You Only Need To Put In Minimal Effort To Achieve Your Goals (With This Strategy)
Let’s face facts; attempting to change life-long habits and pursue the path of self-improvement is enduringly difficult.
What if we told you that there was a strategy that can make self-improvement goals fun, stress-free, and entirely attainable? In fact, with a few simple steps, you can achieve all of your goals while completely redefining your outlook as a person.
What is the Minimum Acceptable Day Strategy?
The strategy itself has been pioneered by the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who used it successfully throughout his stellar career. Referred to as the Minimum Acceptable Day (MAD) strategy, it is breathtakingly simple and turns the age-old concept of self-improvement on its head.
Before we get to that, however, we have a question for you. What is the main issue you have experienced when attempting to pursue the path of self-improvement (whether at home or in the workplace)? If you are anything like us, you will have struggled with the pressure of setting lofty and often unobtainable goals before being thrown completely off course after several days of perceived failure. This can be disheartening and it also impacts negatively on your levels of confidence and self-belief as an individual.
This is where the MAD strategy comes into its own, as it triggers a complete change of outlook when establishing goals and attempting to become more productive. So how exactly does it work? Here is a brief overview:
- Firstly, you need to place a large calendar in a prominent place in your home or workplace.
- Then, you must establish a theme or an action that you want to do each day.
- For every day that you achieve your goal, mark the relevant point on the calendar with a large red X.
How this Strategy Can Work for You
Now while the simplicity of this system is easy to see, some of you may also think that this bears an uncanny resemblance to many of the generic productivity strategies available online. There is one key difference, however, and one that shies away from the accepted logic that drives goal-setting and attainment in the modern age.
More specifically, this strategy makes allowances for the fact that humans are incapable of achieving 100% performance every single day.[1] So, rather than encouraging you to set objectives that require the maximum effort, it focuses on establishing a minimum performance threshold. This instantly removes the pressure from specific goals, while helping you to celebrate each incremental step that you take towards realizing your objectives.
If you are looking to become fitter by running in the New Year, for example, you should set minimal, daily goals relating to the length of your workout. You may decide to work out for a minimum of 10 minutes per day, as this is a an attainable goal that helps you move closer to your goal. Once you have completed this brief, intense workout, you can mark off each day on your calendar and quickly reflect on your progress.
Of course, there may be days when you complete 20 or 30 minutes workouts, which far exceed your minimum goal and should be considered as a significant bonus. Whether you increase your minimum goals over time is entirely up to you, as the key is to create a positive perception of change and build confidence by achieving incremental goals on a daily basis. Such an outlook also makes the process of building good habits far easier, without creating additional stress or forcing you to compromise on your daily schedule.
The Last Word
This simple, positive strategy can be applied in almost any scenario, whether you are writing a novel and set a minimum number of words to write each day or taking up running and looking to build your endurance over time. It works by challenging the accepted convention that we must exert the maximum effort to achieve our goals, and instead creates a template that is fun, practical, and easy to implement over time.
This strategy also reinforces the importance of progression and taking single steps towards the accomplishment of goals, so it is definitely something that you should try in the future. On the path to self-improvement, this may make the difference between long-term success and demoralizing, sporadic failures.
Featured photo credit: Pixels via pexels.com
Reference
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