Goalsettr Blog

Helping you plan and achieve your goals

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Keeping Healthy

There’s lots of news at the moment about Coronavirus as it spreads around the world. Instead of publishing about goal setting today, I’m going to add to links of sites to visit to keep informed about what’s going on.

My other piece of advice is to stay off social media for your information - try and keep to official sources only. To help with this, I’ve listed some of those official below.

The World Health Organisation page on Coronavirus lists 5 key points, 

- Wash your hands frequently with soap  (here’s why soap works)

Wet hands with running water

Apply enough soap to cover wet hands

Scrub all surfaces of the hands – including back of hands, between fingers and under nails – for at least 20 seconds.

Rinse thoroughly with running water

Dry hands with a clean cloth or single-use towel

- Maintain social distancing.

- Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth.

- Practice respiratory hygiene.

- Follow the directions of your local health authority. 

Stay safe and Healthy!

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How To Set Goals - A complete guide

I’ve written a number of articles about goal setting and the different aspects of achieving them, such as barriers, defining your path to achieving goals, and resources, among others.

However, it’s all dotted around the site - rather than searching across goalsettr.com for each of the different aspects of goal setting, I’ve made this single all-encompassing guide, which includes all the steps you need for setting goals and succeeding with them. I’ll also include links to resources (some of my own, some from others) that you can use in your own goal setting. Obviously, the diary and the app itself are also available if you feel like you need something more specific to you.

Table of Contents

Introduction Values Planning Your Goals How to Prioritise Your Goals Breaking down Your Goals into smaller parts Other Aspects Resources Barriers Developing Habits for your goals Keep Going!  Conclusion  A Goal Setting Worksheet

Introduction

What is goal setting and why should I do it?

Setting a Goal is defined “the development of an action plan designed to motivate and guide a person or group toward a goal”.

That all sounds more complicated than it needs to be, but essentially;

If you have something that you want to achieve, like running a marathon or stopping smoking, goal setting is the process of developing a plan or a system to achieve this goal. Research has shown that by making specific and ambitious goals (and plans to achieve them), you’re more likely to make improvements than compared easy or general goals.

You probably already have some goals that you want to achieve - great! However, before we start examining how to achieve them, let’s step back a bit and talk about values first, as they’re going to help with the process of setting goals that work for you.

Values

A value is “one’s judgement of what is important in life”. Examples are kindness, assertiveness, or reliability.

Why are values important for goals?

Let’s ask another question first - Have you ever thought about why you set the specific goals you have? Why are they important to you? **Are** they important to you, or did someone tell you they should be important to you?

One way to help answer these questions is to define our values - they can be your North Star for your goals and projects, or for changing the goals that you have. But how do you define values?

Defining Your Values

To begin with, write down a list of all the values you can think of that relate to you. There are too many values to list here (here’s a list from Google).

Don’t worry about if your values seem like they’re repeating or seem similar to each other, the key thing right now is to get as many of them as possible down on paper or on the screen.

Group Similar Values

At this point, you should have a list of values that are important to you. The next step is to group all of your similar values together. For example, happiness, humour and fun could be grouped together, thankfulness and gratitude could also be grouped together.

There is no specific limit to the number of groups of values, but I think 4 or 5 groups works well for me.

Pick a Key Value

From the groups you made above, circle one word from each group that best describes that group.

Apply it to your goals (current or future)

Now that you have defined your values, take a look again at your goals. Do they match the values that you have just listed? If not, why not? Perhaps they refer to some values that you hold but haven’t listed, or perhaps they don’t align with your values at all?

If you’re setting new goals or just starting projects for the first time, ask yourself before you start whether the goal or project aligns with your values?

Finally, perhaps your projects or goals align with some, but not all of your values - are there values that you hold that you’re not as focused on? Why is that?

Reflect on your values over time

As a side note, periodically reflect on the values that you’ve written down. Over time, they may/will change, sometimes without realising. This is perfectly normal. Repeat the above process, but add the step of comparing your previous values to your new ones. What’s changed, what values are new and what values do you no longer hold (if that’s the case)?

This process of self-examination and self-reflection is difficult, but will ultimately help you set better goals and projects that are aligned to your values. It will make them seem more meaningful and important to you, and gives you a direction in life that’s specific to you and your needs.

Planning and Setting Your Goals

Initial goals

Now you’ve identified your values, how can you identify some initial goals that align with those values?

You probably already have some goals already, but to help, ask yourself the following questions:

- where do I want to be in my life in 3/5/10 years time? - is there a habit (e.g. smoking, going to the gym) that I would like to stop or start? - is there a dream of mine from childhood that I would like to achieve? - is there something about my life that I would like to change/improve? - are there actions that I do (or don’t do) that don’t align with my values?

There are thousands of other ways to identify goals, but asking yourself the above questions is a good start.

Please note that all of these questions tie back to your values - which is why it’s so important to identify your values first.

Write down as many goals as you can think of for now, in no particular order. For now, just list as many as possible.

How to Prioritise Your Goals

Most people have more than one goal or dream that they want to achieve at any one time. They may be at different levels of difficulty or (personal) importance, and may even have an order built into them. For example, if your two goals are to fly commercial airplanes for a living and get your pilot’s licence, it’s (hopefully!) clear which goal you need to achieve first.

But not all goals are as clear and ordered as that, so how do we decide what to focus on first?

To begin with, look at the complete list of goals that you wrote down earlier. You may have a list of 5/10/20 goals that you’d like to achieve.

The next step is to borrow a technique from the Getting Things Done productivity strategy; for each goal, decide whether it’s a goal that you can start on today, want to do it soon, or a goal that you’ll come back to in the future.  

Ordering your Goals By Your Priorities

Goals I want to Start on Today Goals I want to Start on Soon Goals I want to Start on Sometime in the Future

The final step is to order these goals in each list by it’s importance to you - this is quite a personal thing, but my advice is to think of the ones that seem the most important to you from a health/personal perspective, or have been a long held dream of yours to achieve. They’re probably quite important ones to you.

Once you’ve done the above process, you’ll have a list of goals, ordered by priority and that you know you can start on straight away. Keep the rest of the goals in a folder or file that you can review later, and if you want to add them back into the today list at a later stage, you can do that!

Breaking down your goals into smaller, more specific parts

Now you’ve identified your goals and values, and prioritised them, it’s time to look at your goals in more detail and start breaking them down into smaller chunks. As an example, let’s say one of your goals is to run a marathon. That’s a good general goal, but it’s not very specific - for example, when do you want to run the marathon, how long do you want to take? Have you ever run as a hobby before? The goal ‘run a marathon’ is missing lots of detail, and as we said earlier, planning our goals in detail makes them more achievable.

If you can’t answer questions like the ones in the previous paragraph about your own goals, the chances are that they’re too general. To fix this, it’s a good idea to break each goal down into more detail and formulate a clear plan to achieve it. One way of doing this is asking the following questions:

Effort - How hard is this goal for me personally? Have I done something similar before? Time - How much time will this take up? How much time have I available? Priority - How important is this goal for me compared to other tasks/goals in my life? Stages - Can I break the goal down into smaller pieces? What are they?

To keep using the marathon example, let’s look at what training for a marathon involves. A quick search online showed that there are many marathon training plans available. Here’s a sample one with specific plans for beginners, intermediate and advanced.

However, the first week for beginners involves running 20 miles, increasing to 40 miles a week as you get closer to the marathon itself! I’m not criticising the plan (I’m sure it’s excellent if you’re at that level), but I think the definition of ‘beginner’ here is someone who runs regularly but has never done a marathon. I think it’s unrealistic for someone who’s never run at any consistent level to do 20 miles in their first week of training and an average of 30 miles a week for 4 months.

So answering those questions using our marathon example:

Effort - It’s very hard to run a marathon (the first guy who did it died!) - I’ve never run more than 2km in my life. Time - Large amount of time for training/recovery. Priority - This is your own personal choice Stages - I can break my marathon goal down into smaller distances and build up to the goal of a marathon in the future. Finishing 5k/10k runs are still great achievements and help me prepare for the marathon itself!

So now your single goal has become more than one goal, staggered over time. It may seem like more work, but in reality, it’s far more achievable.

So the goal(s) now looks like:

Goal 1 - run a 5km race in 2 months Goal 2 - run a 10km race in 4 months Goal 3 - run a half marathon in 6 months Goal 4 - run a second half marathon in 12 months Goal 5 - run a marathon in 18 months?

If you take this approach to your goals and break them down into smaller parts, it’s a great way to increase your chances of success. The reality is that the goal may actually take longer in reality want it to take, but consistency and sustainability, not speed, are the key ingredients to long-term change.

As a side note, there are similar goal setting strategies like SMART - Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. I think that the above goals also fit into the SMART criteria - if using those criteria work for you, great! 

Other Aspects to think about when Setting Goals

So now we have our values, our goals and a plan to achieve them, but is there anything else to think about? Things should all just run smoothly and we’ll hit our goals in no time, right?

There are usually other factors beyond the plan that we need to consider. I’ve described a few below.

Resources

Some goals require things (objects, time etc.) beyond just our sheer willpower. If you want to lose weight, and have decided to learn to cook so that you eat healthier, do you have any books on cooking? If you're quitting smoking, have you purchased nicotine patches or gum? If you’re learning to dance, do you have a dance teacher or club you want to attend? It’s important to think through the resources that are needed and amend your plan to account for it, if necessary.

Barriers

Nothing worthwhile comes easily, so it's natural to encounter some resistance while trying to achieve your goals. Identifying and thinking about these barriers helps you deal with them when you encounter them for real.

The smart scientists who study goal-setting call this coping planning, and along with action planning, they’ve shown that it provide you with a proven strategy to achieve your goals. As a quick recap, action planning and coping planning can be defined as:

Action Planning and Coping Planning

Action Planning -  This is about planning the goal itself - what you will do, when and where you will do it:

“I will meditate for 10 minutes after my gym session in the stretching area before I head to the showers.”

Coping Planning - You’ll inevitably encounter resistance to the change you want to make, so planning for it and thinking through solutions can be really helpful. For example:

“If I want to go to the gym but feel tired, I will not let myself sit down when I get on, but will pick up my gear bag and go straight to the gym at once”.

Internal Barriers

Some barriers are a little less obvious and require some introspection. They may not be based on physical or financial limitations, but on your own internal mindsets or thinking. How do we work through these types of barriers or fears, often where we may not even be consciously aware that we have them? For example - some people think that ‘they just can’t lose weight, no matter what’, so they don’t try.

These sorts of barriers are beyond the scope of this article, but Ramit Sethi’s invisible scripts article is an excellent primer on the topic. I might write more on it at a later point.

Worst case scenario

Another example where people won’t try to achieve a goal as they keep imagining the worst-case scenario if they don’t succeed. In reality, it usually is both unlikely that your worst-case scenario and isn’t anywhere near as bad as you think it will be.

By actually defining the worst case thing that could happen, it allows us to think through what we could do if that came to happen - and can also define a coping plan for it. In Tim Ferris’ own case, he discovered that even in the absolute worst case scenario - where his business collapsed and he lost all his money - he realised he could still work and find a job relatively quickly and get back on track:

So how do we examine at our fears and barriers in detail?

Examining Your Barriers and Fears

For each goal:

- What’s the worst thing(s) that could go wrong by trying to achieve the goal? List them all.

- If these scenarios happened, what could you do to fix things or get your life back to where it was? How long would that take? Are these worst-case scenarios permanent? For example, if you started a business and it failed spectacularly, losing billions of dollars for everyone involved, does that mean you’ll never find another job again? (the answer to that is no just to be clear!)

- Why are these particular scenarios your worst-case scenarios? Are they due to fear? Shame? Maybe it reminds you of a past you wanted to forget? Something else? Think about the underlying emotion related to that scenario and where it comes from.

- How can you reduce the possibility of these things happening - not trying to achieve the goal is not an answer!

- How likely are these worst-case scenarios to occur - be realistic! What other scenarios are more realistic?

- What are the upsides of achieving your goal - do they outweigh the potential risks of failing?

- What’s the cost of not trying to achieve the goal? I always think of the line ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ when I’m unsure about whether to do something. Is it better to have tried to achieve your goal and failed than never to have tried in the first place? Will you regret not trying in later years?

Developing Habits for your goals

One of your goals may be to start (or stop) a habit. Or maybe your goals are more likely to succeed if you change some of your habits.

Achieving our goals usually means doing something repeatedly, or stopping an action that we do repeatedly. This action is usually called a habit.

Most goals we have require stopping, starting or changing a habit - but what’s the right habit to pick or stop?

For the sake of completion, we’ll define a habit as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.”

For example, if you want to run a marathon, you have to start a habit of running consistently, slowly increasing the amount of time and distance you run. Alternatively, if you want to stop smoking, you have a number of techniques that you can use, such as stopping the habit immediately, tapering down your smoking habit over time, or changing to a vaping habit.

Sometimes the habit is obvious - if we want to stop smoking, it’s pretty clear what needs to stop. But what if we want to start learning a new language - should we start listening to radio shows in that language, attend a class, or buy a language book that we’ll read daily/weekly/monthly? All of the above? Something else?

We’ve spoken above about prioritising your goals so that they’re achievable, where breaking down your goals into smaller and more digestible chunks makes you more likely to succeed with them.

So ask yourself some of the following questions, once you’ve identified a goal that you’d like to achieve:

- Think about similar goals that you’ve achieved in the past: why did you succeed and what could you apply to this new situation? - Also think about some times where you didn’t succeed: why not? What can you learn from those situations? Perhaps you were too busy? Or took on too big a goal? - Do I know someone who’s done this before? What were their experiences like? It may not directly apply to your situation but it’s always good to talk to someone who’s done it before and learn from their experience. - Is there something I really like (or really hate) that I should keep in mind when planning this goal?

This isn’t and shouldn’t be a particularly involved activity, the idea is that you’ll quickly be able to pick a habit to start, stop or change that’s more suited both to the goal you want to achieve and you as a person. Additionally, you may find that you can incorporate existing habits into your goal, further increasing the chances of success!

Reviews

Most goals take more than a few minutes, so it's always a good idea to review where you are along the way.

As a quick review, ask yourself some of the following questions on a regular basis for each goal

- Where am I on the path to achieving my goal? Is that where I want to be? - What’s going well? What’s not going so well? - Is there anything I want to change?

If everything’s going well, then continue on - but a little course correction on the path to your goals every now and then can really be the difference between succeeding in hitting your goals, and not quite getting there.

Keep Going!

Thomas Edison famously made 1,000 attempts at inventing the light bulb before he succeeded. When a journalist asked him how did it felt to fail 1,000 times, he replied that he didn’t fail, but that “the light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps”.

We mentioned previously how one study showed smokers take (on average) 19.6 attempts before they succeed in quitting. Some might see that as a sign of how difficult it is, and they’re right.

But it also shows great resilience that so many people dust themselves off after each unsuccessful attempt, try again and (eventually) succeed.

One aspect this study did not focus on was the type of method people used to quit (vaping, patches, tapering off, cold turkey etc.) or why they succeeded when they did. What was so different about the successful attempt compared to the other ones? Would understanding why they didn’t succeed in the past help them succeed in the future?

If you’re trying to quit smoking for the 20th time, lose weight again, or trying to get up earlier every morning, it’s useful to reflect on why you think previous attempts didn’t succeed. It could be a combination of many things, and you may not know exactly why an attempt didn’t succeed, but a small amount of reflection could give you some ideas on how to increase your chances of making that habit stick.

This isn’t meant to be an exercise in failure - changing habits to achieve goals is not easy and if you’re succeeding first time on everything, then you’re not challenging yourself enough. Edison’s achievements are incredible and there were many years of effort before that moment, but I think we can all agree that the lightbulb was worth it!

This reflection can be part of developing a ‘coping plan’ for your goal, namely, identifying barriers that you know you will encounter as you try to achieve your goal and writing down ways to overcome them. A simple plan could look like this:

Goal: Previous Attempt (If any): What did I find easy? What did I find hard? Why did I succeed (or not)? To achieve my goal and for the problems I find hard, what I can do to help make them easier? Examples include: Things to do (exercise, reading) Talking to or spending time with friends Talking to a mentor/professional who can advise me. This can also be a great exercise to do after you have achieved a goal. By writing down why it worked, it can help you in planning for the next goal you want to achieve!

Conclusion

There’s a lot there about the many facets of goal-setting, but it’s important to cover all aspects of it - the good parts, the difficult parts and the parts no-one talks about like barriers, reviews and reflections.

A free goal/planning worksheet

To finish, I’ve put the worksheet I’ve made for setting your goals - It has some examples present for each part of the process - if you want a version without the examples or a different format (maybe a printed version?), get in touch!

Download the PDF here.

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Reading Biographies and Life Stories as Inspiration for Your Own Goal Setting

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing on this blog for almost 5 months now - this is my 28th post and with the app and diary both going well, it’s great to look back on the consistency I’ve found to work at my goals for an extended period of time - that in itself was/is a goal of mine for 2020!

There have been times in the past where I haven’t believed in myself, or haven’t trusted the process when it comes to some of my goals. I wasn’t sure that I could develop the consistency to write regularly. However, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten into some good habits and written post for the blog at least a couple of times a week.

As I wrote a few months ago, it’s totally normal to go off track from your goals (it would be weirder if you didn’t go off track at all - if that’s you, please bottle and sell whatever it is that allows you to do that).

Sometimes you’ll feel like going off track is specific to you - that you’re the one person who’s failing, who’s not good enough, who’s struggling at times. One explanation for this is the theory of ‘impostor syndrome’, which is when

“one doubts one's accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud”, despite external evidence of their competence”

Biographies

I’ll do a longer post on impostor syndrome later, but I wanted to bring it up as a precursor to the point of this post.

I love to read biographies, or at least stories of inspiring people’s lives, and how they became (usually over a long time)the amazing people they now are.

What’s particularly interesting is how the amazing person we see today was not born that way - they had ups and downs, successes and failures, sometimes trying multiple times before they finally succeeded. Steve Jobs was famously kicked out of his own company before returning years later and setting the stage for Apple to be the company they are today.

Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, as his biography is aptly called, describes his whole life from his youth through to the ANC, prison and the presidency. He struggled (and succeeded) to be become the inspirational person that he continues to be, even after his death.

Less Famous, But No Less Inspiring

I’ve listed some famous names there, but some are less-well known people who are no less inspiring. I’m currently reading about ‘WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy’, Virginia Hall, who was

“determined to overcome a physical disability that threatened to define her life, successfully infiltrated Vichy France for England's SOE before America's entry into WWII and then, three years later, for the SOS, providing crucial intelligence and logistics for the mounting French Resistance and, later, Allied troops.”

Even the very best of us had to overcome adversity - life didn’t always go perfectly for them, and they still did amazing things - it’s a reminder to the rest of us to keep going. You never know where it will lead you!

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How to Avoid Setting Too Many Goals At Once

When you’re starting to set goals, or coming back to some long held dream that you’ve wanted to achieve for years, but never truly felt like you’ve given it a proper try, it can be tempting to try and set as many goals as possible at once and try to change our life with a click of our fingers.

To give an example of this: you’ve decided to set some goals;  you’re going to get up earlier every day, followed by a 10k run, drink a healthy smoothie afterwards while meditating in your spotless apartment; we haven’t even left the house for work yet and you’ve already set 3 or 4 new habits that you expect to just become part of your life immediately!

Fast forward to 3 or 4 weeks later - all your new habits have stopped, you’re annoyed at yourself (again), you’re not going to try (again) for another 6 months, whereupon the whole process repeats itself, just like it the last 3 times you tried it. It’s the classic New Year’s Resolutions Story that we’ve all heard about - the gyms are packed full of people in January, not so much in February.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. And while we’re not advocating to not set any goals at all, trying to make your day perfect and 100% productive is not the only alternative. There’s a middle ground.

Prioritising your Goals

So, what’s the solution?

We wrote recently about planning and examining your worst-fears, and a similar technique can be used for examining and prioritising your goals. 

To begin with, write down every goal that you have, regardless of how big or small it is. You may have a list of 5/10/20 goals that you’d like to achieve.

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to borrow a technique from the Getting Things Done productivity strategy; for each goal, decide whether it’s a goal that you can start on today, want to do it soon, or a goal that you’ll come back to in the future.  

Ordering your Goals By Your Priorities

Goals I want to Start on Today Goals I want to Start on Soon Goals I want to Start on Sometime in the Future

The final step is to order these goals in each list by it’s importance to you - this is quite a personal thing, but my advice is to think of the ones that seem the most important to you from a health/personal perspective, or have been a long held dream of yours to achieve. They’re probably the most important ones for you.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a list of goals, ordered by priority and that you know you can start on straight away. Keep the rest of the goals in a folder or file that you can review later, and if you want to add them back into the today list at a later stage, you can do that!

One final word of caution; you might find that, even with this process, you have a lot of goals that you wish to start on right away. Trying to make too many changes at once usually results in making no changes, from personal experience. So even if you want to start on 10 goals today, it’s worth making a plan to focus on only a small number of goals at a time. How do we do that?

Adding More Goals/Habits

You can start with the most important goal, or any of your goals really, and once that habit or goal is ingrained in you (like getting up early every morning), slowly add in the next habit or goal over time (e.g. the 10k run). That way, you get a number of benefits - it’s easier to change one thing at a time instead of 4 or 5, and even if you struggle with a particular goal, you won’t lose the benefits of the previous goals/habits (in this case, getting up early) as it’s already a part of your life!

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A Short Guide to Examining Your Barriers and Fears

Hi again!

Following on from our last post about looking at the worst case scenario if we don’t succeed in our goals, and realising that it usually isn’t anywhere near as bad as you think it will be,

I decided to put together a small guide to help people actually do this exercise and inspired by Tim Ferris’ slides that he put up for his TED talk on the subject.

Tim has his own notes at the end of his article that are excellent and cover similar topics but I’ve focused the concept a little bit more specific to goals you want to achieve and included some more personal ideas and thoughts. I hope that it will be of some use to you all!

Guide to Examining Your Barriers and Fears

For each goal:

- What’s the worst thing(s) that could go wrong by trying to achieve the goal? List them all.

- If these scenarios happened, what could you do to fix things or get your life back to where it was? How long would that take? Are these worst-case scenarios permanent? For example, if you started a business and it failed spectacularly, losing billions of dollars for everyone involved, does that mean you’ll never find another job again? (the answer to that is no just to be clear!)

- Why are these particular scenarios your worst-case scenarios? Are they due to fear? Shame? Maybe it reminds you of a past you wanted to forget? Something else? Think about the underlying emotion related to that scenario and where it comes from.

- How can you reduce the possibility of these things happening - not trying to achieve the goal is not an answer you can give!

- How likely are these worst-case scenarios to occur - be realistic! What other scenarios are more realistic?

- What are the upsides of achieving your goal - do they outweigh the potential risks of failing?

- What’s the cost of not trying to achieve the goal? I always think of the line ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ when I’m unsure about whether to do something. Is it better to have tried to achieve your goal and failed than never to have tried in the first place? Will you regret not trying in later years?

I wanted to include a small note at the end on this process. Like everyone on this planet, I’ve had my own share of struggles and some of my ‘worst-case’ scenarios actually came to pass. And just like Tim (and I) have written, they were neither permanent nor as bad as I’d feared. So go ahead with achieving your goals, what’s the worst (no pun intended) that can happen!

[goalsettr]

Face your Worst-Case Scenario

We’ve written before about the idea of barriers to our achieving goals and dreams, and how identifying, planning and creating a strategy to deal with them is an important tool for our success. The smart scientists who study goal-setting call this coping planning, and along with action planning, they’ve shown that it provide you with a proven strategy to achieve your goals. As a quick recap, action planning and coping planning can be defined as:

Action Planning and Coping Planning

Action Planning -  This is about planning the goal itself - what you will do, when and where you will do it:

“I will meditate for 10 minutes after my gym session in the stretching area before I head to the showers.”

Coping Planning - You’ll inevitably encounter resistance to the change you want to make, so planning for it and thinking through solutions can be really helpful. For example:

“If I want to go to the gym but feel tired, I will not let myself sit down, but will pick up my gear bag and go straight to the gym at once”.

Your Internal Barriers

Some of the barriers you’ll identify are quite straightforward - if you want to learn to play the piano and you don’t have access to a piano or keyboard, well, that’s a pretty easy barrier to define.

However, some barriers are a little less clear and require some introspection. They may not be based on physical or financial limitations, but on your own internal mindsets or thinking. How do we work through these types of barriers or fears, often where we may not even be consciously aware that we have them?

I’ll give a personal example of a barrier like this - when I was thinking about starting a business, I had a fears of not succeeding and of not having enough of a commercial mind to be able to succeed in starting something from scratch. I hadn’t actually tested these fears, they were internal mindsets that I wasn’t totally aware of but were actually holding me back from trying in the first place.

Facing your Fears Diminishes Them

Tim Ferris has a quarterly routine called ‘fear-setting’ to work through his fears. In his own words,

“Why don’t I decide exactly what my nightmare would be—the worst thing that could possibly happen as a result of [goal here]?”

By defining the worst case scenario, it allowed him to think through what he could do if his worst fears came through - and define his own coping plan for something that was very unlikely to happen. In his own personal case, he discovered that even in the absolute worst case scenario - where his business collapsed and he lost all his money - he realised he could still work and find a job relatively quickly and get back on track:

“I realized it wouldn’t be that hard to get back to where I was, let alone survive. None of these things would be fatal — not even close”.

By defining the fear, he overcame the fear. Additionally, he then thought about what the cost of NOT trying to achieve his goals would be - the cost of inaction.

To refer back to my own internal barriers that I mentioned earlier, I used both these techniques in my own life. I defined my own worst-case scenarios and realised that, no matter what, I’d be ok. I had a safety-net built in through savings and I’d always be able to find work if things didn’t work out.

Furthermore, I knew that in 5-10 years, I’d regret not trying to start a business, to see if I could actually do it. I was in a unique position at the time with few responsibilities beyond myself, and so I started the business. And while it’s definitely been an up-and-down journey, I’m not sure I’d want to do anything else.

So take a moment and think through your barriers and fears, or if it’s a big goal, the worst case scenario. Often, you’ll find that scenario is nowhere near as fatal as you may think it is!

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Walking to Solve Problems

As we all wander through life, we occasionally encounter problems or issues that require some thinking over a period of time, often for hours or even days and weeks.

And sometimes, we get stuck on finding a solution these problems or making a decision. Maybe it’s an essay or report that’s due in next week, a personal issue we want to respond to, or a bigger life decision to make. We’ve all been in that situation of sitting at the desk in front of our computer, with the cursor blinking and a blank page on the screen, not having the slightest idea what to do next or even how to begin.

Getting moving again

So in scenarios like this, which are all too familiar, what are some approaches to get moving again? Are there any specific habits that we could build in to our lives using the implementation intentions process we discussed previously?

One answer seems to be actually getting up and moving, by going for a walk.

A Professor of Neuroscience in Ireland recently published a book about this very idea called “In Praise of Walking: The New Science of How We Walk and Why It’s Good for Us”, where he espouses the benefits of walking for a whole host of physical, emotional issues. From a recent interview, he said to:

“Think of walking as something which repairs our brains, lowers our blood pressure, aids the passage of food through our intestines, reduces inflammation and allows us to be creative and better at problem-solving. We also know from studies that people who walk a lot are less prone to depressive disorders; that walking can enhance your memory and that older people who walk more are less lonely”

Walking for Problem Solving

So the next time you need to chew over an issue some more, physical, emotional or otherwise, get up off the seat if you can and go for a short walk. Personally, walking by the sea makes the biggest difference for me and if that’s possible for you, I’d recommend that. There’s something about views into the distance, whether that’s mountains, lakes or sea, that seem to have a particularly calming effect on me.

So to use that implementation intention:

IF {situation} THEN I will {behaviour}

This becomes:

IF I get stuck on this issue THEN I will go for a short walk

Procrastination and Other Techniques

Sometimes this can get confused with procrastination, which for me is a more conscious effort to not start the task. I’ll write more on that soon, but I think there is a clear distinction between being genuinely stuck on an issue, and avoiding it at some level.

One final note is that there are alternative and complementary techniques that you can use in situations like the ones described earlier. In addition to walking, talking to a trusted confidant or researching the area yourself are all well-established ways to help with decision making and problem solving. Walking on it’s own is merely another (healthy) option that has many benefits beyond just the physical ones. As the book says, it seems that we are “essentially social walkers” and made for it!

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We’re making a Planner/Diary Type Thing!

We’re big tech fans here at Goalsettr, but we also realise that not everyone likes to use a computer for note taking or planning, preferring instead to use pen and paper.

There are probably a couple of reasons for using pen and paper over a computer - the complete freedom to sketching and write are one, but there are also some (old and limited) studies that suggest that using pen and paper results in a higher content quality when writing a letter. On the other hand, it can also just as easily be a personal preference. I know that when sketching out ideas, pen and paper is the only medium that works for me. I’ve yet to try the iPad/Pen option so will maybe some day change my mind, but for now, pen and paper is the best. I would dearly love something that captures and digitally records what I sketch and write on pen and paper (they do exist) but I’ve yet to find anything that really suits my needs.

Announcing the Diary/Planner

With this in mind, we’ve been working on a physical planner and diary that provides an alternative to the computer version for those who prefer to carry a planner/diary instead of a laptop.

Here’s of teaser photo.

How we designed the diary

We’ve used the Goalsettr techniques to plan out making the diary. We’ve a free worksheet which you can use for free if you want to try out the idea!

- Identifying the goal (in this case, designing and printing a diary) and breaking it down into smaller parts.

- How far along am I to making this diary - is there any existing content, images or resources that I had already created that I could re-use or re-purpose? (Answer: Yes)

- What resources did I need to create the diary?

A printer to print the diary

PDF of the diary

Content for setting goals

Content for a regular diary: months planners, calendar, notes etc.

A nice design - not my strong suit

Software to create the PDF and design (Indesign)

Marketing and Advertising

- Breaking the goal down into smaller parts and defining a path for each stage of the goal

- Could I identify or define any barriers to me making the diary?

- Any habits I needed to create making the diary - getting into the habit of asking for feedback on something I created was one thing I focused on.

- Were there any ideas or solutions that came out of the planning or design process that I could use later or in another project?

When can we buy the diary?

Having gone through that process successfully, we’ve created a version 1.0 of the planner and printed a small number for testing. They’re currently being used by some good friends for feedback, suggestions and comments, good and bad.

Once this process is completed, we’ll make some changes based on that feedback, following we’re going to make it available for sale. We’re looking forward to seeing how you all use the planner and are always keen to hear from you, so please bear with us as we try and finish it as soon as possible!

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Implementation Intentions for Breaking or Replacing Habits

We’ve spoken about implementation intentions before, but for the benefit of new visitors (welcome!) here’s a quick summary.

What are Implementation Intentions

Implementation Intentions are a strategy for helping you achieve your goals or start/change/replace an existing habit as part of changing your behaviour.

It takes the following form:

IF {situation} THEN I will {behaviour}

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implementation_intention#Concept)

While a lot of articles focus on using implementations for starting new habits, e.g.

“IF {I go out for lunch} THEN I WILL {order a salad},

they can also be used for replacing or stopping existing habits, which make up a sizeable proportions of people’s goals, such as stopping smoking or stopping the eating of unhealthy food.

So what evidence or research is out there that implementation intentions work for replacing or stopping habits? And how can I use them myself?

Do Implementation Intentions work for Breaking or Replacing Habits?

Google Scholar is often a great source for checking out claims on the internet (as Abraham Lincoln famously said!)

You can see if anyone has conducted any research on the topic and usually you can get an idea of whether the research supported or disproved the thing you want to try.

So what does it say about Implementation Intentions as a strategy to break habits?

There are a couple of well-cited (meaning other researchers have referenced this research in their own projects) papers that suggest that it works well for breaking and replacing habits.

One study looked at using implementation intentions to encourage recycling in a company and replacing the habit of disposing of rubbish to general waste.

They tested this by splitting the company into two groups: one used implementation intentions and the other continued as normal.

The results were quite impressive:

“Recycling behaviour was substantially improved in the facility as well as the implementation intention conditions in week 1 and week 2 and still 2 months after [the study]”

Do Implementation Intentions Work With All Habits?

If a habit is very strong, they may not be as effective. One study looked at using implementation intentions with strong habits - in this case, strong smoking habits. While the implementation intentions had an effect on more moderate habits, they didn’t always work with stronger habits.

Unfortunately, the evidence/research into breaking or replacing strong habits isn’t that clear at the moment.

How do I use Implementation Intentions?

It’s important to say that they’re not a panacea - if you’ve a strong habit that you’re trying to break, then it’s going to be hard no matter what technique or strategy you try.

But using them in the formula described above:

IF {situation} THEN I will {behaviour}

has been shown to help you break or replace your habits. An example might be:

IF I’m browsing Social Media for more than 10 minutes THEN I will shut away my computer and go for a walk.

Contact us and let us know if they worked for you!

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Good books on Self-Improvement

I’ve read a lot of books on self-improvement - like everything in life, some are great, some are ok, and some are best skipped. There comes a point where you feel like you’re re-reading the same stuff but in slightly different packaging.

So having read more of them than any person should reasonably read in a decade, I’m listing some of the best ones that really had an impact on me. Some of them I’ve read multiple times, usually after some change in my life. Others referred me into do

It’s not an exhaustive list, and I will add or remove books as time goes on - I certainly read books when I was younger that I really liked at the time which I now feel differently about.

The Charisma Myth

Most people would like to be more charismatic, and as someone who for a long time believed that people were either born with charisma or they weren’t, realising that it was a teachable skill was illuminating.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

This book is more aimed at men than women, but everyone could get something out of it. If you’ve ever felt that you’re “trying too hard to please others while neglecting your own needs” (to use the books’ own description, then this is a great read.

The School of Life

If you want to understand yourself, be kinder, and more emphatetic, resilient among other things, read this - or listen to it, as I did. The narrator’s voice is great!

Atomic Habits

I’ve spoken about this book previously, it’s a great guide on how to make and break habits.

Biographies of Inspiring People

While these books are not strictly in the ‘self-improvement’ category, I always like to look at the lives of some of the most successful people in the world and see how they improved themselves. It’s a great way to look for inspiration for your own self-improvement.

Tools of Titans - a more general list of the habits and routines of successful people: 

Shoe Dog - the creator of Nike’s life story. If you’re starting a company, it’s a particularly great read on the mindset of a early-stage business 

Long Walk to Freedom - All about the life of Nelson Mandela, need I say more? An inspiration for us all.

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Matching Habits to Your Goals

Achieving our goals usually means doing something repeatedly, or stopping an action that we do repeatedly. This action is typically called a habit.

Most goals we have require stopping, starting or changing a habit - but what’s the right habit to pick or stop?

For the sake of completion, we’ll define a habit as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.”

For example, if you want to run a marathon, you have to start a habit of running consistently, slowly increasing the amount of time and distance you run. Alternatively, if you want to stop smoking, you have a number of techniques that you can use, such as stopping the habit immediately, tapering down your smoking habit over time, or changing to vaping habit.

Sometimes it’s obvious - if we want to stop smoking, it’s pretty clear what needs to stop. But what if we want to start learning a new language - should we start listening to radio shows in that language, attend a class, or buy a language book that we’ll read daily/weekly/monthly? All of the above? Something else?

We’ve spoken previously about prioritising your goals so that they’re achievable, where breaking down your goals into smaller and more digestible chunks makes you more likely to succeed with them.

So ask yourself some of the following questions, once you’ve identified a goal that you’d like to achieve:

- Think about similar goals that you’ve achieved in the past: why did you succeed and what could you apply to this new situation? - Also think about some times where you didn’t succeed: why not? What can you learn from those situations? Perhaps you were too busy? Or took on too big a goal? - Think about the goal itself - have you a realistic idea of what’s required to achieve the goal? What barriers may occur and have you a plan to overcome them? - Do I know someone who’s done this before? What were their experiences like? It may not directly apply to your situation but it’s always good to talk to someone who’s done it before and learn from their experience. - Is there something I really like (or really hate) that I should keep in mind when planning this goal?

This isn’t and shouldn’t be a particularly involved activity, the idea is that you’ll quickly be able to pick a habit to start, stop or change that’s more suited both to the goal you want to achieve and you as a person. Additionally, you may find that you can incorporate existing habits into your goal, further increasing the chances of success!

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Matching your Values to your Goals

The pole star has been used for hundreds of years as a navigation aid - no matter where people were going, they could look up and see where North was and be confident they knew what direction they were ultimately heading. It doesn’t help define the journey in detail, but it’s crucial for guiding towards the ultimate destination.

This can equally be applied to the journey towards your goals in your own life. Have you ever thought about why you set the specific goals you have? Why are they important to you? **Are** they important to you, or did someone tell you they should be important to you?

One way to help answer these questions is to define our values - they can be your North Star for your goals and projects. Values  can help you with setting goals or projects, or changing the goals that you have. But how do you define them?

What’s a Value?

Before we define our own values, we need to define what a value is.

A value is “one’s judgement of what is important in life”. Examples are kindness, assertiveness, honesty, or reliability.

Listing Your Values

To begin with, write down a list of all the values you can think of that relate to you. There are too many values to list here (but Google is your friend). Don’t worry about if they repeat, or seem similar to each other, the key thing right now is to get them down on paper or on the screen.

Group Similar Values

By now, you should have a list of values that apply to you. The next step is to group all of your similar values together. For example, happiness, humour and fun could be grouped together, thankful and gratitude could also be grouped together.

There is no clear limit to the number of groups but I think 4 or 5 groups has worked well for me.

Pick a Key Value

From the groups you made above, circle one word from each group that best describes that group.

Apply it to your goals (current or future)

Now that you have defined your values, take a look at your goals or current projects. Do they match the values that you have just listed? If not, why not? Perhaps they refer to some values that you hold but haven’t listed, or perhaps they don’t align with your values at all.

Alternatively, when you’re setting goals or starting projects, ask yourself before you start whether this aligns with your values? Ask yourself what the motivation for the goal or project that you’ve defined is?

Finally, perhaps your projects or goals align with some, but not all of your values - are there values that you hold that you’re not as focused on? Why is that?

Reflect on your values over time

Periodically reflect on the values that you’ve written down. Over time, they may/will change, sometimes without us realising. This is perfectly normal. Repeat the above process, but add the step of comparing your previous values to your new ones. What’s changed, what values are new and what values do you no longer hold (if that’s the case)?

This process of self-examination and self-reflection is hard, but will ultimately help you set better goals and projects that are aligned to your values. It will make them seem more meaningful and important to you, and gives you a direction in life that’s specific to you and your needs.

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Not everything has to be about self-improvement

If it’s not obvious by now, we’re big fans of self-improvement here at Goalsettr. All of the articles we’ve written, the software we’ve built and the upcoming diary we’ve designed (more on that soon) is based on the techniques that we’ve used in our own lives to build businesses, finish PhDs, and change personal habits.

However, not every single task or thing we do should be looked at through the lens of ‘Is this productive/helping me improve/good for me?’. It’s necessary to have some downtime for a number of reasons:

- Changing something about yourself is hard and takes a lot of energy. It might be better than the current situation but that doesn’t mean that the change itself doesn’t take effort. - ‘Play’ as a concept is important - life isn’t always about work (or always fun) but it’s possible in certain situations to incorporate play into your goals. Someone wrote a book about this exact topic! - Dedicating some time to watching that silly show that you love, or going to Disneyland, or whatever it is that works for you, is really important both for your own mental health and as part of rest and recovery. It can’t and shouldn’t always be about optimisation.

There is a great article that’s almost 20 years old called ‘The Making of a Corporate Athlete’. One particular part about rest and recovery stands out:

“In weight lifting, this involves stressing a muscle to the point where its fibers literally start to break down. Given an adequate period of recovery (typically at least 48 hours), the muscle will not only heal, it will grow stronger. But persist in stressing the muscle without rest and the result will be acute and chronic damage. Conversely, failure to stress the muscle results in weakness and atrophy. (Just think of an arm in a cast for several weeks.) In both cases, the enemy is not stress, it’s linearity—the failure to oscillate between energy expenditure and recovery.”

So while we’re not saying to just stop trying to achieve your goals and simply do whatever you want, we’re suggesting to:

-  Take your time! It’s a marathon not a sprint. And sprinting a marathon has never worked for anyone. -  Incorporate some changes in your life to achieve your goals - but don’t try and do everything at once. -  Take some time to do things just for you, it’s both fun and helps you recover. Schedule it if you need to! - Have some fun! Meet a friend, go dancing, whatever it is that works.

One final part is about feeling guilty when doing nothing, like watching a TV show when we could be doing something productive or better. There is a level of personal judgement in this but this is where the scheduling of downtime can be quite useful - it’s a set period of time and as we’ve said, rest is an important part of the process of achieving your goals.

So enjoy that movie, or coffee, or event, and don’t feel guilty about it!

[goalsettr]

The ‘least-worst’ Decision

There are always many decisions that need to be made every day, whether you’re running a business or just going about your day-to-day life. Some decisions are big, some are small, but the one common feature most of them have is that it’s not always obvious what the right decision is. 

One strategy to deal with this can be summarised as: 

“I/We may not know what the right decision is in this scenario, but can I/we reduce our risk of making the wrong one while maximising our chance of success?”

Taking 5 or 10 mins to write (and yes, writing is key to the process in my experience) down the various scenarios and then see if there is a scenario that gives you the greatest chance of success while limiting your chance of failing. 

It’s really important to emphasis that limiting failure and increasing the chance of success really aren’t the same thing. Furthermore,

This isn’t a surefire way to succeed 100% of the time (no one does or should).

You shouldn’t be afraid of not succeeding this time. It’s part of the process!

The scenario you pick should actually help you achieve what you want to achieve. Saying that the best way of not failing in your goal of going to the gym 5 times a week is to not go to the gym at all is not what I’m advocating here!

Making the ‘not wrong’ decision is not the same as the ‘right’ one. Try and differentiate the two.

It may be that when you've looked at all the scenarios, that you have to risk more than you’re comfortable with, be willing to fall down or fail in order to succeed. 

Hard as that is, I’ve always found that I’m happier to take that option than the alternative of never having tried, or of keeping the status quo that I’m clearly not happy with.

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Being ok with 80%

Hope the New Year is treating you all well!

I’m due to write posts on my habits and goals/resolutions update, another one on consistency and being ok with the little slips that will happen as we try to change, and maybe another one on how if we’re not seeing little slips now and then, maybe we’re not changing! There is still so much still to write and talk about, but then again that’s one of my goals for the year, so it all circles back!

But for now, I wanted to write a small piece on habits/goals and not quite hitting 100% of your target, how that’s entirely normal and human, and celebrating the successes rather than focusing on the rest.

None of this is new - people have been writing about habit formation for a LONG time, though our methods and understanding of stimulating change have improved thankfully!

What the research says

We’ve all heard the term “You have to want to change”, but how well does this actually stack up? Does wanting to change more mean you’ve a better chance of succeeding in your goal or changes?

Some research and meta-analysis (essentially looking at all the studies in an area and comparing/examining the overall pattern of the results) has suggested that a large behavioural intention (basically saying ‘I will do [x] or want to change [x]’) leads to a small-to-medium actual change. Essentially, your actual change will probably be smaller than the change you want. 

4 out of 5 ain’t bad is great!

This sounds bad, but in reality it’s a key point that’s probably not well understood. It’s great (and probably necessary) to really want and have the intention to change, but that won’t necessarily mean you’ll change as much as you want to. That’s not a failure, it just means you’re human! And if you get 80% of the way to your goal, that might mean you lost 16 kilos instead of 20, smoke 2 cigarettes a day instead of 10, or ran 4 km instead of 5. All of that should be celebrated as a big success, and there will be noticeable changes for you in any of those achievements (and they are achievements!).

Focus on what you did achieve rather than being hard or criticising yourself for what you didn’t. You can always try again, if that’s what you want. And if you’re happy with the changes, that’s cool too!

If you do hit your target/goal, even better - It’s worth reflecting why and what tools worked for you as you’ve probably beaten the odds!

Shoot for the stars, you might not get there but you might make the moon, which is worth celebrating too!

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Getting off to a good start

It’s only a few days into the new year and so far the goals I’ve set are proceeding nicely. I don’t feel overly burdened by them either, for reasons I’ll get into here. Any interruptions or periods where I’m not 100% successful are ok too, as I’m happy with the general progress I’m making.

Starting my day (or month or week) off by reviewing my todo/task list, identifying today’s tasks, and then actually scheduling them into my calendar, is one of the main reasons that things are going well. I have a tendency to just start working on whatever I think of or is in front of me as soon as I sit down at the desk, and being more deliberate in my actions, or pro-active rather than reactive, is really helping stop this.

I think it’s a keystone habit for me, one that allows the rest of the goals that I have to flow nicely and achieve them without needing huge amounts of willpower. Just seeing the activity written down and scheduled in the calendar is quite empowering for me.

Cal Newport has written about this in the past. His method is more detailed than mine, as he’s had time to build upon it extensively. His results speak for themselves.

My routine is built for me, and seems to work. Cal’s is built for him and his life. Modify as needed to work for you.

Everything goes in the todo list, whether that's a notepad, app or something else.

Every morning I review the inbox, add things to today, and review any projects for next steps or tasks, adding them to today as needed. It’s important for me to do it every morning as it focuses me on the day.

I then take today’s tasks and schedule them into the calendar, based on an estimation of how long they’ll take. I leave some buffer room in case things run over, or some other event.

I do something similar every week, month, year.

Nothing fancy, but it seems to work!

[goalsettr]

Reframing for Success

Happy new year/decade!

This year, as part of setting goals for the year, I’m trying to view problems or things I find annoying/frustrating from a different angle, in an attempt to transform my attitude towards them.

Every problem is an opportunity in disguise is a close analogy, but it’s more than that. To give an example, in the past I’ve found things like diet and exercise (i.e. taking care of myself) to be boring but necessary things to do. I don’t look forward to them and thought of them as things that I should do, or used external motivation to achieve them.

While external motivation can be useful in some situations, for example when we simply have no internal desire to engage in an activity, I’ve questioned why I didn’t have that internal desire when it came to my health. Perhaps it’s the health issues I had, or maybe I didn't value myself as much internally as I should have, but at a personal level, I’m trying to reframe my attitude to one of having pride in looking after myself and that my body, mind and spirit deserve that. It’s part of being happier in myself and putting myself first more regularly than I have in the past.

In a wider sense, it’s the difference between intrinsic (internal) vs. external motivation, and I want to have more intrinsic motivation when it comes to my health and wellbeing.