From Intention to Integration: Making Your Goals Part of Everyday Life

Why small daily habits matter

Whenever you set big goals, you often feel motivated. It’s like this motivation kick you get at 1 am where you want to change your whole life. This is exciting and inspiring!

But once this feeling goes away and you are left with reality, overwhelm comes up, and you are unsure how to achieve this new goal.

Here’s where small daily habits come into play. They provide the following things:

• Reduce overwhelm: A big goal often seems intimidating; it is so big that you don’t know where to start. Focusing on a small daily habit minimizes feeling lost and stressed. It makes the progress manageable.
• A sustainable way to success: By breaking a big goal into smaller milestones, you don’t start with too much intensity. You’re not trying to tackle your goal overnight but splitting it over weeks or months.
• Compound Growth: Small, consistent habits add up over time and create exponential results. If you improve 1% every day, you’re going to see big results without overworking yourself.
• Builds identity: Doing something regularly every single day shapes your identity. If you read one page daily, you become a reader. This makes it easier for you to read in the future because it’s a part of who you are.

Looking at your goal 

BLet’s take a look in yourself: What do you really want? And just as important- when do you want it?

Getting clear on your intentions gives them shape. Your goal is no longer a vague idea floating in your head but something you can take action on without waiting for the “perfect moment.”

Adding a deadline gives your ambitions a sense of urgency and prevents them from lying in your drawer for months.

But before taking action, you should identify if you truly want to achieve the goal for you. You don’t want to pursue something that isn’t meaningful to you and doesn’t feel good.

Use the questions below to explore your direction more deeply:

1. What exactly is my goal? What do I want to achieve?
2. If someone asked me to describe my goal in detail, what would I answer?
3. When do I want to achieve my goal? Can I set myself a deadline?
4. Picture your future self already having that goal. How is achieving this goal influencing her daily life? How does it make you feel thinking about this lifestyle?
5. If it makes you feel good, why?
6. If it makes you feel unsure or bad, why? Do you feel like your friends or family want you to achieve this goal?

Example

You’ve been thinking about waking up earlier but never asked yourself why. Many other people do that, too. You watched videos on YouTube where people are waking up at 6 am. So why not you, too?

One day, you take some time to reflect and realize:” I want to start my mornings slower, without rushing out the door. I want to have a nice breakfast and read some pages in my book. It would be great to wake up at 6 instead of 8 am.”

Suddenly, it’s not about doing something only because productivity videos say so. It’s about creating space for yourself, and this feels meaningful. That small shift in clarity makes it easier to commit to your ambitions.

Look at your current situation 

Let’s reflect on your current situation. How much time can you realistically spend working toward your ambition each day/week/month?

This step is crucial because it grounds your goal in your actual life- not in an ideal version of it.

When you know your time limits, you can create a plan that feels doable, not overwhelming. You’re not trying to force a goal into a schedule that can’t support it. You’re building a system that works with your life, not against it.

Filling your schedule with work you can’t achieve because of time reasons makes it unrealistic to get started.

Being honest with your current situation doesn’t mean limiting your growth– it sets the foundation for it.

To find your available times, ask yourself the following questions:

1. How close or far away am I from my goal?
2. How much time (in hours/minutes) do I currently have available to pursue my goal daily? And weekly?
3. If my schedule is busy, how can I make room and more time for my goal?
4. At what time and what place can I work toward my goal during my available free time?

To help answer the second question, I would recommend time blocking your week.

Therefore, you can see when you are busy with non-negotiables (for example, working) and spot free time frames where you could work towards your goal. Even 10 minutes in-between-time matters!

But please make sure to take breaks and don’t work all the time. Your schedule should leave room for you to rest and do other things that are important to you.

Example

A “bad” approach:

• I want to write a book in 6 months. I currently have around 20 minutes of free time per day and could write there. I’m planning to write 20 pages per day in my available time!

A “better” approach:

• I want to write around 1-5 pages daily in my 20 minutes. I know writing more than 5 pages would be too unrealistic, but I can test that out! Finishing my book in 6 months is not reasonable; I think 12 months would do better.

Building a bridge

We have to build a connection between your current situation and your goal. How do we come from your present reality to your desired one?

Imagine you want to cross a wide river, but there is no way to get to the other side. You see your goal, the other shore, but right now, it feels unreachable.

Instead of trying to get there in one big leap, which would most likely make you fall in the water and get swept away, you build a bridge. Starting with gathering materials, maybe stones and logs.

You build the foundation piece by piece. Every plank and stone makes the bridge stronger until it’s strong enough for to cross it. You reached the other side; you reached your goal.

Just like you wouldn’t expect to build a bridge in one day, don’t expect to reach your goal in one day.

Split your goal into daily habits to make it easier to reach. Take it step by step, and be patient and consistent.

Ask yourself: How can I make a small and easy improvement daily and weekly in my available time to work towards my goal without trying to build the bridge in one day.

Let’s build a bridge 

Let’s use what we learned in the last section and apply it in action. Answer the following bold text for your own goal.

Here’s an example with the goal “Waking up at 6 am daily” to help you start:

Your current situation: Waking up at 8 am daily.

Your desired situation (your goal): Waking up at 6 am daily.

The question: How can I build a bridge from waking up at 8 am to 6 am slowly and mindfully by considering my available time?

A possible solution: Reducing your wake-up time every 2 weeks by 10 minutes until reaching 6 am (a possible plan underneath).

How to optimize your new habit 

1. Make it easy: Make the steps easy and realistic. Don’t try to build the bridge in one day.
2. Track your progress: Use some kind of tracking tool; for example, write it down in your note App or on a piece of paper. It gives you a clear overview of how often you worked toward your goal.
3. Reward yourself: This keeps you motivated and helps you celebrate small steps.
4. Tip: Keep in mind that your goal can change over time.

Example: Wake up at 6 am

• To make my habit easy, I can schedule my alarm clock monthly to avoid forgetting it during the week. Additionally, I can put my phone across the room so that I physically have to get up to turn my alarm off
• (You can find a possible tracking method underneath this section.)
• Every morning, I can reward myself by drinking a cup of tea and listening to my favorite podcast