Kate Padilla

I achieved a goal this weekend.

I baked a loaf of sourdough bread — a good loaf.

I’ve been studying sourdough for years. I’ve begun starter after starter, only to forget about it a few days later. I’ve watched YouTube videos. I’ve read blog posts. I’ve prepared.

I knew the mechanics of it. I could bake a yeasted loaf, and do it well. But, for some reason, sourdough was that hurdle I could not seem to overcome.

And so, when I set my goals for the year, I wrote it down:

I commit to developing and maintaining a sourdough starter and baking a good loaf.

The planner system I use (the Full Focus Planner) encourages assigning a goal to a certain quarter of the year, so that we don’t overload our efforts trying to get 12 goals achieved by the end of March. So I set this as a Q2 goal. I knew I could achieve it by July, but I would also give myself the time to fail.

I’m not good at goals.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I haven’t gotten the whole “goal” thing figured out yet. I’m really good at setting them. I’m really good at developing step-by-step plans for how I’m going to achieve them in the future. But I’m terrible at actually following through with them.

But, when I sat don to do my Weekly Preview (another part of the Full Focus planner), I realized that not only had I achieved the personal goal of being able to bake a good sourdough loaf, I had achieved one of the goals I had specifically set for myself at the beginning of the year. And so, I was able to write this down in my planner:

Not necessarily a weekly goal, but I accomplished an annual goal over the weekend! I successfully baked a good sourdough loaf.

It was the next part, however, that led me to understand how baking a loaf of sourdough bread was much more of an achievement than just baking the loaf. It really led me to understand where I’ve fallen short in the way I have been setting goals up until this point.

More importantly, it helped me understand how I can set goals going forward.

I realized that it’s okay to keep goals small to start. We want to achieve the goals, but we want to become a person who achieves goals.

Achieving small goals leads to achieving bigger ones

Goals may seem like they have to be big. “Dreams are something you have to believe in,” said Ke Huy Quan in his acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor at the 2023 Academy Awards. “I almost gave up on mine. To all of you out there, please keep your dreams alive.”

Winning the Academy Award? That’s a big dream.

What we don’t see under the surface, however, are all of the small dreams he had to achieve first. He had to become the man who achieved the dream of getting the audition, of getting the part, of building his career little by little each year.

If you’re like me, and you have trouble achieving the goals you set for yourself, start small. We are never going to achieve the big dream without first achieving the little ones.

And there’s no shame in that! The only person I’m letting down by setting goals too big for my current bandwidth is myself.

If I set a goal at baking a sourdough loaf, and I achieve it, I set myself up for the next goal. And the one after that.

In my business, if I set a goal of achieving $1 million in volume sold and I achieve that goal, I set myself up to achieve a goal of $2 million sold. I am already a person who achieves goals, I can step up to achieve the next one.

But if I immediately set a goal of $10 million sold, and I come up short, I only hinder myself because I’ve set myself up as a person who cannot achieve goals. Even if my volume sold is higher than my smaller goal, the act of achieving creates us into a person who achieves.

Becoming a person who achieves goals takes time and effort

Goal-achieving is a lot like building muscle. It requires progressive overload. What happens if you go to the gym on Day 1 and try curling 50-lb dumbbells? It probably won’t go so well. But what happens if you work through 10 lbs, then 15, then 20, etc. Over time you’ll become strong enough to lift 50s.

So, what does this look like in practice? For me, this looks like reviewing my annual goals when I do my Quarterly Preview (another Full Focus concept). It looks like asking myself whether this goal is achievable in the time I’ve allotted and what achieving this goal will lead to in the future.

It also looks like baking more sourdough.