Self-regulation: The complement to motivation when striving for success

Recent research indicated that only nine percent of the population who make New Year’s resolutions stick to them throughout the year. Given that many people who make such resolutions begin with high levels of motivation, the statistic indicates that motivation by itself is typically insufficient for people to achieve their goals.

The missing ingredient to success in achieving goals is often self-regulation. The importance of this factor in goal achievement is discussed in Motivation Myth Busters by Drs. Wendy Grolnick, Benjamin Heddy and Frank Worrell. In the following sections, I will discuss how you can use self-regulation to complement motivation to achieve your goals.

The role of motivation in achieving goals

Motivation refers to energy, enthusiasm and excitement in relation to a behaviour, task or goal. Motivation often spurs people to set goals such as making New Year’s resolutions.

Motivation can also lead people to begin acting in the pursuit of their goals. This is evident when workout centres are typically filled with people early in the year as they embark on fulfilling their New Year’s resolutions to exercise regularly.

Unfortunately, motivation alone is typically insufficient for someone to maintain the consistent action necessary to achieve their goals. One reason for this is that, although motivation provides the enthusiasm leading people to set goals, it does not identify the steps necessary to achieve the goals. It is akin to someone being excited about traveling to a destination but not having a map to get them there.

A second reason that motivation alone is typically insufficient to achieve one’s goals is that motivation fluctuates. For example, a person’s motivation is typically high when they make their New Year’s resolutions. As a result, their initial energy, enthusiasm and excitement may be enough to carry them through the first week or two toward fulfilling their resolutions with action.

Unfortunately, their motivation will inevitably fluctuate as time goes on. This often leads people not to continue performing the actions necessary to achieve their goals. For example, many of the people whose New Year’s resolutions were to exercise regularly may begin to skip workouts, indicating that they don’t have the motivation to exercise on certain days. Eventually, they have skipped so many workouts because of low motivation that they give up on achieving their goals to exercise regularly.

So, although motivation often plays a significant role in setting goals, it is usually insufficient for the person to achieve their goals through consistent action over time.

Self-regulation: The additional ingredient in goal achievement

Self-regulation is the ingredient which, when added to motivation, helps a person to achieve their goals. It does so by facilitating the implementation of strategies which lead to consistent action over time in pursuit of one’s goals.

Self-regulation has three steps which facilitate taking consistent action in the pursuit of goals:

Forethought—This entails setting the stage for performing actions. It involves scheduling specific tasks to be performed at a specific time and in a specific location. Action plans, as they are commonly known, are a tool to foster ‘implementation intention’. Research shows that the probability of taking an action toward a goal significantly increase with the use of action plans.

Action plans are most effective if the actions to be performed are specific. ‘Run on the treadmill at the gym for 30 minutes on Monday starting at 8 am’; and ‘Make a list of possible topics for my history term paper starting this Tuesday after eating dinner’ are examples of the level of specificity you should have in your scheduled actions.

It is also important that the person has the knowledge and ability necessary to perform the actions. If not, you should consult with someone who can help you gain this knowledge and ability or choose different actions for which you have the required knowledge and ability.

Finally, it is important to choose an environment in which it is easier for you to focus on your actions without being distracted. For example, if you are a student you may choose to study at the school library rather than at home.

Performance—In this step, you perform the actions scheduled in your action plan. If you have the required knowledge and ability, on most occasions you should be able to perform the action which you scheduled. However, on certain occasions when your motivation is lacking, it may feel challenging to do this.

In these instances, it is good to use the five-minute rule in which you agree to perform the scheduled action for five minutes. After that time, you can choose to continue beyond five minutes or stop and resume at a different time.

The five-minute rule is helpful when you are lacking in motivation. It is helpful because, even with low motivation, most people can manage to do an action for five minutes. The good news is that performing the action for five minutes often leads to an increase in motivation and energy. In turn, this makes it easier to continue beyond five minutes and perform the action as scheduled.

Having said that, if there are certain times at which an action is scheduled and you believe it is just not in the cards to perform that action, stopping after five minutes is perfectly fine. Even in that short a time frame, you will have taken some action toward your goal and can resume performing the scheduled action at a time when your motivation is higher.

Self-reflection—This third and final step entails reviewing your performance of the scheduled action. This includes recording your performance of any scheduled actions. As discussed in Atomic Habits by James Clear, this ‘habit-tracking’ makes it more likely that you will continue performing the actions in your action plan.

Self-reflection also entails recording details of your performance of the scheduled action including strategies you used effectively (such as the five-minute rule) which helped you to perform the action. It also involves recording challenges you faced in performing the action and strategies you can use going forward to overcome those challenges.

Tracking progress toward your goal in this manner has been shown to facilitate goal achievement.

A final word: Avoid perfectionism when applying these strategies

Adding self-regulation strategies to motivation should markedly enhance your ability to perform actions consistently toward the achievement of your goals. Having said that, be aware that no strategies are perfect and this is no exception.

I can state from my own experience that these strategies have been fundamental to achieving my goals but that I have occasionally slipped in my use of them. Various factors including life circumstances have led to these slips.

For example, one day in April 2023 I was well on my way to performing the 75 minutes of daily piano practice scheduled in my action plan by having practiced for 60 minutes by the early evening. Then my vehicle was stolen after I had been out and about. The stress of that event combined with having to find an alternative way home, calling the police and my insurance company and eventually having dinner led me to abandon the final 15 minutes of piano practice for that day.

The next day, I followed the advice from Atomic Habits not to miss performing an action two days in a row. By then end of the following day, I had got back on track by having practiced for 75 minutes. I also reminded myself that, even though I had not performed all the piano practice scheduled in my action plan for that week, I had performed significantly more practice that week by having scheduled in my action plan than if I had not done so.

That is how to view the power of self-regulation in achieving goals with the proper perspective. I encourage you to adopt the same viewpoint as you use this concept to help you achieve your goals.

May you use self-regulation as a complement to motivation to help you achieve your goals,

-Dr. Pat