How to do Goals

2024-12-31

How to Goals

It’s almost the new year, so that means you’re obligated to create a “New Year’s Resolution” and then dump it in the first month. I’m here to show you pitfalls in goal setting, and hopefully set you straight.

Focus on what you want to achieve, and it will happen.

I’ll rehash the SMART Goal system, and show few tricks to reorient your goals to make them more effective for growth.

On, the resolution thing - I think they’re a waste of time: you’re set up for failure because of the grandiose nature of it (New year new me), and so most people set resolutions that are way too hard. I’m not sure if it’s common knowledge on why this happens, but it feels like there’s a new Hidden Brain podcast on the topic every year. Here’s one from 2020

SMART

The SMART goal system is an initialism for “Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-Based,” and it’s a well-known system.

Here are some references

If you’ve never heard of the SMART goal system, it’s a simple and effective way to vibe-check your goals. If your goals aren’t SMART, you can often rewrite them to be SMART.

I don’t think these are the end-all-be-all. For one thing, the acronym doesn’t tell you that feedback helps a lot (there’s SMARTER for that, adding “Evaluated,” and “Reviewed”). It also doesn’t tell you that having fewer goals makes it much easier to achieve them.

Bad Goalposts

Ok, time to dispel some bad goals

“I want to learn X”
“I want to set up X”
“I want to do (grand) X which I’ve never done before”
“I want to brainstorm an idea”
“I want to figure out a better system for X”

These are terrible goals: each one of them is nebulous and has no clear success or failure criteria. How do you know if you’ve learned X? Most things can’t be 100% learned, or even quantified.

It’s not bad to want to learn something, but it’s not a measurable goal. Try this, “I will practice X 15 minutes a day on the weekdays for 2 months.” I personally don’t like this goal because I tend to be the learn-as-I-go type, YMMV.

“I want to set up X” is similarly awful. How often do you know if you’ve set it up? With computers, especially Linux, it’s a continuous process.

Try this: “I will get 5 computers booting to Linux Mint by Friday,”

Man, starting the magnum opus “I will write the world’s best novel,” you have to be realistic with your goals. Not to say you shouldn’t be ambitious (we’ll get to that), but know realistic boundaries. If you’re pushing for 110% of what you’ve done in the past, great. If you have never done something that experts say or report to take months of dedicated work, maybe take a step back before committing.

Try this: “I will write a 5000 word short story, and get it edited by the end of the month.” This is a compound goal (task A then task B) and you need to ask for outside help, but this is a much more digestible chunk of work.

Endless Goals

I didn’t mention this but I updated all of the prior goals to have due dates too. The prior goals didn’t have any such time-bound, and this is bad. There’s no check on runaway goals, or taking forever.

I’ll restate some bad goals:

“I want to learn X”
“I want to set up X”
“I want to brainstorm an idea”

These don’t have deadlines, so you cannot fail. This sucks, and what will probably happen is that you’ll either think you did it immediately or give up before you’ve gotten where you want.

Here’s some example fixes

“I will learn X by reading the docs for 15 minutes every day for a week”
“I will study X for 1 week” (I still don’t like this; but we’ll fix it later)
“I’ll brainstorm for 20 minutes and write down everything I think of”
“I’ll set up X for 45 minutes”

By simply adding an end you can upgrade these aimless goals into finite ones. This is strictly better, because you know when the deadline is, and when it comes you can assess if you have met your goal.

Amorphous Goals

If you can’t measure your goal, then you can’t know if you did it. Here’s some more bad examples:

“I’ll spend less money next year”
“I’ll get better at X”
“I’ll do more of X”

These are all… fine.

No wait, they’re terrible!

None of these goals say how much and you can’t even track your progress on your way to your purported goal. “I’ll do more of X” doesn’t tell you when you succeed, because you probably don’t even know how much you’re already doing

Try this: “I’ll do X on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday”

Or “I’ll get better at X”? How much better? when?

Schools have dialed this in with tests; while testing is flawed it at least gives you a qualitative measure. If you can’t measure and track how you’re progressing toward your “goal,” then you don’t have a goal just a wish.

Try this “I’ll score 5 points better on the practice test than my baseline, 85% of the time,”

Safe Goals

If your goal is something you already do, then what’s the point?

“I’ll go to the grocery store once a week” (when you already do)
“I’ll write 500 words per day” (when you write an average of 650)
“I’ll learn git” (when you use it daily)

These goals are bad because they’re useless. If you’re already achieving them then there’s not much reason to write them down and commit to them. If you’re already in the habit or practice, you don’t need to add more layers on top of it.

Your goals should have some risk of failure. Without this risk, there’s no path for growth. If you’re having a hard time completing the goals you set already, then this tidbit isn’t for you.

I try to aim for a 10% improvement from the last time I did something if I’m making the time to set a goal for myself. The last time I did this, I was able to bust out a bunch more work than even I had expected: my thought going in was this “I feel like this is crazy, but totally doable - if I stick to this I can actually get through all of this.” And I did, in that case I was way more productive than I thought before. That felt pretty great for me, but I didn’t double down I used the experience to evaluate why I had discounted my ability.

It’s important that even if you’re successful at achieving your goal, you still assess what went right and wrong.

Why do I make bad goals?

If you want to get something done, then why is it so hard to make a good goal?

There are a few factors:

Lack of training
Fear of failure
Demoralizing spirals

If you haven’t been trained that goal setting is a skill then you will miss when your goals are bad. It’s like someone writing a book who does not read: would this person be expected to write well? Luckily this is fixed with some basic lessons.

Once you know that you can plan effectively, you still aren’t guaranteed to make progress and to create good goals. Fear of failure is normal; your ego is (typically) constantly trying to keep itself safe. One of the barriers is a thought; “I’m not bad, I don’t fail.” This isn’t necessarily an overt thought, but rather a defensive posture. Think of this: if you could consciously choose between two tasks, one where you could not fail, and one where you could fail would you favor the scenario where you cannot fail?

Most would, and not because they say “I’m afraid of failure.” There’s an innate bias to certainty in most, and that often leads to avoidance of failure.

Finally, should you overcome the last 2 hurdles, you may find yourself in a precarious spiral. If you find yourself making overambitious goals and failing then not trying anything new, then starting up again - you’re in a spiral. This is caused by the depressive feeling of failure, resulting in a recovery. After recovering from this depression you may feel renewed vigor, and therefore try another big task.

This cycle is common, and one I constantly fall into, so I try to train myself to make my goals small.

To break it, set your goals appropriately: timed (shorter is better), and with failure resulting in renewed strategy. The key is to prepare alternate strategies for an overarching goal, without hedging yourself. Don’t fail by saying you will.

For example, if you were writing a book, and you needed it to be 50000 words, you may set a goal to write so many words per month. If you fall behind, you may be able to catch back up, but if your goal was already ambitious, then failure is a trap. But, if instead you fall behind and cannot recover, instead you must reevaluate. If the book must still be done on a deadline, you need a new strategy - perhaps a different way of writing, perhaps a smaller word count, or perhaps you get help from others. Whatever your solution, change is the key in this situation.

When you’re forced to reevaluate and see the possible, that’s when you are your most creative and curious self.

Non-Goals

Now you have the secret sauce, but let’s lay it out

Make your goals SMART; run them through the acronym
Focus on your goal on a regular cadence
Review your goal on a regular cadence, see if you need to reevaluate it

Don’t use this for everything - some things don’t need hyper focus, and to be crossed off of a list. Sometimes, putting in the system to GTD sucks the fun out of it. If you don’t feel anxiety about your movie backlog, don’t make a SMART goal to blast through it. If you don’t feel bad that you haven’t learned a new musical instrument in the years since you had it, don’t make it a smart goal. It’s not only important to start from a place of curiosity, but also to not start from a place of shame

This system takes control of your reward system, but when you do this it’s important to know if the result is what you’re after. If you do what you do because you like it, then you don’t need to hack your brain to do it.

There’s one last piece of advice:

Do or do not. There is no try.

A lot of the time, you don’t need to sit down and formulate a goal; most of the time you can just do it.