Aakash Pathak

#13 - Update your defaults

New Year, New Me. right?

“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” ―Archilochus

It took me several years to understand the real meaning of this quote. We essentially are creatures of habits, and we are habitual of doing what we know. Thus, we fall to the level of our daily habits, vs rising to our expectations. This means that if we think we will be able to do a task exceptionally well on a special day compared to our average, that generally does not happen. This highlights the core point about human behavior - That we are creatures of our habits, and we do what we are used to doing.

So as you're taking some time to reflect on 2023 and setting goals for 2024, I urge you to write your goals in a way so that you update your defaults. Now what are these defaults? These defaults are the habits that we are used to doing and we continue to do. So in order for us to actually improve on something, we have to update our defaults. I call this process of going through an intense phase of intentional changes to modify a behavior, and then ending up in a new default state. For example, I have noticed that people who struggle to lose weight usually are trying to lose weight all the time. And I think that is the problem. In this case, I recommend going through an intense period of 15-30-60 days, in which you intentionally make choices and do what's needed to meet your goal, even if it makes your existence miserable. But once you are done with it, you come on the other side stronger, and your defaults are updated. It is also easier to keep your motivation for short period of times vs all the time. Once you have a new default or baseline, it will take significant amount of bad/counter habits to negate it’s impact. So, once the intense phase is over, you can relax as you have built a new set of habits with your updated defaults.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!FH6U!,fauto,qauto:good,flprogressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F915544b0-95e5-4c4d-9e58-7b9466cdf3f41469x964.jpeg

The chart above shows the simple concept. The idea is to focus, change, and get to a new cruising altitude. Think about airplanes, they don’t continue to rise in height, they take off and raise height until they reach a cruising altitude and then stay there unless a change is needed or they are approaching landing.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!1AkX!,fauto,qauto:good,flprogressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1b543a7-92aa-4ab8-bb5a-7fd45eccaace800x287.jpeg

You can kid yourself but it is hard to stay motivated towards one goal for an extended period of time. If it is not practical to achieve your goal in 30-90 days, I recommend breaking it into smaller chunks so you can work towards a new baseline every 30-90 days. This also provides milestones to track overall progress. Good thing about this is that even if you don't meet your goal, you will end up way closer to the goal and far from where you started. The process has worked way better for me than endlessly working towards a vague goal.

Not going to get into details here but to set goals properly, i recommend reading how to set SMART goals.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!IZ4b!,fauto,qauto:good,flprogressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb63fbd1-e764-4072-bdd9-5fb9892b819a3840x2160.png

Summary

  • Find your current default for the activity you’re setting goal for
  • Set a goal for 30-90 days ( read how to set SMART goals)
  • Focus and work intensely to reach new goal
  • Updated default with habits
  • From here, cruise with the new default or continue with next milestone. Allow rest period between intense phases to keep the motivation

I love you all, keep going!

Originally published on substack.