I love the energy that is felt in the first days of a new year, the atmosphere is permeated with positivism, people make plans and project their fulfillment for the coming months. Most of the articles, television programs and conversations that we have revolve around those projects and commitments that we dream of materializing in the coming months. We have 12 months to make them come true and the motivation of the first days of the year, together with the hormones that are released as a result of this, floods us and allows us to believe that anything is possible. We are unstoppable and we will be able to achieve everything we set out to do. In the last few days I have spoken with friends who have told me that this year, this year if they are going to climb the Himalayas, they are going to swim 10K in the open toilet of San Andrés, they are going to read more than 48 books a year, to meditate all the days, to change jobs, to transform their diet and even to hand-paint a mural at home.
The motivation for the beginning of the year is fascinating, I feel how the energy of the moment fills all the spaces I am in, I see the faces of my friends and family and I believe that they can move mountains, the commitment is authentic and the motivation is real, but it’s not enough. Most of those projections and commitments dissolve over time. The passing of the days, weeks and months make us forget that injection of confidence that was generated by the motivation of a new beginning; Lagging behind on the road the kilometers that we were going to climb to reach the Himalayas, we gave up on the books we were going to read and the painting that we already bought stays in the corner of the house waiting to be used, perhaps the next year will be the year of the mural. Why does that happen to us? And perhaps even more important: How can we avoid that our motivation is diluted and the objectives we have for the year remain in a beautiful memory of another year that went by without achieving what we set out to do?
Motivation is a double-edged sword, although it is essential in the process of achieving goals, the excess of it makes us think that just writing our plans and visualizing them in time is enough for them to materialize. And the truth is that 99.99% of what you dream and do nothing to materialize, it does not materialize.
The tasks, commitments and promises that we make, we fulfill them when motivation is accompanied by a daily decision to execute short tasks in order to add fragments to the whole to which we committed ourselves, in other words, motivation materializes when we create habits. Rome was not built in a day and trying to climb the Himalayas without developing a routine is impossible. The magic of the projection for 2022 then seems to be in the daily activities that we carry out.
The importance of creating atomic habits (small particles) lies in the power that the sum of daily activities has, paraphrasing Will Smith in his autobiography: “It is not the idea of the wall you are building, it is the brick that you put every day the one that allows you to have a wall at the end of the days ”. Creating habits is easy, contrary to what we think, the solution is in that brick, in not thinking about everything that is missing but about that brick that I am leaving on the wall today. Do not focus on the climb to the Himalayas, do not think about the 47 books that you are missing, divide those tasks into milestones, fragment the steps in a short way and each day read a few pages, walk a few kilometers, swim a few pools. The sum of the days will bring you closer to the goal, it is those habits that allow you to materialize motivation. Trying to do it as quickly as possible not only tires you, but the results are usually the opposite of what you were looking for, the frustration increases and with it the motivation ends.
The recipe to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves in this new year is then in the sum of three words: Daily + Short + Fragmented only in this way habits are generated, only in this way can we fulfill what we propose. And what we propose, our commitment is gender equity, is to achieve a Medellín, a Colombia and a world where gender equity ceases to be a discourse. For this, we will continue to generate daily, short and fragmented actions that allow us to impact spaces and create sisterhood in 2022. The invitation today, January 2, 2022 is for this to be an atomic habit that we all develop.
*Project Manager for the Americas at Microsoft
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