Goals - Divya Toshniwal

Success being a very relative term can differ for every individual. But one definition is common: success is when you achieve the goal that you had set for yourself.
-Divya

We all have goals and we all want to achieve them. At the beginning of each year, we set New Year’s resolutions for ourselves. We set high goals and dedicatedly try to achieve them with all the effort that we can possibly put into it. For a few days, everything seems up, and then one day we fall. Well, that is not the problem. The problem is that we don’t get up again.

Goal setting is easy but to work on them and achieve them, we need dedication, consistency, and habits.

So, when I understood this very basic problem and very simple solution, I started working on my habits. I listed down all the habits that could get me closer to my goal and incorporated all of them into my daily routine. Things were good for the next week and then the habits slipped out of my routine one after the other. I was back to my normal self by the end of the 44th day. My simple solution was not so simple after all.

Eventually, after working on myself for a long time, I came up with the Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix (EEMM) tool to Build Habits.

Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix

The Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix is a tool that helps individuals evaluate and categorize habits based on two critical dimensions: Effectiveness in achieving your goals (vertical axis) and Easiness to incorporate and continue (horizontal axis). This can effectively work as a habit-building worksheet. By plotting habits on this matrix, individuals can gain insights into the balance between the effort required to establish a habit and its potential impact on achieving personal or professional goals. Each habit falls into one of four quadrants based on these two criteria.

Quadrant 1: Balanced Achievers

The Sweet Spot of Success

Habits in this quadrant strike a harmonious balance between effectiveness and ease of implementation. They are both effective in contributing to one’s goals and manageable in terms of the effort required. These are the habits that can bring about quite a big change with moderate levels of effort. But finding such habits may not be that easy. It will need a little creativity and innovation too. The tagline for this quadrant is “The Sweet Spot of Success,” highlighting the optimal balance achieved between effort and impact.

Quadrant 2: Challenging Champions

Where Grit Meets Greatness

This quadrant represents habits that are both challenging and highly effective. These habits may demand significant effort, discipline, and dedication but offer substantial rewards in terms of personal growth and goal achievement. If you have extremely high willpower and are highly adaptable to change you can pick on habits from this quadrant and you are good to go. Building these habits will bring you closer to your goals faster than anything else. The tagline for this quadrant is “Where Grit Meets Greatness,” emphasizing the resilience and determination required to conquer challenging but impactful habits.

Quadrant 3: Struggle Zone

Overcoming Obstacles on the Path to Mastery

In this quadrant, habits may be challenging to implement, but their impact on goal achievement is limited. These habits might demand a considerable amount of effort but may not bring significant results. The tagline for this quadrant is “Overcoming Obstacles on the Path to Mastery,” acknowledging the difficulties faced in pursuing habits with less tangible outcomes. Habits in this quadrant might be difficult to implement and may not bring significant results. But these may be those little things that can make you stand out from the rest of them. You should take up these only when you are the closest to your goals.

Quadrant 4: Effortless Essentials

Simplicity in Success

Here in this quadrant are habits that are easy to incorporate but do not have a high impact too. The habits that fall under this category are the ones that are not that important but you still have to do them anyway. Like, checking your emails every day. While they require minimal effort, their impact might be limited. Examples include cleaning up your desk, creating a to-do list, or minor daily tasks that don’t align with broader objectives. The tagline for this quadrant is “Simplicity in Success,” emphasizing the ease of incorporating these habits but also recognizing their limited impact. These are habits that aid your growth but do not directly impact it.

Anyone who starts building new habits should begin with something easy to incorporate and have maximum effectiveness in bringing them closer to their goals. Hence begin with habits in Quadrant 1. But also remember to not stop just there.

Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix For A Blogger

As a blogger when I divided my habits according to the effect-ease mastery matrix, this is how it looked:

Building habits is a task that needs determination, but it is important to choose habits that will keep you motivated enough to achieve your goals. If you keep on challenging yourself with habits that are tough to incorporate and do not give any immediate result you may lose your intrinsic motivation to keep going. Hence, this Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix acts as a tool for you to decide where you should start.

Achieving your goals is not going to be a smooth ride. You are not going to get a road without speed breakers. A few of these obstructions in achieving your goal will be absolutely out of your control while some you can manage to control. Having these internal obstacles is not defeating but doing nothing about them definitely is. I am listing down 9 different internal obstructions that I have faced along with my clients and also how you can deal with a few of them.

Perfectionism

How can being perfect be a barrier to achieving your goals? it should rather be motivation, right?

well, not always. Being perfect can lead to more harm than good in your journey towards success. I have faced this myself. I was not ready to present myself as a life coach until I have learned it all. I spent almost 3 years trying to understand all the things I need to learn and learning them. Every time I would set a date to make the announcement and every time I realized there is still more to learn. Learning would never end and it should never end. Learning is an ongoing process and hence no one can ever be perfect.

Don’t stop learning but don’t wait to be perfect too.

Procrastination

This is my favorite one. How many times do you think you tell yourself ‘ I’ll do that later.’ in one day? The first thing you need to do is count it. Once you are done counting, ask yourself why are you saying that. Procrastination (meaning – the act of putting off doing something that you should do till another day or time because you do not want to do it because it’s unpleasant or boring.) There can be a number of reasons for procrastination but only one way to deal with it. As Nike says ‘just do it.’

One of the best solutions that I have come up with to deal with procrastination is the 5-minute-rule. The 5-Minute-Rule to deal with procrastination is simply that if any task that you are supposed to do, is going to take less than 5 minutes to do, you would not postpone it. This has worked for me and many of my clients. Not only will this help you achieve your goals, but it will also make you more organized and save a lot of your time in the long run.

Losing Focus

This is the most common obstacle to achieving your goal. Most of us have been facing this lately and no doubt the biggest reason is our smartphones and the pinging notifications. Your phone never lets you leave its side. As soon as you lock the screen and try and focus on work again there comes a ‘ping’ and here you go back to your phone. One thing leads to another and there go the next 20 minutes of your life.

The best way to deal with the distractions is to remove them. Simply remove them and don’t exert your willpower. You don’t have an infinite stock of it. Simply remove your distractions. So if your biggest distraction is your phone, switch it off or at least put it on focus mode.

Feeling Overwhelmed

You are bound to feel overwhelmed if you take up goals that are too difficult to achieve or those which have a lot of aspects attached to them. It takes a toll on your confidence or blocks a large portion of your mind in assessing the next steps and calculating all the variables. Such goals stop you from moving forward even when you keep working on them the entire day. The reason is that you are not able to take any actionable steps.

The best solution is to simplify your goals and divide them into smaller goals. So if you have a goal for the year, divide it into 12 monthly goals, the weekly goals, and then daily goals, making them easier, clearer, and achievable. Do not underestimate the power of small steps.

Boredom or Retreat

Too simple goals or goals that are not challenging enough can also be the reason why you are not being able to achieve them. Have you ever thought about visiting the nearest tourist place to your city ? you always feel like- ‘we can go there anytime. Let us go to some other good (far away) place. ‘. This has happened to me so many times and in spite of living in Kolkata for 25 years, I have never been to Darjeeling while I have traveled to Mussoorie, Nainital, and Kashmir.

The same applies to our goals. We procrastinate and say it’s too easy it can be done anytime. But that anytime never comes. So don’t make your goals too easy to achieve.

Drama Seeking Behavior

For people who love drama, the fights between two colleagues, banter in the house, and back-bitching from people(or sometimes even self), be aware, this is taking up so much time of your life that it is pulling you behind and not letting you achieve your goals. This can be the silliest and most daunting barrier that you’ll ever face in achieving your goals.

So just stop, which one of your colleagues is going to win the fight is not going to make any difference in your life. Understand the reason behind this behavior. Even though it is the silliest obstacle it might be one of the toughest to deal with. Mostly, people who seek drama in others’ life are ones who do not have fulfilling lives themselves. So, connect to someone who can help you create a fulfilling life for yourself.

Negative Self-talk

“I have failed before, I will fail again”

“Nobody wants what I have to offer”

” I don’t have the right connections”

“This is way out of my league”

Do these statements sound familiar? Well, then you are a victim of negative self-talk. The irony is that you are the victim and you are the assailant too. Creating self-awareness is very important to understand why are you saying these negative statements to yourself. Imagine if your best friend came to you and told you a business idea, would you say this to them?

Dig deeper into your beliefs, see what are the beliefs you hold for yourself and why do you hold these beliefs. Eliminate the negative beliefs and move on. It will take some time and some practice, nothing happens overnights. But things will change. Start talking to yourself positively. Learn more on how to overcome negative self-talk here.

Fear

One of the most common reasons you are not able to achieve your goals is- fear. Fear of the unknown. Many of us are not being able to move forward just because we are too comfortable where we are. Even when we are not happy, we prefer to stay because there is a certainty. We prefer not to venture into the unknown as here at least we know what’s going to happen. Even Elsa could realize her true power only when she ventured into the unknown, so take that lesson from Disney.

Anger

Anger – it’s the most dangerous emotion to face. Yes, it’s a part of our emotions wheel and yes, everyone is bound to face it. But, how you deal with it is what will make all the difference. Do you rise above it and move forward, or will you let your energy burn in the heat of it(remember you have limited energy for each day)? Keeping any kind of anger or disappointment within you can cause a lot of your energy to burn without any fruitful results in your favor.

So ask yourself – are you angry when someone gets a promotion and you don’t? are you angry when things don’t work for you and they work for someone else? are you angry when you can’t perform as much as you expected to? and how do you react to your emotion of anger?

Take your anger out in productive ways. Empty yourself of this negative energy. I am not going to tell you to count backward and breathe deep. Because this kind of anger may not even surface but it’s there. So you need to dig deeper to see where it arises from and how it affects you. This will help you change your thought patterns when you start working on your emotions.

To understand your own obstacles and how you can deal with them, You can connect to me for personal virtual sessions

Tag: Goals

Effect-Ease Mastery Matrix: Definitive Tool To Build Habits For Success

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