How switching to identity-based habits can help creators stick to their goals

What are the best frameworks for goal setting as a creator?

This week I am going to talk about setting up goals. Most writing about performance, or habits, or mastery tells you to set ambitious goals that "get you out of your comfort zone." But much of this same literature glosses over exactly how to set these kinds of goals.

As a creator especially, it's easy to think that quantifiable goals are things like follower count, engagement, subscribers, etc. And while paying attention to these metrics is definitely important (and could make for valuable goals at certain points), a goal can easily fall apart when you’re not seeing the results you’re hoping for. In fact, the hardest thing about goals is how often they fall apart in response to one of these common challenges:

• Your motivation wanes

• You don’t have a focused system to implement the goal

• You have too many goals (this is the one I always struggle with)

• Your steps to achieving the goal are too big / overwhelming

• Your goal is based on factors out of your control

• You don’t plan for disruption

For a long time I subscribed to various acronym-heavy goal setting frameworks. From SMART goals to OKRs, there are plenty of frameworks that work well for many situations, but there are times when your actions don’t immediately lead to results. For example, you may be publishing blog posts for some time before your writing begins to gain traction, or you may be tweeting into what seems like the abyss until you start building community on Twitter. So how do you create a sustainable system that supports you as you try to achieve your ambitious goal? How do you both push yourself and work through the highs and lows of your motivation?

Goal Types

One of the ideas I’ve taken to most in James Clear’s work is the idea that a goal is actually just helpful for setting a direction. Systems are what you need to actually make progress towards this goal.

Your goal as a creator may be to create a profitable business, and your system (at first) may be the consistent content you create to build an audience. James Clear offers this framework on thinking through types of goals:

(Graphic Framework From James Clear)

• Outcomes Goals

  Goals that exist at the level of outcomes. It might be reaching a particular follower count, losing a specific number of pounds, publishing a book, launching a company, etc. This is typically how we’re trained to set goals and sets the direction for where we’re going.

• Process Goals

  These are goals that relate to implementing a specific system or habit in your life. Perhaps its journaling or meditating everyday or placing your phone in the next room when you sleep. Or it may be, posting one tweet a day and publishing and promoting a blog post. This is what bridges the gap between the goals we set and the steps we take to implement those goals.

• Identity Goals

  These are goals based on changing the beliefs you have about yourself. These goals focus on who you want to be and what you want to stand for. So, for example, you may want to be the kind of person who is a thought leader in your field (and perhaps your first process or system is to write one sentence each day until you graduate to writing a weekly newsletter post), or you want to be a healthy & fit person (and so you might wake up every morning and make yourself a smoothie). For me, I’ve been thinking about being a responsive person (and my actions have involved setting aside 30 minutes every evening to respond to emails).

None of these goal types are right or wrong, but they may be more or less appropriate for different scenarios. As James Clear describes:

Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. When it comes to building habits that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change.

James Clear, Atomic Habits

For me at least, and I imagine this may be the case for many creators, switching from an outcomes-based goal of I “want to build a profitable business” to an identity-based goal of “I am a self-sustaining creator” is a subtle but important shift.

It lets me stay flexible about how to learn and improve each day, it reminds me that I am taking small steps each day towards this goal, and ultimately it means that I will continue working on this goal, without having some "outcomes” based cliff after which I fall off. Imagine the difference between when you achieve your goal of “I want to lose 15 pounds” vs. “ I am a healthy and fit person.” One is a short term pursuit that may lead to a rebound, the other is simply a way of life where you are making daily choices in support of this identity.

All good goals, whether outcomes or identity-based, ultimately need manageable, small steps to support them.

Steps That Grow

A few months ago, I facilitated a group of female entrepreneurs who wanted to grow their audience on Twitter. One of them, who had been on Twitter for a decade and regularly posted multiple times a day suggested that the goal we all track should be follower count (aka an outcomes based goal).

The only problem? Some people were completely new to Twitter. For them, they were still dealing with imposter syndrome, struggling to figure out what to post, over-editing, and so much more. It could easily be meaningless, or worse, demoralizing for them to start out by tracking followers. Instead, starting by tracking their own ability to show up and post each day (a process-based goal) might be more achievable.

This is what it means to take a small step first. If you’re new to twitter, you may not be focused on growth and engagement, effective threads, or optimizing your headlines, for example. Instead, you start by asking yourself to open your notes app each morning and spend 10 minutes composing a tweet before hitting publish. And doing that for a week is something to celebrate before you’re able to move towards your next slightly more challenging goal.

Steps Require A Plan

The last thing I’ll touch on is that whatever the goal you have, and the steps you’ve identified to support this goal, you also need a plan for implementing those steps. Both James Clear and other psychologists talk about having an implementation plan. For example:

During the next week, I will write for at least 5 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:30AM at my desk.

You might then take this plan and add it to your calendar, create alerts, etc. to help you anticipate anything that might prevent you from following through on your implementation plan. An implementation plan helps you set aside actual time and have a real system to take continuous steps towards your goal.

In Summary

In a nutshell, goals can either be singular, outcomes-driven events or they can be tied to a way of life/ a kind of person you want to be. In both cases, you need to identify small steps you can take to reach your outcome or live in alignment with the identity you’ve envisioned. And finally these steps require you to make a plan for how and when you’ll be able to implement them.

While this all may seem a little rigid to some of you, there’s also something pretty magical about organizing your day in alignment with the kind of person you want yourself to be. A creative person who makes time for creating every single morning. A healthy person who makes time to prepare healthy meals every Sunday and Thursday night. These are all the small actions that make up your life and the person who you are. And ultimately, these small steps compound over time.

So I’ll leave you with a little example from Gertrude Stein:

As always, thanks for reading! If you have thoughts or are interested in learning more, feel free to comment, like, or share this newsletter. Or check out some of the mini-essays I’m publishing on twitter @alina_thinks