Why We Often Fail to Meet Our Goals

It’s not your fault. You’ve been wanting to do something about that business idea you have, and it keeps getting pushed down the road. You really want to write a novel – someday. Maybe you want to go back to school for a degree, but you can’t seem to find the time to explore schools.

And each time you revisit these goals, your confidence in accomplishing them erodes a little bit, until one day you just give up. This is an all too common occurrence that not only affects your view of those goals, but also wears down your self-esteem. 

Why is this so often the case? It’s simple really. As soon as we become young adults and leave the support of our parents behind, we begin taking on obligations to live our lives. We get jobs to make an income, we get married and start a family or we need to think about taking care of our parents. These things fill up our plate and crowd out the possibility of adding anything else to our already busy schedule. While the dreams remain, reality seems to make them impossible. And naturally we need down time too, working 16 hours a day isn’t sustainable for most people. 

So how does one overcome this? It starts with knowing your values. Why is that goal you can’t seem to accomplish so important to you? What is the feeling that is driving it? When you go through a values exercise like the one presented in Scrum for Your Life, you may find that there are values driving your behavior that you weren’t aware of and letting go of that goal is just fine. Or you may find just the opposite – that the only way for you to fill fulfilled is to accomplish that goal. If the latter is the case, then you need to examine what in your schedule you want to trade time for in order to dedicate effort toward the achievement of that goal. And if you are taking small steps every day, they will add up over time and you will build momentum and confidence.

And if you’re doing a Sprint Review every four weeks, you’re seeing the results of those daily actions adding up. That builds confidence, self-esteem and enthusiasm. If you Sprint every four weeks and perform your Daily Scrum every day, and the end of a year you’ll be able to look at something significant that you accomplished, and you’ll feel better about yourself.