Move the Chains
Don’t focus on scoring a touchdown every day. Focus on moving the chains*.
I snagged this somewhat obvious philosophy from Ryan Hawk who is the host of the The Learning Leader Show (highly recommend it, Ryan is an amazing interviewer). His guest for the episode I was listening to was the great thinker Daniel Pink who is famous for his TED talk on motivation in addition to his books Drive and a Whole New Mind. They were talking about learning and how often people fail to practice what they learn. Ryan played football in college and brought up a story about how he emailed future hall of fame quarterback Drew Brees for advice. Surprisingly, Drew Brees responded and simply said “Move the chains”. That bit of advice has stuck with Ryan his whole life and does a great job of illustrating why so many of us fail at reaching our goals.
New Years resolutions are perfect examples. Take a goal like “I want to lose 50 pounds this year”. While this is a good goal and an attainable one, 92% of people setting this type of goal will fail (source).
They’ll try to go from not exercising and eating shit food to exercising every day and eating like a world class athlete. They’ll go buy exercise apparel, organic groceries, and new running shoes. They’ll make sure they’re held accountable for it by telling all their friends, family, and followers that they’re going to lose 50 pounds. They’ll buy a gym membership and set their calendar to when they’re going to workout.
It seems like they’ve done everything they should to set themselves up for success yet their chances of failure are still so high. Why is that? It’s because they’re trying to spark radical change in their lifestyle all in one day or week (usually Jan 1 or the first week of Jan). They’re completely flipping around their lifestyle ASAP to set themselves up for success (they think). They’ll go from not running at a all to trying to run 3 miles a day.
They’ll convince themselves they can run 3 miles and then when they go to try and realize they can’t even make it a mile — they’ll get discouraged. Then, the same thing will happen when it comes their diet. They’ll try and eat “healthy” meals every single day but then realize they weren’t prepared for it so they’ll relapse and eat something quick and easy like fast food so they can get back to work on time. Then, because of this they get discouraged again.
Rather than trying to make these radical changes abruptly, they should ease into the new lifestyle by setting themselves up for small wins. Spend the first week walking a mile and then the next walking 2…that’s moving the chains. Focus on eating healthy for 1 meal a day to start then work your way up to two. Again, that’s moving the chains. When you set yourself up for small wins, you significantly raise the odds of scoring the touchdown or achieving your goal.
That’s why so many people stand by the habit of making your bed every morning. It takes 2 minutes, makes you feel good, and starts your day off with a small win. Beyond that, it can help lead to other good habits and lowers stress. If you were to look at your day like a football field with scoring a touchdown meaning you had a good day then making your bed in the morning is like getting the first, first down.
For me, I had a lot of lofty New Years Resolutions. I have to admit, I’m not crushing them out of the park but I am doing better than I ever have before because I’m breaking up these goals into bite sized pieces. For example, I had a goal to read 3 books a month. Rather than trying to read a book each weekend, I’ll try and read for 20–30 mins every morning when I wake up. I’m getting better at staying focused and it’s starting to become second nature to read when I wake up and because of that, I’m on pace to finish 3 books this month.
I’ve fallen victim to thinking about touchdowns over first downs in business plenty of times. “I’ll be done with that feature by Friday” and then Friday comes around and I’m stressed out of my mind trying to finish this unrealistic goal I set without any thought…I’m getting better at this now because I’m realizing that scoring a touchdown normally takes a handful of first downs and not just a hail mary.
So lately, I’ve been asking myself at the end of the day — “Did you move the chains” and if you did, then you know you had a good day and you’re ready for the next play.
*In case you’re not familiar with the analogy — it’s a football reference. In football, you have four downs or plays to get 10 yards and get a first down which means you get 4 more downs. You can continue to get first downs all the way down to the end of the field. Once you get inside the 10, then it’s “fourth and goal” meaning you have four downs left on the drive no matter what. This is where many teams will capitalize and score a touchdown giving them 6 points.
