Snippet 17 — How to Set Better Goals for 2023 - Oliver Burkeman
Metadata
- Author: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
- Full Title: Snippet 17 — How to Set Better Goals for 2023 - Oliver Burkeman
- URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/d7f79d31-626f-4e26-ac8d-c2d711a45830
Highlights
How to Set and Achieve Goals Key takeaways: (* Setting a destination goal is important, as is breaking it down into smaller, more manageable steps., * It is important to focus on what is within one’s control, as opposed to thinking about what is outside of one’s control.) Transcript: Speaker 2 I think it’s really useful. Yeah. Well, well, one of the ways I’m thinking about it, because I’m, I was writing the chapter about this in the book like this week, last week. I intended to do this week as well, but then time going, like, like, like, like. Yeah. Like systems of, I don’t know. I feel like, I feel like all, all of the stuff converges on a few central, central themes admit and we as productivity writers try to put our own stamp on like a thing which people have been doing for centuries, not millennia. But that aside, what I’m, what I really like is, is that if I kind of break down my implicit process of goal setting, because it’s never been like explicit. If I, if I break down what that looked like, what it looked like was step number one, setting a kind of destination goal that is within my control, like write a book I’m proud of, just like this big product, big project. Maybe in my mind, it’s like, it would be really cool if it hits the best analyst. It would be really cool if I get invited on conferences. And if I, I don’t know, get on a podcast because that, that, that would be sick. But like those are outside of my control. So I mean, just not think about those. Yeah. And just recognize that actually it’s a, you know, a preferred and different as, as the Stoics might, might say, right. So the, the destination goal is within my control. And then I’ll break that down into the kind of, quote, journey goals, which are, is more the system stuff of therefore what I like tangibly need to do is that every week or every day I want to aim to write X thousand words or X hundred words. And again, that is within my control. And then kind of my step three of this three step process is (Time 0:03:34)
Ensure destination goals are within your control
Aiming to do things daily ish Key takeaways: (* It is within the control of the individual to set and achieve goals., * It is important to lower the bar of quality when aiming to write, in order to make it easier to achieve., * It is important to do things regularly, such as meditation, in order to achieve a state of flow.) Transcript: Speaker 2 But like those are outside of my control. So I mean, just not think about those. Yeah. And just recognize that actually it’s a, you know, a preferred and different as, as the Stoics might, might say, right. So the, the destination goal is within my control. And then I’ll break that down into the kind of, quote, journey goals, which are, is more the system stuff of therefore what I like tangibly need to do is that every week or every day I want to aim to write X thousand words or X hundred words. And again, that is within my control. And then kind of my step three of this three step process is for that journey goal that like let’s say I want to write 500 words a day to lower the bar of quality as much as possible. Yeah. I want like, I literally wrote my to do list, write 500 crappy words for crappy first draft of chapter two. Speaker 1 And I find that putting the words crappy in there twice really makes it easier to be okay, you know what, this is actually, it’s actually doable. Do it. Yeah. Let’s do this. And it makes me think of two other things like Dan Harris, meditation writer and the podcaster talks about doing things specifically meditation, aiming to do them daily ish and having this built in built in fuzziness like, because you know whether you did something daily ish like in a given week, you have a feel like if you did it twice, there wasn’t daily ish, but it but it reduces this kind of like, oh, if I break my streak, it’s all over and I might as well spend the next three weeks not doing anything. So I think that’s an important part of that. (Time 0:04:33)