Getting Unstuck: How to Follow Through on Your Priorities

How frustrating is it when you know what you want to prioritize in your life but you can’t seem to follow through on it?

You want to prioritize getting healthy, but you can’t stay out of the double fudge ice cream. You want to build your business, but you have a hard time overcoming your fear of public speaking. You want to spend more quality time with your kids, but you can’t seem to put your phone down.

In the last post, we looked at setting our priorities. In this post, we’re going to find out how to follow through on them.

Don’t rely on willpower

Once we know what we want to prioritize, how do we get ourselves to actually do it? A lot of people think the key to following through on our goals is self-control and willpower.

But what do the researchers who study willpower say about it? It’s overrated.

The problem with willpower is that we only have so much and it’s really taxing to have to use it. So even when we are able to use our willpower to overcome a temptation, doing so leaves us feeling depleted.

How can we avoid this? Instead of constantly relying on your willpower to avoid temptation, let’s set up our environment so that we don’t have to.

Find your bright spots

If we want to follow through on our priorities without always having to rely on sheer willpower or self-control, we need to make a plan.

This is where a lot of people get stuck. They want to change and they know they should have a plan, but they’re not sure where to even begin.

Here’s the good news: you already have a great place to start. It’s what researchers Chip and Dan Heath call our “bright spots”—the things we are already doing that are working.

We just need to find them and repeat them.

Normally, when we’re stuck, we focus on our problems. We ask ourselves, “What’s the problem, and how do we fix it?”

Bright-spot thinking has us begin with a different question: “When does the problem we’re having not happen?” Instead of looking for the problems, we look for the exceptions to our problems. Instead of starting with what is supposed to work, we start with what is actually working.

For instance, if you’re having a hard time with procrastinating, think about the last few times you were able to get your work done on time. If you’re having a hard time sticking to your workout plan, think about the last few times you did get yourself to workout. If you’re having a hard time staying engaged at your job, think about when you actually feel happy at work.

We don’t need to look for perfect. We just need to look for the times we do better than we usually do.

Then we need to explore why we do better.

What are the conditions under which you are able to succeed? What is different about the times you are able to follow through on your priorities?

Do you tend to get more work done in the morning? Do you tend to feel happier at your job when you’re working on a project with clear expectations or with more creative freedom? Are you more likely to go for a walk when you’re with your fitness-loving friend? During what activities do you find yourself able to give your kids your full attention?

Try to uncover the patterns:

• Where are you?
• Who are you with?
• What time of day is it?
• How are you feeling?
• What did you do prior to that?
• What is the project or task like that you were trying to accomplish?

Once you have established the patterns, make a concrete plan for repeating your bright spots. Research has shown that people are more likely to follow through on their goals when they establish detailed plans for how to achieve them. So get specific. Include the who, what, when, and where in your plan. 

If you find that you’re more creative at night, have your spouse put the kids to bed while you go work at a coffee shop. If you are more active with your fitness-loving friend, ask them if you can walk together during your lunch hour.

Then put it on your calendar or set a reminder.

Establish a back-up plan

Starting with what’s already working makes it easier to follow through with our priorities.

Unfortunately, the world does not always bend to our every whim and give us our ideal conditions. We get sick. Our roof leaks. Our babies are up all night. Our coworkers don’t cooperate. Our bosses don’t understand.

There are a lot of things that can throw us off. But, we have control over how far off balance we get.

The key is to have a contingency plan.

Look at your bright-spot plan again and ask yourself, “What will I do if these conditions are unavailable?”

What are you going to do when your walking partner can’t meet? Or when you sit down at your computer to work and your kids or spouse or coworkers interrupt you? Or when you just don’t feel like working?

We can’t always rely on our environment to be ideally suited for meeting our goals. Having a back-up plan in place will help keep us from getting off track when our bright-spot conditions are not met.

Even so, we will sometimes fail.

What should you do when you mess up?

Start by showing yourself some compassion. Think about what you would tell a friend who did what you just did. Then tell that to yourself.

Researchers have found that showing ourselves compassion when we have set-backs can actually make us more likely to overcome them and get back on track.

So, if you know your priorities and want to make sure you follow through on them:

• Find what’s already working and make concrete plans to repeat it.
• Know what to do if you can’t.
• And don’t beat yourself up if you fail. Just look for your bright spots again.

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This is Post #2 in our Getting Unstuck Series. Check out the rest of the series here:

• Getting Unstuck: How to Prioritize Your Life
• Getting Unstuck: How to Achieve Work-Life Balance
• Getting Unstuck: How to Change When Change Is Hard
• Getting Unstuck: How to Change Your Life in 5 Seconds

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Also published on Medium.