A Master Follow Through Program enrollee — I’ll call him Stan — recently confessed that he was doing a lousy job of following through on following through. Given that he had earlier been blown away by the results he had achieved by using follow through strategies, he was troubled and puzzled by his failure to keep using follow through strategies.
Stan’s confession prompted me to once again make my own confession. I’ve given you follow through strategies — proven tools that make it possible for you to do a far better job of following through on your good intentions. But what I haven’t given you is a way to make you use those tools. And unless you can somehow make yourself use them, they won’t do you any good.
Caught in the Follow Through Catch-22
This is what I’ve referred to before as the Follow Through Paradox or the Follow Through Catch-22. It takes a little bit of willpower to make yourself use follow through tools that make it possible for you to follow through without relying on willpower (which is decidedly unreliable).
Making yourself use tools that you’ve already seen for yourself work beautifully should be a no-brainer. But as Stan discovered, it’s not.
Using follow through strategies requires you to deliberately take an extra manual step to position your good intentions for success. Taking that step requires deliberate attention, thinking, and effort. In contrast, NOT using follow through strategies is a snap. It comes naturally and automatically without attention, thinking, or effort.
The Path of Least Resistance That Leads to Disappointment
Although it’s not hard to use follow through strategies, it’s a lot easier to NOT use them. And given that we humans are wired to take the path of least resistance, even after seeing for yourself how much good follow through strategies can do for you, you might not consistently make yourself use them.
I wish I knew how to help you make yourself use follow through strategies, but I don’t. What I do know is that these strategies work like a charm for people who make a practice of using them. And once you can manage to make yourself use follow through strategies consistently, I’m sure that you’ll be thrilled with the results.