pile all these things on at once, which all sound really good. "This is what it would take for me to finish my novel. I'm going to do all of these things." Well, that's a lot to try at once, and it's a lot to process mentally and emotionally. Giving yourself the space to try something new is important. So when you're trying five or six new things at a time, or even three, each one becomes more difficult to experience, to try, and to test, to see whether you like it.
If I try all those things at once and after a week I hate my life, my new life that I've built for myself as an author—no more Netflix, getting up early, writing an hour every day—I don't want that, right? But if you try one at a time, each one is more likely to succeed, and each can be fine-tuned to be a habit that you'll not only keep up but hopefully enjoy. You've heard of habit stacking, right? I prefer the term habit layering. Habit stacking is like piling everything on at once—Netflix, getting up early, etc. But habit layering is when you've semi-mastered a habit, it's on cruise control, like writing for an hour a week for seven to ten days, and you have the mental and emotional space to add a new one on top of it, to layer it. Something that doesn't conflict. Not writing for an hour and a half, but keeping that one and building on it. Habits take 21, 30, 90 days to build, so you keep going with that one. Then you say, "I feel I could write better if I got up a little earlier," and now you try that. You have to start small again, asking, "How much earlier can I realistically get up?" And then you consider all the factors—will I disturb my family, do I need to grind my coffee beans, etc. Then, once you're on a really good track with that second habit, you can consider layering the next one, and so on. We don't have the emotional strength to compartmentalize multiple habits at once, especially when they're all directed towards one goal. When we fail, it feels like we've failed at everything, which can be overwhelming. This is like what happens when people decide, "On Monday, I'm going to start the keto diet and go to the gym five days a week."
And, I need to start going to bed earlier because I know that's going to help me go to the gym. They do all of these things, and then after two or three weeks, they look back and realize they've stopped doing all these things. What a failure. So they give up everything, and because it was all tied together, it was one thing that they were doing.
They give up everything, and then, how long does it take to start again? Because every time you have a failure, it's that much harder to start again. No matter what it is. If you've ever been on a diet, you think, "I was on a diet last year. It didn't really work. I'm going to try it again." But you could try it right now, you could try it on Monday, but you just keep putting it off because consciously and subconsciously, last time you tried, you failed, and this time, it's probably going to be the same. So the way to mitigate that is to go through these steps: smaller dopamine hits, cutting yourself some slack, give yourself an expiration date, and do one thing at a time, and then layer them as every time you succeed.
[00:35:47] Matty: It's interesting because, as we've discussed before, I have a challenge with getting enough movement in my life, and I've talked to many guests about this. A couple of months ago, I was at a book club, and this topic came up. Someone asked me what my day was like as a full-time author, publisher, and podcaster, and I described it, mentioning how it was a very sedentary lifestyle.
Afterwards, one of the women in the book club introduced herself as the executive director of the local YMCA. She said, "I don't know if you've ever been to the YMCA, but here's my card. If you'd like a tour, give me a call, and I'd be happy to take you through it." I thought, why not? I hadn't been to the YMCA, even though it's six minutes from my house, because I had a probably decades-out-of-date idea of what they were like. But I went for a tour, and it was a very nice place with a lot of appealing features.
So, I signed up and started going. One of the things I really liked about it, illustrating many of the points we've discussed, was the app that allowed you to sign up for classes the day before. I loved that I wasn't committing to 10 weeks of yoga. It was like, "I'll do aqua aerobics, and then when I go out to the car, I'll open the app and think, 'Oh, chair yoga, that sounds like fun, I'll do that tomorrow.'" So, I had a lot of flexibility in what I was signing up for, and if I decided I didn't like aqua aerobics, I didn't have to go, and I wasn't wasting any money.
I was sticking with it and found that on the days when I went to the YMCA, I was also more likely to take the dogs for an extra walk because I was already out and about. So, one good thing led to another good thing. Then at the end of December, I got the flu and obviously didn't go to the YMCA.
[00:38:59] Matty: And then after I was over the flu, I still had this chronic cough, and nobody wants to be around someone who's coughing a lot these days. So I wasn't going to the YMCA then. And then I was on vacation, so I wasn't going to the YMCA, and I got back from vacation about a week ago. The earlier part of the story is, I used to have an item on my calendar from 10 to 11:30, which was when I blocked off time for going to the YMCA. But when I got into the habit, I took the calendar entry off because I thought I didn't need the reminder anymore. However, when I got back from vacation, it had sort of fallen off my mental radar. It wasn't that I was thinking about going to the YMCA and deciding not to, it had just disappeared from my conscious mind as something I needed to include in my day.
I realized that I should have put it back on my calendar as a reminder and kept it there until I no longer needed it as a reminder. That illustrates, in my own life, all those things about goals being small, like "yes, tomorrow I'm going to go to the YMCA," and the dopamine hit of saying "today I went to the YMCA," and all those good things. So, this is a good reminder to me to get that back on my calendar and on my actual schedule.
[00:38:59] Roland: Oh, good. I mean, there is some benefit to changing that reminder on your calendar too, because after a while, it just becomes another calendar reminder every day. You sort of tune it out.
[00:39:11] Matty: I think the benefit is that it blocked my time. So, like, I do have events that get scheduled automatically through Calendly, and it was a reminder to me, but it also prevented other things from showing up in that time block, which was important.
[00:39:25] Roland: Yeah. I like that.
[00:39:27] Matty: So, I do have to say, when I was reading over these notes ahead of time, and you were talking about the power of small and things like that, and then I look back over your bio, which ends with raising a family and working a 60-hour week day job. So, in closing, I just want to ask, personally, as someone who has achieved the things described in your bio, is there any contradiction there that we need to discuss? Like, did you say "I am going to not only raise a family but I'm going to work a 60-hour week day job, and then I'm also going to do all the things you're doing on top of that"? How does that all mesh together? How does that work logically together?
[00:40:03] Roland: Well, my goal is not to be a full-time author. My goal is just to write books that people enjoy. Yes, I do want to make some money from my books, but that's not my primary goal. Making money from my books is a good goal, right, and it's a strong part of my goals. But I have no illusions about being a full-time author. I wrote books that I really wanted to, mostly they're health and fitness books. I have some urban fantasy coming up, but right now, they're health and fitness, and I had a message that I wanted to get out there. So putting it out there, I knew that I had a family, which was important, and sometimes I've had a full-time job, and sometimes I've had jobs that, you sort of... I was a health coach and an author coach, and I did consulting for printing and publishing companies.
[00:41:58] Roland: So, it all adds up to those things, but that was where I was primarily making my money. So I had to say, "Here's what I'm doing. This is my life. I have a family. I can't neglect my family, right?" And I also have these jobs, this work. So I looked at how I could build a writing career around that foundation. That's where I came up with the idea that I could write for an hour a day. Luckily, I've trained myself over time to be able to write without needing a solid block of time. Sometimes I can write in the morning, or if I have a longer lunch break, I can take half an hour of my lunch and write then. If I have the energy after work, I can write a little bit there. So over time, it's become like sometimes it's an hour and a half of writing, sometimes it's half an hour, but it's built around my life, rather than my life being formed by it. Yeah.
[00:41:58] Matty: That's so cool. It's always lovely to speak with you and so helpful to be reminded of these things that make so much sense when you describe them but are sometimes hard to remember in the moment when you get all caught up in whatever the latest thing is that you want to do.
[00:42:11] Roland: I do have a freebie that people can download if they go to indestructibleauthor.com/habits. They can download this thing; it's got a poster you can print off, stick on your fridge or your desk, and it will give you all these habits. It goes into a bit more detail on how to set your goals, how to set your habits, and all the ways to get your little dopamine hits. And I think signing up for my email list is a dopamine hit in and of itself.
[00:42:37] Matty: Perfect. Thank you so much, Roland.
[00:42:39] Roland: You're very welcome.
