Most people approach their life the same way they approach New Year’s resolutions: they make a list of what they want. What they want to achieve. What they want to change. What they want to fix. It’s a long list — and usually an optimistic one — but it rarely survives more than a few weeks.

And there’s a simple reason for that: we’re obsessed with the WHAT, but we spend almost no time on the HOW.

Ask someone what they want from life and they’ll tell you:
“I want to be healthier.”
“I want less stress.”
“I want to be happier.”
“I want to be more fulfilled.”

Ask them how they intend to do it… and things get quiet.

We’ve trained ourselves to think goals drive change. But goals only point at a direction — it’s the method that gets you there. In work, this is obvious. Nothing happens without a plan, a process, and a structure. Outside of work? We leave most of it to hope.

This is where the shift from WHAT to HOW becomes life-changing.

The Problem With Chasing the WHAT

We love outcomes because they’re neat, clean and aspirational. “Run a marathon.” “Learn a language.” “Get fitter.” “Improve my wellbeing.” You can put them on a poster.

But they don’t help you live differently on a Tuesday morning.

The WHAT only tells you the destination. It says nothing about the daily actions, the systems, the practices, the friction, the support, or the way you show up when you’re tired, stressed, or fed up.

In other words:

The WHAT feels good to imagine.
The HOW determines everything.

And this is why ideas like these matter:

“Living our best life is a skill.”
“We are what we give our attention to.”
“To be a better person, start with HOW you do this.”

These aren’t slogans — they’re reminders that skill, not intention, shapes your everyday reality.

Skills don’t appear out of nowhere.
They’re built through method.

Why We Avoid the HOW

Most people avoid the HOW because it’s grounded, detailed, and occasionally boring. It forces you to confront the reality that improvement isn’t magic — it’s repetition and adjustment.

A few uncomfortable truths:

• The WHAT changes nothing without a system.

• The HOW exposes whether you’re actually willing to change.

• The WHAT is imagination; the HOW is behaviour.

• The WHAT is a wish; the HOW is a practice.

It’s much easier to declare, “I’m going to reduce my stress,” than it is to investigate how your stress is created, how you respond to it, and how you could develop better ways of working and living.

This is why most wellbeing efforts fail. People don’t lack motivation — they lack method.

What Happens When You Focus on the HOW

Focusing on HOW shifts you from outcome-chasing to skill-building. You stop thinking of life as a set of goals and start treating it as something you craft, intentionally and steadily.

This is the backbone of Sprint Living.

It doesn’t matter whether the topic is:

• wellbeing,

• relationships,

• personal growth,

• values,

• habits,

• or emotional resilience.

The question that matters is always the same:

“How do I want to live — and what is the method that gets me there?”

When you make this shift, three things happen:

1. You become less chaotic.

Instead of reacting to life, you design the way you approach it.

2. You improve faster.

Deliberate practice works in every domain — parenting, leadership, wellbeing, decision-making, relationships, stress management.

3. You stop relying on luck.

You don’t hope things will get better. You build the capacity that makes things better.

This aligns with a simple truth:

“The first step is to focus on HOW above WHY and WHAT.”

It’s not poetic — it’s practical.

HOW Before WHY? Really?

Yes.

And here’s why.

The self-help world loves to start with WHY. But for most people, the WHY comes after they start doing the work. You rarely understand your deeper purpose before you begin. It emerges through action — not imagination.

As you put it elsewhere:

“People have a very low maturity in how they try to achieve wellbeing. No focus on HOW.”

The HOW grounds you. It gets you moving. It gives you evidence. And once you build consistency, the WHY becomes clearer and more honest.

The REAL Engine of Change: Continuous Improvement

When you focus on HOW, you automatically start working in cycles:

• try something,

• observe it,

• adjust it,

• refine it,

• improve it.

Suddenly your life looks less like a lottery and more like a craft. This is the deliberate practice mindset that runs through intentional living.

And it removes the pressure to “get it right.”
You just get it better.

Putting This Into Your Everyday Life

Here’s the simplest version:

The WHAT is your direction.
The HOW is your path.
The HOW is the only part you control.

Ask yourself:

• How do I want to handle stress?

• How do I want to communicate?

• How do I want to plan my days?

• How do I want to make decisions?

• How do I want to recover when things go wrong?

These are design questions.
And they build wellbeing far more effectively than any goal list.

Bottom Line

If the WHAT tells you where you want to go, the HOW is the engine that gets you there. Most people spend their life rewriting the destination. The mature shift — the intentional shift — is learning to build the engine.

Because living a good life isn’t a belief system.
It’s a skill.

And skills are built through HOW.