I've recently discovered a pattern that massively impacts whether or not you will achieve your goals.
And weirdly, I've never heard anyone talk about it before.
Obviously, one of the most important factors in whether or not you'll achieve your goals is what your goals actually are.
But what's not so obvious is that the individual goals aren't as important as the group of goals itself.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been looking through some of the progress people made as part of my 2024 Reset Challenge so far.
And by doing so, I found the pattern I will share with you today.
Put simply, if your goals follow this pattern there's a good chance you'll achieve them.
And if they don't, there's a good chance you won't.
This strategy is what I call flywheel goal setting.
To understand it, I'm going to take you through 3 sections:
- What a flywheel is
- How it applies to your goals
- The 3 components of the perfect goal flywheel
Background: What Is A Flywheel?
In the real world, a flywheel is a type of wheel that uses momentum to keep itself spinning, even when it is not being pushed.
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It requires loads of energy to get going.
But, once it finally gets up to speed, its movement creates momentum, which allows it to keep spinning.
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This concept is used in business to describe strategies that are hard to get going but keep improving themselves the more they run.
The most famous example of this is Amazon.
Lets go through a simplified version of their flywheel.
There are 4 key components:
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A) The number of sellers on the platform
B) The selection of products
C) The customer experience
D) The traffic to the website
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You'll see that any time any of these improves, the next component will improve as a result.
Example: If Amazon adds a new seller, the selection of products increases, resulting in happier customers and more traffic.
Then, the increased traffic makes it more likely a new seller will join the platform, and the process will repeat.
This is one of the reasons that Amazon is so successful.
But I've realised that this concept is just as true when it comes to setting your own goals in life.
Strategy: How Does This Apply To Me?
You want to create a group of goals where completing an action in pursuit of one goal makes completing the action for the next goal easier.
Goals With A Flywheel Strategy
So let's say you have three goals for a period:
- Health: Avoid junk food & alcohol (6 x per week)
- Fitness: Go to the gym (4 x per week)
- Money: Work on your business (7 x per week)
How do these fit on a flywheel?
So, let's say that on a day we don't drink alcohol.
Not having a hangover makes it easier to go to the gym the next day.
Then, going to the gym will help with energy and sleep, which will make working on your business easier.
As you make progress on your business, you'll then be more motivated to keep going, so you maintain your health.
Getting started with any of these is hard, but each time you complete a step, the next one gets easier.
And after a month or so, it will become second nature and you'll form a habit.
(Note: This was a trend in the challenge participants: people with flywheel goals hit their stride around 4 weeks in and got amazing performance scores from then on)
Goals Without A Flywheel Strategy
So what about when your goals don't use the flywheel strategy?
Let's use another common set of goals that I found:
- Health: Go to the gym (4 x per week)
- Learning: Study coding (6 x per week)
- Money: Build a dropshipping business (7 x per week)
Let's go through these on a flywheel:
When you go to the gym you get the benefits we talked about earlier, which'll make studying coding easier.
But, having just spent hours coding, you're unlikely to want to spend time on the computer again working on your business.
In fact, the more time you spend learning to code, the less you'll want to spend on your business.
It's not that either of these goals are bad; they just don't support each other.
In this case, you can pick one of the two to focus on exclusively for a period, or change one of the goals so that they're more aligned.
For example, starting a SaaS business would be great for someone learning to code.
Do It Yourself: The Perfect Flywheel
So finally, let's talk about the perfect flywheel.
This setup isn't the only way to make this work, but it's a simple configuration I've seen work for many people.
Each of our goals needs two components:
- Frequency: How often are you going to complete the action?
- Timeframe: In what timeframe are you going to complete those actions?
Don't say: "I'm going to sleep better."
Instead say: "I'm going to go to bed and get up at the same time six days a week."
So, what are the components?
Component 1: Health
The more you prioritise your health, the better your focus, motivation and energy levels will be.
It could be sleep, exercise, food, mental health etc.
Pick whichever area you're weakest in at the moment.
Component 2: Knowledge
You need to commit to learning about something that interests you regularly.
The key thing here is that whatever you're studying must match the final component, implementation.
Component 3: Implementation
In this component, you will implement the knowledge you've learned in a project or business.
You can do this with a personal project, like learning to paint or a business that uses the skills and knowledge you're acquiring.
When you use these components, the flywheel runs seamlessly.
Summary
So, if you're struggling to achieve your current goals, look at what they are.
Do they help support each other?
If not, it's probably time to change them so that they do.
I hope you found this useful.
If you did, I'd love to hear how you're going to change your goals to work with this system.
Just hit reply and let me know!
Have a great day.
Thanks,
Tim