Transcription
How many of your last year's resolutions have you accomplished? Maybe one or none. And the same thing is going to happen unless we change how we approach goals. Because you're not actually failing because you're undisciplined. You're failing because the way you've been taught to set goals is completely backwards.
I recently read this book called Tiny Experiments by the neuroscientist Laura Leon. I can't pronounce her name. To be honest, it completely changed how I approach goals. So, in this video, I'm going to break down why goals never stick, what to do instead, and how to actually apply this into your life. Let's get started.
One of the biggest things that I struggled for years is definitely hitting the gym consistently. Every time a new year would come, and I would tell myself, "This time I'm going to be a fit person. This time I'm going to hit the gym consistently." And I would sign up to a gym, right? I would go three, four times, but then slowly I would start to skip the gym. And then I would feel like, "I would tell myself, I am so undisciplined, like I cannot even hit the gym. I'm not even following the plan that I created."
But now that I think about it, now that I've established the habit of going to the gym and I am pretty jacked, I would say, I realized that the reason was because I was creating this all-or-nothing attitude. I was telling myself that either I'm going to hit the gym four times a week or I'm not going to do it at all. And to be honest, this is not only about the gym. This applies to every aspect of our lives. Think about it, like how many times have you told yourself that, "I'm going to learn a new language," or, "I'm going to start posting on social media." "I'm finally going to read more this year," or, "I'm going to start to eat healthy." After a few days, you quit. And then there's another evidence that you didn't keep the promise that you gave to yourself. So you feel the guilt and you feel shitty about yourself and you start to talk negatively to yourself saying that, "I am not disciplined. Maybe I am not the type of person that achieves their goals." It becomes this guilt and shame spiral that you can't get out of.
But actually, I realized that it's not really about discipline, or it's not really about how much motivation you have towards a goal. It's actually about not creating a binary system where you have a certain goal and if you follow it, it's a win. If you don't follow it, it's a lose situation. This creates the all-or-nothing attitude where it makes it so impossible for most people to take action because you think, "If I'm not going to do it perfectly, I'm not doing it." But the thing is that you cannot do perfectly from the beginning because most of us actually don't know how to properly set goals. Do you actually understand your capacity right now? Do you know what you truly want? And do you actually know how to make goals sustainable? These are really hard questions to answer and we think we must have the answers before we start, like the perfect plan, perfect strategy, like the perfect 10-year road map in your mind or something, especially me.
But actually, we need to explore more to figure out our way of achieving things. We can't know our capacity until we test it. And we can't know what we want until we try different things. We can't know how to make something sustainable until we experiment. But nobody tells us that, right? Instead, we're told to set SMART goals, or create a detailed action plan, or just commit fully. So, when we don't have all the answers, we feel like we are failing before we even start.
And the other thing that actually opened my eyes is that most of the time we treat goals like one-time achievements. But actually, 99% of the goals that you're trying to achieve are probably not one-time and they're ongoing. It's not really about going to the gym once, but it's about staying consistent. It's not about posting one video, but it's about building a sustainable content habit. It's not about reading 50 books this year. It's about maintaining a reading practice. And we treat goals like finish lines. Once you cross them, you're done. Poof! Fades and game over. Wow, amazing. But in reality, goals actually need constant adaptation. And different seasons of life have different priorities. And one of the difficult things that I learned is that if you have two different priorities, you actually have none. Because you can't simultaneously grow your business and get fit and learn a language and read a lot of books and spend a good time with your family if you're just getting started. You're going to spread yourself thin and make zero progress on anything or be mediocre at everything and probably burn out.
Okay, Rory, these things make sense, but what is the alternative? Like, what am I supposed to do then? Like, how am I going to experiment and explore more about my life? How am I going to figure out my capacity, my priorities, and what I actually want from life? Let me explain how.
So, this is where actually the book Tiny Experiments really comes in. And I'm going to explain how to apply the tiny experiment principle or tiny experiment method into your life. The method that the author talks about is actually stupidly simple.
The first step is observe. First, you just observe. No judgment. You just look at your life and literally take notes like, what is working in your life? What's not? What drains your energy? What gives you energy? I know, like this creates resistance because we immediately want to jump into creating plans and create this like elaborate plan and obsess over it. But actually, this is a very important step. This is the starting point that you should not skip.
The second step is form a hypothesis. Based on what you observe, you basically start to form a hypothesis. Okay? You tell yourself, "Maybe I would enjoy doing this thing differently. Maybe I would enjoy this if I did this in this this way," or, "Maybe I would be more productive if I tried this approach, this method, or this thing." Or you tell yourself, "Maybe this time of the day works better for me." If you're trying to wake up early but if you're constantly failing, then you start to form a hypothesis asking yourself that, "Is actually waking up early the thing that is going to make me productive, or is it something else?" When forming a hypothesis, it doesn't have to be the perfect hypothesis as well. You just use your instinct and follow your curiosity.
And then step three is design your experiment. So, the basically the template that you're going to use when you're creating your tiny experiment is quite simple and I'm going to give you the most simplified version. And basically, you fill out this structure: "I will [action] for [duration]." So, for example, "I will go to the gym for 20 minutes three times a week for the next two weeks." Or, "I will write for 10 minutes every morning for the next 10 days." Or, "I will work in a library for 12-hour sprints three days a week for the next two weeks." This is literally your personal commitment to the curiosity, the hypothesis that you're trying to figure out whether that's true or not. And as you can see, these are quite like small experiments. It's not like, "I'm going to do this for the next three months or something," but I'm going to do this for the next two weeks and I'm going to do this in a specific way to see where it goes.
And then step four is running the experiment. So, you do it. You don't judge it. You don't try to perfect it while you're doing it. You just conduct the experiment and then you also collect data and see how it feels. For example, if you told yourself that, "I'm going to post, I don't know, one story per day for the next two weeks," you just do it. You don't look for better ways to do it. You don't look for the optimized ways to do it, or maybe, "Is this the correct way? Is this thing?" or maybe, "What should I do?" No, you just form a hypothesis. You fill out the template that I told you, "I will [action] for [duration]," and then you conduct the experiment.
And then you analyze how it went, which is step five: reflect and iterate. After the experiment is done, you basically look back and you ask yourself, "Did this work? How did it feel? What did I learn?" Then you either keep doing it because it's working for you, or you tweak it and try it again. Maybe you post it every day on, let's say, stories for two weeks, but you realize that it's not really sustainable for your current lifestyle. Then you don't do it every day. Maybe every other day for the next two weeks. Let's see what's going to happen. Or you can also choose the option to abandon it completely. You might realize that maybe it's not the goal that you want to prioritize right now. Unless you try something, you might not even recognize that it's not maybe suitable for your current life season.
And the great thing about actually running this tiny experiment, this mindset, is that failure actually becomes data, not just like a result. Because the point of the experiment is to see whether there are things that you can do better or collect data and understand yourself and your life more. Right? If you would tell yourself, "I'm going to become a writer," and then you're suddenly telling yourself, "I'm going to write every single day for this year," and then you suddenly stop it, it becomes a failure. But with tiny experiments, you're telling yourself that, "You know, failure is failure is literally normal. The thing is that, why did we fail? How can we tweak it? Are we abandoning it?" Like abandoning it is also an option. That's the big difference. You change your mindset from, "I'm a failure. I failed at this," to, "Okay, that approach didn't work. What can I try next? Should I tweak it, or should I focus on something else?"
So, you might be asking, like, "How do I know whether it's a good experiment or not? Like, should I try something random?" No. Actually, there are a few things. Like, there are three signs that you should look into if you're trying to conduct a good experiment.
The first one is, you're actually excited about it. Okay? If you're not curious about exploring this and trying to figure out this hypothesis, it's probably not worth of your time. You're just telling yourself that it's worth of your time. Okay.
The second thing is, it's doable. Can you actually like complete it? If not, make it smaller. Make it way simpler. Like, go for two weeks instead of a month, or maybe even like for a week, or maybe just like for five days. And if you're telling yourself, "I'm going to do this for an hour every day," just tell yourself like, "I'm going to do it for 15 minutes every single day." If you're not able to do 15 minutes every day, then probably you're not going to be able to do it for an hour anyway.
And the third criteria is, it's out of your comfort zone. If you already know the outcome, or like 99% guess the outcome, it's not really an experiment. It's just a project in your life because experiments start from uncertainty. You need to be thinking, "Oh, does this work in this way?" You don't know the answer. Therefore, you conduct the experiment.
You know, this is actually how I literally like became a full-time YouTuber. To be honest, when I was 15, like nine years ago, which is crazy to mention, being a YouTuber wasn't really a cool thing. Like, it was kind of weird. Not a lot of people were watching YouTube like nine, ten years ago, to be honest. But I did not necessarily have a strategy. I had just like this big vision of, "Oh, I love YouTube. I love watching YouTube and I'm going to become a YouTuber." I don't know how long it's going to take. I'm just going to do my thing and I'm going to become a YouTuber. That was the whole vision. And you know, when I decided to become a YouTuber, literally the next day I published my first video, which you can dig deep online. You can see my first video ever. It's so embarrassing, but I kept it public so that you guys can see it. It's so embarrassing. But literally, like I learned editing on the same day. Like I was watching YouTube videos and I borrowed my mom's camera and started like literally posting videos. I didn't strategize how to grow my YouTube channel, uh, in like 100k subscribers in three months or something. I literally decided and made a video next day. Published, kept going like for years. And then I realized, "Okay, maybe I need a strategy." And then I like, take a step back, created a strategy, came back with my, you know, current channel, and we went from zero to 100k in three months. Sure, like in the second part of my YouTube growth, I had a strategy, I had more strategic planning. But the reason why I actually was able to create that strategic planning and execute on it was because I first learned by doing. A lot of people ask me like, "How did you learn editing?" I don't know. Oh, I just watched a YouTube video and I like publish videos again and again and again, and with the repetition, I learned how to do it.
And when I was also trying to grow my YouTube channel, I didn't necessarily have like goals based on timelines. I wasn't telling myself that I needed to hit 100k subscribers in under two years or anything. My whole plan was just to become a YouTuber and publish videos and then we will figure out later what happens. And that really worked. We went from 0 to 100k subscribers in three months and to 1 million in two years. And now we are at 1.4. If I had created the perfect plan from day one, I probably wouldn't be here because I would be in analysis paralysis mode and I would think to myself, "Oh, I failed. I cannot become a YouTuber." But because I was just experimenting, I was like, "Okay, this didn't work. Let's try this. This didn't work. Let's try that." And I kept going, going, and going and going. And for five years, I saw no results. But I kept going because it wasn't a failure for me. It was just an experiment.
So, how do you actually run a tiny experiment in your life, right? Like, what is the action plan for you? So, first of all, we're going to follow the template that I mentioned: "I will [action] for [duration]." Okay, that's it. That's basically the whole rule. That's how you design an experiment. The intentional constraint is that you're not really saying, "I'm going to write more." "I'm going to start to read more," or, "I'm going to start exercising." You're saying exactly what you will do and for how long. This can be also based on input-based or maybe time-bound. And if it's input-based, you could be maybe saying like, "Write 300 words per day." And if it's time-bound, you would be saying like, "Write for 30 minutes per day." You can pick whichever feels more natural for your experiment.
To be honest, there are no rules. But the most important thing is that you need to follow your curiosity. Like, what do you want to know? Don't pick something because you have to. Like, don't tell yourself that, "I'm going to hit the gym three times a week for the next 10 days," if there is no curiosity around it, then don't conduct an experiment around it. You could be telling yourself that, "Okay, for the next five days, I'm going to follow this specific workout plan from this specific creator and let me see how it goes." That's an experiment. The whole idea and the whole purpose of running this tiny experiment is to see whether a certain method works for you or a certain approach will work better than the last time.
Now, this actually fits perfectly into my system, Kaizen. Kaizen is basically a Japanese word/philosophy that means continuous improvement through small adjustments. It's like an ongoing process of improvement. And that is the whole philosophy behind my channel. And I designed this Kaizen system specifically for people with ADHD or anyone else that struggles with traditional productivity methods because I struggled with it my whole life. And in Kaizen, we actually do a practice called micro-commitment. This is basically the exact thing that actually helped me to finally get in shape after years of like literally six years of struggling to be consistent with the gym. And it's very simple. A micro-commitment is something that is basically a two-minute action that you can take right now to move towards your experiment. For example, if your experiment is like, "I will go to the gym three times per week for the next two weeks," your micro-commitment isn't going to be like, "Go to the gym for 45 minutes." It's going to be just, "Put on your workout clothes." Like literally, like your micro-commitment, the commitment that you're making that is micro, is putting your workout clothes. If you're trying to, let's say for example, write more, instead of like, "Write 200 words," your micro-commitment is, "Open the document and sit in front of it." We're literally breaking it down to the smallest chunk as much as possible. And it's often times the starting act of it.
The reason is because I don't know, maybe this is because I have ADHD, but if you're also like struggling to take action, you'll probably recognize this, but the starting part is very difficult, right? Like when you're trying to switch your brain into that mode, that is like almost impossible. Therefore, we are not making the goal to hit the gym, but we're turning it into, "Put on your workout clothes." You don't even need to go to the gym. You just put it on and you just get into the motion. I remember there was like a physics rule of like, "The object that is in motion will continue to move," or something like that. I don't know, I hated physics, I don't remember. But anyway, I literally believe by that. Okay, the moment I sit down, the moment I take my phone, four hours gone. But if I initiate the next task, right? Like the start of it, and if I don't break the momentum, I can keep going. And that is how literally I built the habit to go to the gym consistently. After I'm done with my workday, I don't sit on the couch. I set my micro-commitment as, "Put on your gym clothes," and I change my clothes and suddenly it's way easier for me to hit the gym. I literally have a video about how I hit the gym 365 days, you know, during my depressive episodes. So, if you want to watch it, you can watch. But that is literally the method that I use to be finally be consistent.
And the great thing about Kaizen is that you're not just logging these micro-commitments. It actually visualizes for you every week. You can look back and see how many days you followed through. Like, you can reflect on what worked, what didn't, and what you want to adjust for the next week, because what you want to adjust for the next week is a small improvement that you can make, which is Kaizen. And the thing is that you don't have to reflect every week. Like, I skip weekly reflections quite often, to be honest. But remember what Tiny Experiments actually says: "Don't judge, just conduct the experiment." So if you want to keep continuing your experiment without like stopping to analyze it, that's completely fine. Just keep doing it. The big reflection is there if you want it. It's not a must. I designed it in a way that it doesn't distract you. If you want to pause and if you want to compare how you're doing compared to last week and maybe overall this month, how many streaks that you have, then you can, but you don't necessarily have to. The whole philosophy behind my system is flexibility and adaptability. And if you're interested into my Kaizen system, check out my website, rudyohama.com.
And when you decide to reflect, whether it's after a week, 10 days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever the duration that you decided your experimentation will run, you have basically three options.
The first one is persisting. If you're enjoying the experiment or it's adding value to your life, you basically extend it. Maybe you run a two-week experiment and it's working. Great. Now do it for another two weeks and let's see if it's still working.
And path two is pause. If the data reveals that the experiment didn't fit with your schedule or you simply didn't enjoy it, you pause. You reassess. Maybe it's not the right time for you to work on that specific goal. Maybe you need more capacity in your life right now. That's not necessarily a failure. That's actually very valuable data.
And path three is pivoting. If you need to course-correct, adjust the scope. Maybe 20 minutes, the goal that you set was too much. So let's try 10 minutes now. Maybe five, five times a week was like really aggressive. So let's try with maybe three times a week. Maybe the time of the day didn't work, right? Like maybe you told yourself, "I'm going to work out in the mornings," but maybe it was too much. So let's change the time and let's try for another week. You pivot, you adjust, and then you iterate, and then you run the experiment once again.
And let me give you an example of what I'm actually experimenting right now in my life. And that is like, I've been struggling with productivity because I have ADHD. It's crazy. Okay, I would always tell to myself like, "Okay, I'm going to work like five times a week, almost like a 9 to 5, right? Like I would start from the morning and I would work till afternoon. I'll do it five times and I'll have weekends off so that I can hang out with like friends of mine, family of mine that also don't work on the weekends." But then I realize it does not work for my brain. Like, I am really bad at task switching. So if I'm working on one task that day, I need to be only working on that thing. Let's say I'm filming a video, that's a filming day. I cannot do anything other than filming. But I can batch filming. I can film multiple videos in that day, like I'm doing right now. But I cannot like switch my brain to different tasks. If it's a meeting day, that's a meeting day. I'm not doing anything else. Okay.
I basically realized this pattern and I was like, "Okay, what if I run an experiment to adjust my lifestyle accordingly instead of trying to overcome it?" So, I basically designed this experiment. I told myself, "I will work in sprint mode. So, three to four times a week for 12 to 14 hours like work days in a library or a co-working space for the next two weeks. And I'm going to try to batch similar tasks into the similar days as much as my schedule allows." So instead of like working, you know, 9 to 5, like eight hours for five days, I told myself, "Okay, I'm going to do more intense sprints where I work 12 to 14 hours for three to four days so that it's like 40 hours, but I'm doing it more intensely because that's how I operate. I'm either in a work mode or I'm in a rest mode. There's nothing like from 9 to 5 I'm working and then from like, I don't know, 5 to 9 I'm chilling or something. I cannot do that." Okay. If I'm working that day, I'm working that day.
And my hypothesis was basically that deep focus works in sprints. And without context switching, I will be more productive than trying to work a little bit every day. And my micro-commitment on sprint days was literally just, "Go to the library at 9:00 a.m. and lock in." That was it. And I realized that it's actually working really well. Like, I told, I thought to myself, "Why did I not try this way earlier? This works way better for my like how I operate, the type of brain that I have. It's way easier for me to work for 14 hours for three days in a row rather than trying to work like eight hours for five days in a row." But again, I'm not treating like this is my permanent system. I'm just running an experiment. I am about to finish my experiment, like this is the second week that I am in, and I'm going to extend it for another two weeks to see where it's going. Maybe in two months, I will realize that this doesn't work anymore and I will try, I will I will need to come up with a new experiment. But that doesn't mean it's a failure and I cannot I cannot be productive or anything. It just means that for this season of my life, I needed this system, and for the next season of my life, I'm going to try something new.
So before you set yourself a new goal, I want you to ask this: "Can I turn this goal into a tiny experiment where I can experiment with it for two weeks to see and gather data and then improve from there?" Instead of like saying to yourself, "I'm going to lose 30 lbs this year," try like, "I will walk for 15 minutes four days a week for the next two weeks." Instead of, "I'm going to build a successful YouTube channel this year," try, "I will record one two-minute video every week for the next three weeks." Instead of like telling yourself, "I'm going to finally become a morning person," tell yourself, "I will wake up 15 minutes earlier for the next five days." That's like very small, specific, time-bound, and clear. And that's not sexy as telling to yourself, "I'm finally going to become a YouTuber this year." But that's how really things work. You know, set it as your micro-commitment, track it however you want, and commit to it for the next one or two weeks and see how things go.
And this actually applies to big existential stuff in my opinion. Like people tell to yourself like, "I don't know." A lot of people tell me that like, "In your 20s, you're supposed to find your life meaning, your passion, your purpose, discover what whatever you're meant to do." But many of us like in our 20s feel lost because we don't really know the answer. But what I realized is that we don't actually need to find the answer, to be honest. Also, your life purpose will probably not will be the same in the next 10 years, right? I don't think that there is like a one purpose and we're moving towards it. Like life itself is an experiment and life itself is a journey to figure out whatever meaning there is. And in my opinion, I heard this quote recently and I really resonate, it really resonated with me. It was saying that, "Life is not about the pursuit of happiness. It's the happiness of pursuit." And by running tiny experiments, applying this micro-commitment philosophy into your life, by following your curiosity, you will discover what you like. And it might change with time, but it is fine. And when you do that, you will finally develop this experimental mindset instead of like failure, goal setting, that kind of a mindset. And let go of the all-or-nothing attitude.
You know, like I am INTJ. I want to strategize every single step. I sometimes even think about what I will name my non-existing kids and grandkids and where I would want them to go to school to. Like, I'm not even married. Like, what what are you planning for? But at the same time, I also have ADHD, so I am chaotic as hell. I'm very strategic, but I'm so chaotic. Okay. And for years, like that contradiction really made me feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing with my life. I feel like I'm wasting so much time, and I would feel crappy about myself. But when you apply this like tiny experiments and starts to actually conduct experiments in your life, it becomes really exciting. You know, for example, like yesterday I failed at my sprint and I noted down and I noted also the reason why I failed, and now I can see clearly what is actually blocking my productivity and my efficiency.
So if you're someone who's been beating yourself up for not sticking to your goals, if you have lost your self-belief, if you're stuck in analysis paralysis, just try this approach of running a tiny experiment. Okay, "I will [action] for [duration]," and then set a micro-commitment, that two-minute action that will start the thing for you, and then conduct the experiment for the next two weeks and see how it goes. If you couldn't commit to the experiment, if you couldn't do the experiment for two years, ask yourself why. What was the reason? What was blocking you? Then let's like change the experiment. Let's make it more simple and maybe try for the next three days. Instead of telling yourself that you failed, adjust your ability and your goals. Adjust the gap between where you want to be and where you are right now. And by conducting a tiny experiment, you're going to get closer and closer.
And if you want the system that helps you implement this micro-commitment and track your experiment, check out my Kaizen system. It's designed specifically actually for this not being able to take action, feeling this guilt and shame cycle. It's very visual and it helps you to also reflect on your week. Really teaches you what you can improve for the next week. When you get the system, not only you're joining to a community of bunch of people who built the system for lifetime, and I'm actually really active there, and you can ask me questions, I'll answer the issues that you're having, the problems that you're going through. Not only that, you're also getting lifetime access to future updates. So when the new version comes and it's better, you don't need to pay it. Links in description. And even if you don't get it, like I make free ADHD and productivity related content on this channel. So, if you like this content, subscribe. And if you're interested into my Kaizen system, check out my website, rudyohama.com. All right, see you in the next video. And if you want to learn more about why you make plans but never follow through, watch this video right here. See you.