For over two years, I experienced homelessness. That whole time, I kept a list of goals in Evernote. The advice I’d heard about goal-setting said if you write your goals down and review them often, you’ll achieve them almost automatically.
That list helped me name what I wanted, but never told me how to get there. (I’ll call that understanding of how to get where you want to go “waypower” in this article.) It also never told me why I wanted it in the first place. I’ll call that willpower. C. R. Snyder introduced these terms in The Psychology of Hope, where he defines hope not as an emotion but as a combination of waypower and willpower in pursuit of a goal.
Plenty of content covers getting clear on your target. Plenty more covers the tactics to reach it. But what happens when you start working toward a goal and you stall? Your drive disappears. What then?
You need a target and a path to it. But your reasons for wanting to reach that target matter just as much. Figure out your reasons first, and the target and the path get a lot easier to find.
Your Willpower Needs a File, Not a List
A goal list tells you what. A why file tells you why. And that distinction changes everything.
Write down every benefit achieving your goal delivers. Aim for 25 reasons. Push for 200, if you can find them. The longer your list, the harder your why becomes to ignore on the day your motivation quits on you.
Cover All 7 Areas of Your Life
A thin why file draws from one or two areas of your life. A strong one draws from all seven, adapted from human-behavior expert Dr. John Demartini’s framework:
- Faith — your sense of purpose and your connection to something bigger than yourself
- Faculties — your mind, your learning, your growth
- Field — your career, your business, your contribution to the world
- Finance — your money, your assets, your independence
- Family — your household, your partner, your kids, your parents
- Fellowship — your friendships, your community, your influence
- Fitness — your health, your energy, your body
Write reasons in every category. A goal that only serves your bank account loses its meaning under pressure. A goal that serves your health, your family, and your sense of purpose refuses to.
A Weak Why Won’t Survive a Bad Week
Business consultant Carlo Guzzi watches this play out with clients constantly. Even skilled operators hit a wall when a project demands more from them than their calendar seems to allow.
“Top leaders will find time,” Guzzi told me, “and I think it comes down to your why. Because, if your why is strong enough, you’ll find reasons to do things, and also reasons to let go of things that are less important.”
A strong why doesn’t just fuel your action. It sorts your priorities for you, and it does the sorting before you’ve had to think about it.
Borrowed Reasons Run Out of Gas
LinkedIn coach Edward Zia sees a version of the same problem daily, in clients chasing followers instead of purpose.
“It all comes down to why you want to do something,” Zia said. “If you have good reasons to do something, you’ll be way more motivated than if you have weak reasons.”
Chase a vanity metric, and your motivation dies the moment the metric dips. Chase a reason rooted in who you serve, and the metric becomes a side effect of the work, not the point of it.
See It Before You Believe It
Performance coach Karim Boktor builds this principle into his work with elite performers, and it applies just as well to the rest of us.
“If your brain can see that success beforehand, it loves familiarity, it loves clarity,” Boktor explained, “and you’re a lot more likely to get to that end objective, because your mind has already seen it, felt it, and lived it.”
Your why file works on the same principle. When you make a list of the reasons why you want to achieve something and read it daily, it turns an abstract goal into a felt outcome — one that lives vividly in your mind’s eye. Your brain stops treating the goal as foreign and starts treating it as inevitable.
Start With a Goal List, But Don’t Stop There
I didn’t have a why file during those two years without a home. I had a goal list, and it wasn’t enough.
Start with your goal list. A simple question to ask is, “What goals will make my life better?”
Then choose your most important goal, and build your why file before you start working toward your aim. Write 25 reasons. Write 200, if you’ve got them. Cover all seven areas of your life, then read that file often. If you wake up one morning and your drive is missing, make reading your why file the first thing you do that day.
Your waypower gets you moving. Your willpower keeps you moving. Combine the two, and anything becomes possib