This is the difference between good goals and bad goals

IT WORKS: 'Fake it till you make it'

Today, in 5 minutes or less, the agenda is designed to::

☑ Transform goals into objectively productive tools for your workflow

☑ Reframe your goals for your personal reality

☑ Get you started. Now.

Good goal vs. bad goal

What makes a goal good and what makes it bad?

Objectively, a goal is good if it gets you closer to your desired outcomes. On the other hand, it’s bad if it doesn’t get you closer to your desired outcomes.

”Wait, Corrin, that sounds insane.” you might tell me.

And I get you. Because why would a goal NOT get you closer to your desired outcome?

The entire point of a goal is that it sets the direction of your actions. It is a creation of the human brain, literally made so that we can get to our desired outcome.

But there is indeed a situation where the goal does not achieve its designed purpose.

Two, actually.

The first was discussed in a previous newsletter, “The game of life's secret win condition”. The first situation occurs when you don’t make and check on goals frequently enough, which results in goals that aren’t updated with your current reality.

The second, which I’ll talk about in this newsletter, is the situation which occurs when you don’t think hard enough about what you want when you make a goal. This results in goals that aren’t pointed towards what you’re aiming for.

In other words, worthless crap that wastes your time and takes you away from your desired outcome.

The Xs, the Ys, and the Zs of Goals

Just like how there is an X, a Y, and a Z dimension in space, there are Xs, Ys, and Zs in goals too.

X = The intended outcome

Y = The way to the outcome

Z = The real but unconsidered third dimension of goals

A lot of people are so focused on X. That’s why they make goals and say stuff like “One day, I’ll be a millionaire!” or “I’ll lose weight!” or worse, “My goal is to be happy!”

These are X goals. Goals that only think of X are what I call wish fulfillment. Dreams. Fun stuff, but I don’t think anyone achieves anything with simple X goals.

It might even be harmful if you consider the stress and pressure to reach such vague goals. If you made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, you’ll know exactly what I mean. When you weigh yourself and find that you’re not losing weight, you feel all of the pain of failure.

Now, when you add Y to the X goals, things become much more understandable. These goals evolve from dreams to being plans.

Back to the example of losing weight, if you instead make the two goals of “Run every morning and eat salad for dinner”, you will, for sure, make more progress than the person who made the earlier simple X goal. Those two goals now have not only a proper intended outcome, but also a proper plan with repeatable steps to reach the goal.

I also mentioned a Z dimension. It is already inside those two previous goals, you just haven’t realized it yet. The Z is actually all about considering how deep you want to go into the goal.

What are you willing to sacrifice to reach that goal? 

Someone who casually wants to lose weight is more likely to make a goal of running in the morning and eating salad for dinner. A professional body builder considers the nutrients contained within each and every meal and snack and probably does much more strenuous and frequent workouts.

If you’re a casual, make goals befitting a casual. If you’re looking for more, if you ACTUALLY are looking for more, your goals should reflect that.

The item on this week’s agenda

This week, we’ll find out whether your goals appropriate for how serious you are. Or rather, you’ll do it for yourself.

We are going to match your goals to your effort. Step by step.

Follow the mission, buckle up and ready your fingers to type into the reply box of this email. You’ll benefit a lot from typing down your response and doing the work, it’ll be great.

The Z ‘Depth’ dimension is more important than it seems

It doesn’t look that impressive, does it? It’s another question in the line of questions that are supposed to make you more productive.

But it is important. Deeply so.

Let’s consider the two situations where your goal is not proportional to your effort.

Situation 1. Goal is much smaller than effort.

In situation 1, your input of effort is much more than the goal you’ve set yourself. This only means one thing.

If your goal is something so small, then it isn’t on your list of priorities. And if it isn’t a priority, what is it?

It’s a waste of time. If you have a lot of effort, also known as time, to waste on something that’s not even your goal, that’s called procrastination.

Either make a bigger goal because you’ve thought about it some more and decided that it actually is a priority or cut it out because it is entirely useless. Your choice.

Situation 2. Goal is much bigger than effort.

Situation 2, on the other hand is much worse. You want a lot, but the issue is, you’re either not willing or not able to input enough effort to get the output you want. What happens in that situation?

You get demotivated. You slip down further away from the goal. Eventually, you’ll start feeling like the goal is impossible. Then eventually you quit. That’s it. It’s over.

Even worse, maybe you start feeling the learned helplessness, and you start quitting every goal you ever make in your life. Then you get into a slump, maybe never to recover.

That last part might be an exaggeration. But it can happen with enough failures. Such is the poison of learned helplessness and impossible goals.

So what now?

If you were convinced, get on that agenda’s mission right now. Let’s improve our lives together.

And remember, goals are just signposts. You still need to put in the effort. Prove that your goals and your efforts are aligned.

I’m doing my best too. You can see the evidence if you’re reading this newsletter.

If you can, let me know how this week’s agenda went for you, so that I can sleep better knowing that this actually helped. And you can sleep better knowing you were able to change your life for the better.

Upstart tangents…

Upstart tangents…

🧠 Listen and learn: Mark Manson talks about goals and other productivity-related tools.

👁‍🗨: I recently completed Justin Welsh’s “The Content OS” course. It is indeed really good. I had a system before taking the course, of course (Pun intended), but the ideas in his course really inspired me to overhaul my system. I feel like my system is much faster and makes more sense now. Much less wasted effort and more efficiency. I highly recommend that course for any content creator of any kind.

^{You’re an upstart with an agenda…}

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