Excerpt from 'The A to Z of Practical Wisdom'

ACTION: Minimum Standards

I use minimum standards to help my coaching clients stay motivated and achieve their goals. It is a full-proof method for ensuring that you don’t take on more than you can handle, and that you will last the distance over the long term. My minimum standard for writing this book: no less than five hours of writing every week, no matter what happens.

Warwick is a coaching client in his thirties. He wanted to lose eight kilos and decided that exercise was the way to go. We discussed what exercise he enjoyed – walking, cycling and swimming. He also wanted to do weight-lifting, but after confessing he didn’t enjoy weights, I recommended he leave it out of his program.

Warwick wanted to lose weight fast so he said he would exercise every day. I suggested that, given his busy work and social life, it might be an unrealistic goal. We decided Warwick would try for five exercise sessions per week, and that he would set a minimum standard: no less than four sessions per week no matter how busy he was.

At his next coaching session, Warwick admitted he was shocked at how often, despite his best intentions, he was unable to stick to his game plan of five sessions per week. He realized that without the minimum standard of four sessions he would have been tempted to throw away the whole exercise idea altogether. “It just becomes too hard,” he said.

Setting minimum standards removes the temptation to fall into an ‘all or nothing cycle’. You get busy; you postpone the bike ride. You feel tired; you miss your swim. By then you are thinking, That’s it, I can’t do it, and you give up exercising for the rest of the week. It is very difficult to get motivated again after experiencing failure.

Minimum standards allows you to make progress on any project you undertake whether it is writing, study, exercise, redecorating. Just determine the minimum number of sessions you will commit to, regardless of how busy, sick or distracted you are, then stick to it.


Rituals

A ritual is a little routine that leads you naturally into your course of action. David is an artist in his fifties. He is retired and has plenty of time yet he struggled to get motivated to pick up his brushes. He couldn’t understand his reluctance because he loves painting.

Examining David’s routine, we saw that each morning he distracted himself by checking his stocks on Internet and ‘forgot’ about painting. David set up a new routine – he made a coffee and walked straight past the computer to his studio. He set up his paints and brushes and drank his coffee on the deck. After this reflective time, he was ready to paint.

Months later, David is a fulfilled, productive artist. He laughs at how he used to unwittingly sabotage his dreams of being an artist. David says that his pre-painting coffee ritual on the deck each morning is now the most treasured part of his day. Rituals are a safeguard against distractions and a gentle reminder of what it is you really want to do.