实现目标的五要素
by Charlie Gilkey on July 19, 2010 · 18 comments
查理 吉尔奇著 2011年7月19日
First we make our habits, then our habits make us. – Charles C. Noble
首先我们养成习惯,然后是习惯造就我们——Charles C. Noble
One of the most effective ways to actualize your own potential and goals is to form habits and routines that make the actualization (almost) automatic. We see reflections of this observation in the works of Aristotle and Lao Tzu from millennia ago on through the works of contemporary thinkers such as Stephen Covey and the Dalai Lama. At a certain point, habits allow you to reach the optimal state of achieving without trying to achieve.
The lead quote sums up things nicely, though, in that habit-building can be an active process, too. Much like choosing to be around people who help us flourish, choosing and habituating the actions that help us flourish is largely within our control.
有一种能挖掘我们潜能,实现目标的最有效的方法之一就是形成良好的习惯和常规,这些习惯和常规就能够自动化的帮我们实现目标。我们可以从千年以前亚里士多德和老子的著作到当代的史蒂芬柯维和达赖喇嘛的著作中观察到。在一定程度上,习惯使你在没有很吃力的情况下达到最佳的状态。
这些重要的引用精辟的总结了许多事情,然而,养成习惯的过程可以是一个灵活的过程。就像我们选择与那些促使我们进步的人在一起,选择和习惯性地某些能够在我们掌握的范围内促使我们进步的行为一样。
Since we can choose, do, track, and evaluate the habits and routines that help us actualize ourselves and our goals, there’s a process with discrete but related steps. Here are the 5As of Actualization:
一旦我们可以选择,行动,追踪和评估扎这些帮助我们实现目标的习惯和常规的话,就需要一系列零散但连续的步骤过程。以下就是我们实现目标的五个要素:
Aim
1,目标
Awareness
2.意识
Action
3,行动
Accountability
4.有责任的
Assessment
5.评定
Let’s take a look at these a little more in depth.
让我们再更深入的讨论下这五个要素
Aim
目标
The saying “if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there” fits in nicely here. Before you can start building supportive habits and routines, you have to know what types of actualization you’re wanting to support.
有一句话“如果你不知道你的方向,记住:条条大路通罗马”很适合文章里所说的情况。在你开始养成支撑性的习惯和常规之前,你必须知道你要实现什么类型的目标。
Our bodies and minds are automatic habit-building systems – whether or not you actively try to build habits or not, you will. For instance, you might not intentionally train yourself to remember the path to your kitchen, but every time you walk to the kitchen, you’re reinforcing a neurophysical pathway that’s been formed. Habits are nothing but reinforced neurophysical pathways.
我们的身体和思想都是自动化习惯生成系统的一部分—不管你是否有意的去养成某些习惯。例如,你并不是有意的记住了到达厨房的路径,但每次你走向厨房的时候,你都巩固了已经形成的神经回路。习惯并不是什么特别的东西,它就是神经回路的巩固而已。
As you can probably tell, a pathway isn’t inherently good or bad. A good deal of your unconscious habits are probably not supporting your growth, though, because we’re wired to remain safe and secure rather than to be continually growing and changing. Once your system finds something that works, it encodes that pattern as something to keep – regardless of whether your desires change. This is how we get canoes.
你可能会说,回路没有本质上的好与坏。你潜意识的一些习惯有可能对你的成长没有什么帮助,因为我们都趋向于可靠和安全的环境而不是不断地发展和变化。但是一旦你的系统发现了可用的东西,它立马就把这些东西编入了保存模式——不管你是否要去改变。这就是我们获得图片的方法。
This step in the process, then, makes your routine-building an intentional activity that supports your goals. Furthermore, most new routines have to displace an already-formed one, so the initial parts of the process will be harder than later parts. The more you’re able to keep fixed on the end in mind, the easier it’ll be to notice counterproductive habits and routines that you’re having to work through or fit against. Which brings us to…
要素里的这个步骤有助于使你有意的形成常规习惯去支撑你的目标。而且,许多新的常规习惯会代替一些已经形成了的习惯,所以这个步骤的起始部分会比后面部分要难得多。我们把这些东西放到越后面来记忆,越容易产生适合或需要进行调整的起反作用的习惯,这时候就形成了......
Awareness
意识
Have you ever set a goal one day and forgot it the next day? Maybe you typed it into that spiffy new productivity app only to have it buried in other screens. As I just mentioned, if you’re going to make a go of habit-changing, you need to be aware of the fact that you’re doing it or old habits will win.
你有没有曾经在今天设立了目标而明天就忘记了呢?也许你把目标嵌入到更新更整洁的应用程序上只是为了把它淹没在其他的屏幕里。就像我刚才提到的,如果你准备改变习惯,你需要意识到你时候已经行动了,否则,还是旧习惯胜出。
For instance, a lot of us buy gym memberships with good intentions, but we don’t do the small things that’ll help them scaffold that new routine. A small thing could be as simple as putting workout clothes in front of the coffeepot so that they’re seen the first thing in the morning. Sure, maybe there’s not enough time to workout today, but at least there’s a chance that that small act will open up the awareness and idea that working out is important.
例如,我们很多人都怀着好的目标去办健身会员的,但是我们并没有去做一些能够支撑新习惯形成的生活细节。生活细节可以是简单到将运动服准备好放在咖啡壶旁边,这样你能够在早上醒来就看到它们。当然,今天可能没有足够的时间进行锻炼,但至少这个细小的动作有机会激活你的潜意识和思维让你意识到锻炼的重要性。
Or maybe you want to start reading more rather than watching TV. Rather than keeping your books in another room, why not stand the book up in front of the TV so that, to watch the TV, you have to remove the book? That small action disrupts the old routine while bringing the intention to your awareness. It additionally makes the action concrete, making it more likely that you’ll complete it.
或者你想要读更多的书而不是看更多的电视节目。与其把书放在其他的房间里,不如将书立在电视机的前面,这样,看电视的时候,你就需要拿开那本书了,不是吗?这些小细节打破旧的习惯,将目的性植入你的意识里。意识能够不断的雕琢这些细节,让你能更快的完成它。
A very similar technique that you can do is place lists of goals in the places you can’t miss them. I’ve often recommended that clients place a list on their bathroom mirrors, near their computers, and on their refrigerators. There’s a sneaky thing going on here, because it’s not just that you see those goals more often, but you often see them when you’re primed for encoding things. If you’re brushing your teeth before bed and see your (hopefully small) list of goals, then you’ll be more likely to process and integrate those goals while you’re sleeping. Likewise, if you’re seeing those goals first thing in the morning as you’re getting water or preparing coffee, you’re more likely to integrate those goals into your day.
还有一个类似的技巧就是你可以在一个你能经常看到的地方写下你所有的目标。我会经常建议我的客户把它们贴在浴室的镜子里,电脑旁边,或是冰箱上。这样有个看不见的好处,就是你不但更经常的看到这些目标,而且你经常在看的时候就准备将它们植入到脑海里了。如果睡前刷牙的时候,看到你的目标清单(希望是小纸条),你就更有可能在睡觉的时候对这些目标进行编译和整合了。就像,当你早上准备水或咖啡的时候,第一时间就看到你的目标,这样就更有可能在一天中整合你的这些目标。
While I don’t have a lot of hard field data on it, I think the tangibility of lists and trigger items like shoes and books are better awareness items than digital lists. I also think handwriting your goals encodes them better than typing given the deliberateness of handwriting conjoined with the fact that you’re less likely to write a lot by hand. (This is why I focus most of my R&D on planner designs whose primary focus is printing and writing as opposed to web apps or fillable forms.)
我不会在我的目标清单上使用过多的生僻数据,我觉得清晰的列表和事件就像鞋子和书一样比数字的列表更容易意识到。同样手写目标列表比起电脑录入更容易使你的目标整合起来,因为深思熟虑的目标列表,通过手写你不会写太多(这就是为什么我更多的关注研究和开发计划设计,这个计划设计主要集中在打印和书写而不是电脑应用或适用表格)
As powerful as Awareness is though, laying those neurophysical pathways requires action.
和意识同样重要的,还有将这些神经回路付诸行动。
Action
行动
In the initial stages of habit-building, doing the new thing is the challenge that keeps people from actualizing their new goal. They want to do that new thing, but something keeps them from doing it.
在养成习惯的初始阶段,去尝试一些新的事物是一个挑战,这个挑战阻止人们实现他们的新目标。他们想去做这些新的事情,但是有些东西在阻挠。
In my experience, what keeps most people from doing the action required is that they overestimate their capabilities in the initial stages and make it too hard for them to get started or sustain what they’ve started. The key to the initial stages of habit-building is to make the barrier to entry to any action as low as possible. Returning to the gym example, rather than trying to start out by going 5 times a week for an hour at a time, try to go three times a week for 30 minutes for the first few weeks. Once you get used to the process, increase the frequency and/or duration, but it’s more important that you keep at it over time than it is that you’re consistent in intensity over time.
以我的经验,在形成习惯的初始阶段, 人们高估了他们自身的能力是阻挠人们去实践的最大因素,高估自身能力让他们更难去开始或去坚持他们已经开始了的。养成习惯的初始阶段最重要的就是尽可能地降低我们去行动的标准。回到健身房的那个例子,不要一开始就制定一个星期锻炼5次的标准而是每次进行一个小时锻炼的标准,或在开始的几周一周三次,每次30分钟的标准。等到你已经习惯了之后,再增加次数和强度,但最重要的是保持这个习惯而不是每次都要求保持强度。
The second thing that keeps people from acting is that they’re just not motivated to achieve the goal. What frequently happens is that people make a goal because it’s an external should rather than an internal desire, and the harder the goal is to achieve, the less likely that that external should will have the motivational force to get you there. Or maybe it’s one of the other 10 types of demotivation that’s keeping them from acting.
阻碍人们行动的第二个因素是他们没有动力去实现目标。最经常发生的就是人们制定目标不是内心的需求而是外在的,目标越难实现,靠外在动力去实现就越不可能。或许还有其他10种降低动机的因素阻挠他们的实践。
Lastly, some of us have trouble converting an intention into an action. We set the goal, we see the goal, but when it comes down to doing, we get lost. Here’s where the 5Cs of completion can come in handy, as it helps you convert intentions into completions.
最后,我们中间还有很多人将目标转化成行动的时候有困难。我们设立目标,我们看得到目标,但真正要去实践的时候,我们却迷失了。这里就有简便的实现目标5要素,帮助我们实现我们的目标。
It’s true that action isn’t everything, but without action, there is no actualization. That said, thinking, reflecting, and meditating can themselves be actions when done intentionally and done in a way to support your own actualization. Obviously, if one of your goals is to meditate, think, and reflect more, then actualizing that goal requires meditating, thinking, and reflecting. The simplicity and obviousness of “we become by doing“ underscores the reality that so many of us behave as if the doing part was optional.
当然,实践并不是全部。但是如果没有行动,就没有目标的实现。有句话说:在我们有目的去做来支撑你的目标的时候,思考,反省,沉思是可以立马启动的。很明显地,如果你的目标之一就是更多沉思,思考,反省,那么实现这些目标就只要求沉思,思考,反省。“我们成就于行动”这句话简单明了的说明了这个现实,即许多人都觉得实践部分是可以选择的。
Accountability
有责任心的
Some of us have trouble with accountability because we associate the word with punishment, scrutiny, and/or not meeting standards or agreements. Perhaps that’s fair because the majority of discussions of accountability arise when we’re not doing what we’ve said we’d do.
好些人都把责任理解错误了,因为我们总是把责任和惩罚,仔细检查或者没有达到标准或不一致性联系在一起。也许这是正确的因为大部分有关责任的讨论都是因我们没有完成我们该做的事情。
There’s a much more positive way to understand accountability, though: we can see accountability as a way to keep up with what we’re doing. What we need to remember is that we’re much more likely to discount the things we actually do and place too much weight on the things we don’t do. Accountability techniques, then, can be quite supportive because they provide some objectivity to your self-perceptions and at least provide some evidence to buttress against this negativity bias.
这里有更积极的方法去理解责任,例如:我们可以把责任当做是坚持我们正在做事情的一种方式。我们都要清楚的是我们通常都会低估我们实际上 要做的事情而过于关注那些我们没有做的事情。负责任的技巧,可以很有说服力,因为责任在你的自我知觉里设立了客观目标,至少为消极的偏见提供了否定的证据。
The other reason that accountability is so important is that it gives you the structure for the information you need for assessment. Often times, thinking about how you’ll account for your actions gives you a lot of good ideas about how frequently you need to do those actions. For instance, let’s say that you’re trying to build a habit of watering your flowers more. When you project into thinking about accountability, you might see that watering your flowers twice a week is what it would take to actualize that goal. Supposing that you keep a monthly calendar on your fridge, you might decide to place a blue W on every Tuesday and Friday. When Tuesday rolls around, you look at the calendar, see the blue W, water the flowers, and then circle or line through the W for that day.
责任之所以重要的另一个原因是它能够为你评估提供信息的结构。许多时候,思考你怎样付诸行动的时候能带来很多新的好想法,这些想法是关于你付诸行动的频率。例如,让我们这么说吧,如果你想养成多浇花的习惯。当你想到责任的时候,你可能会估算一周浇两次才能达到目标。假如你制订了一个月历挂在冰箱上,你可能会在每周二和周五的空白处贴上W字样,当周二的时候,你会浏览下日历,看到了W(浇花),然后你就在W周围画圈或划掉今天的W。
The example here is illustrative of the fact that it’s often quite easy to embed your accountability system into your awareness system. The blue W makes you aware of the goal, so you can act on it pretty easily. Circling or lining through the W lets you keep things simple – simple is good. Awareness reinforces accountability and accountability reinforces awareness.
这个例子说明了一个事实,即要将你的责任系统嵌入到你的意识系统里还是相当容易。蓝色W提醒你你的目标,所以你可以比较轻松的实现它。把W圈起或划起来会让事情变得简单——简单即是好。意识不断的加强责任,而责任也在不断的加强我们的意识。
Assessment
评估
This step in the process is where you evaluate what you’ve been doing. There are really two major questions to ask yourself at this stage: 1) Am I doing the things that are consistent with manifesting my goal? and 2) Are those actions actually progressing me towards actualizing the goal?
这个过程的这一步是你要评估你做的事情。这里有两个主要的问题要问你:一,我做的事情是否都和我目标的实现相一致呢?二,这些行动在实现目标的过程中有没有真正的提升我自己呢。
If you look at your checklist and you see that you’re not doing the actions that are consistent with your goal, it’s a good time to check in with your motivations first, your awareness techniques second, and your time allocations third. The reason you want to go in that order is because if you don’t want to do it, it doesn’t matter whether you’re aware of it or have time for it – you won’t do it. If you want to do it and keep forgetting, then getting some awareness techniques in may help. And, lastly, if you truly don’t have time for it, you need to think about what’s actually possible for you to do.
如果你检查下你的清单,你会发现你并没有付诸与目标相一致的行动,这是一个检查你动机在先的好机会,第二是意识技巧,时间第三。你想要进入到这个顺序的理由是因为你不想做。你是否意识到或由没有时间去做没有关系——问题是你不想做。如果你想做还老是忘记的话,那么就学习一些意识技巧会对你有帮助,最后,如果你真的没有时间去做的话,你需要认真想一下什么才是你真正要做的。
Sometimes we do things that we think would support our momentum that turn out not to. For instance, you might try putting the book you want to read in front of the TV and it still doesn’t help you read. If you try something a few times and it’s not working, it’s time to try something else. This step allows you to make those types of determinations so that you don’t keep doing the same things and getting the same results.
有时候,我们做一件事情,认为这个事情能保持我们的动力,而实际上却不是。例如,你可能试着把要看的书放在电视机前,仍没有帮助。如果有时候你试着去做一些其他事情也不凑效,那么是时候采取其他的措施了。这个步骤就让你去做各种各样的决策,而不用永远都做同一件事情,得到同样的结果。
On the positive side, the assessment step helps you see that the things that you’re doing are making a difference and it also gives you a chance to think about the entire chain of actions to see what’s making the difference. For instance, perhaps you noticed that you had to both pack your workout clothes and drive by the gym in the morning for you to work out later in the day. You can then make sure to include both supportive actions in your regimen until the intended action of going to the gym is routine.
积极上看,评估这个步骤帮助你发现你做的一些事情使结果有了些变化,它同样让你有机会去想想整个动力链,去发现什么起作用了。例如,假定你知道今天早上要为你接下来的锻炼打包好你的运动服还要驱车到运动场,然后你会发现包括你养生法里的支撑行动到你去健身房的目标行动都会成为自然而然的事情。
This step allows you to focus on progress rather than achieving the goal. It’s easy to get frustrated when you’re not “there” yet, even though you’ve come a long way from where you started. The reality is that you’ll always be a work in progress, and setting up your expectations so that you don’t get credit until you’re “finished” leads to a lot of frustration, disappointment, and self-abuse.
这一步骤有助于你关注进步而不是达到目标。当你还没有达到目标的时候,通常很容易感到迷茫,即时你已经从你开始到现在经历了很多。事实是你永远都要为了进步而努力,不断的设立目标这样你就不会因为“到达"了而沾沾自喜,事后导致迷茫,失望,自责。
Assessment and Aim are very tightly connected in that sometimes your assessments will change your aim. Let’s say you aim to write three blog posts a week and end up writing five for two weeks in a row because of the routines and techniques you’re putting in place. When you do an assessment, you can then adjust your aim – maybe you’ll want the goal to be five a week, or maybe you now see that five is too many and you’re going to try to keep to three, higher-quality ones, so you look at what you’d need to change to write those three rather than five.
评估和目标很多时候都是紧密联系的,有时候评估会改变你的目标。如果你的目标是一周之内写三篇博文,两周5篇为一周期,因为你已经设立了习惯和技巧。当你做评估的时候,你可以调整你的目标——也许你需要一周5篇的目标,或许你认识到5篇太多了,你尽量写3篇高质量的。所以你可以发现你需要写3篇而不是5篇。
Or perhaps you aim too high and see that you need to adjust your goals so that they’re realistic for now. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be building toward your higher goal; you just need to focus on smaller steps for now so you can build your capability to tackle bigger ones.
或许你的目标太高了,通过评估你就可以调整你的目标,让它们更接近现实。然而,这并不意味着你不能通过高的目标来形成一个习惯;而是说你从现在开始要专注于每一小步,从而让你更好的设立下一个更大的目标。
Lastly, assessment will tell you whether you need to be actively building the habit/routine or whether it’s now integrated into what you do. If you’re at the point to where you’re no longer having to think about doing something because it’s a natural part of your day, you can just maintain the routine you currently have. Perhaps you’ll want to try something new, or maybe you’re fine exactly where you are. Either way, assessing your progress gives you the information you need to know so that you align your resources with your desired goal(s).
最后,评估还能说明你是否需要积极形成一个习惯或者是将它们整合到你做的事情上边就可以了。如果你已经到了根本不用去想要做什么事情而是你日常生活中的一部分的话,你只要保持目前形成的习惯就好。如果你想要尝试一些新的习惯,或者你知道了你的方向。无论哪种方式,对你的进步进行评估可以给你一些你需要知道的信息,这样你就能将你拥有的资源和你的目标结合起来了。
Remember, Start Small
记住,从小事做起
I’m a huge fan of dreaming and thinking big, but time and time again, acting small is how you manifest those dreams and thoughts. It’s a lot easier to focus on one habit for a month than it is to try to “focus” on five, and it’s much more gratifying to make substantial progress on one than to creep on five.
我超级喜欢幻想一些大的目标,但是时间证明,从小事做起才可以实现你的目标和想法。在一个月之内把注意力集中到一个习惯上比集中到五个习惯上要容易得多,同样,在一个习惯上面持续进步比在五个习惯上面爬行更让人愉快。
Actualization is not just about the external changes – I might go as far as to say that the external changes are secondary. Even more important than the outer changes are the self-trust, -confidence, and -appreciation that you’re building, and this is a second reason why starting small is better. The more you achieve what you set out to do, the more you trust in your own capabilities and resources, so you’re more likely to try something new. The more you try but don’t achieve, the more you feed the idea that you can’t do it, which saps your motivation and commitment to try new things. Remember that some of those neurophysical pathways go out to our bodies, but others are pathways in beliefs and values; the more you reinforce counter-productive pathways, the harder they are to retrain. Hence Socrates’ statement “the soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.”
实现目标不单单是改变外在——我可以说:改变外在居第二位。比外在更重要的应该是内心形成的自信,自信和自我鉴别能力,这也是为什么从小事做起会更好的第二个原因。你实现的小目标越多,你就越相信自己的能力和资源,所以你就更有可能去尝试一些新的东西。你争取而不是达到得越多,你就越会有不能完成它的想法,这样就打击了你尝试新东西的动机和愿望。记住有一些神经回路是到达我们的身体而已,但有一些回路是根植在我们的信念和价值观里的;你越是巩固一些反作用的神经回路,你就越难去摆脱它们。所以苏格拉底的格言说的好”灵魂就像肉体,通过练习接受任何愿望中的习惯。“
In an earlier post, I wrote that no productivity system can override your choices. The key idea there is the same one that I want to bring up here: having a system, process, or technique won’t do the work for you. It can help you immensely, but at the end of the day, if you’re not doing the things that it takes to actualize your goals, then these ideas are worth less than the amount of electricity it takes to share them. Please, start small, but start nonetheless.
在早一些的博文里,我提到生产力系统能够推翻你的选择,和这里一样的原因我想提及下的是:光有一个系统,程序或技巧不会工作于你。这些东西一开始确实对你有很大的帮助,但一天结束以后,如果你不是做这些事情去实现你的目标的话,那么这些想法比起要承载它们耗掉的能量来说,真是太不值得了。所以请从小事做起,但无论如果行动起来吧。
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