How To Set Goals Properly

Stop overwhelming yourself with TODO lists & vision boards – use a scientific approach to get your life in order.

Aug 18, 2022

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Lately, I’ve struggled with this question – how to set goals properly.

I add the word ‘properly’ because we are often bombarded on social media — from all the uncountable motivational/entrepreneur gurus — telling us that we should start a vision board, learn to visualize better, create endless TODO lists, write down post-it notes around your house, scribble on a whiteboard, all in an attempt to organize our lives better and be more productive.

I’ve tried all of those methods. I’ve even built out entire Notion productivity systems to help streamline my day, to help me stay on task, and feel satisfied upon going to bed knowing that I did all that I set out to do for the day. News flash, most of the methods didn’t work. Paradoxically, by telling myself I have to stick to a system and work on creating these objective-based action items, I would overwhelm myself with additional TODOs, only adding to my daily stress and further fuelling my burnout.

Great – so, what do you do?

Living goal-less and not having a sense of direction on where you’re going in life can’t be the answer, although just going with the flow is always an appealing mindset (we’ll touch on that in future articles.)

Today, I will break down a short & scientific approach to goal setting that you can implement in your life immediately.

In this fantastic YouTube video, Andrew Huberman and Dr.Emily Balcetis sat down to discuss the scientific tools necessary for setting & achieving goals. Dr. Balcetis’ research focuses on how visual perception of the world influences our level of motivation, goal conceptualization, goal achievement and emotional state as we pursue our goals.

The entire discussion is fascinating, and I highly encourage you to listen to it when you have the time. For the sake of your time today, I will distill one of the approaches to goal setting as described in the video.

What To Avoid When Setting Your Goals

It’s mainstream to ‘visualize your success’ by creating vision boards or manifesting your intentions, popularized by the 2006 self-help book THE SECRET by Rhonda Byrne.

The book argues that your thoughts can change your reality; that just thinking of what you desire will make it come to fruition. The book refers to this as ‘The Law of Attraction,’ but in actuality, that’s a sugarcoated version of ‘Confirmation Bias’; the human mind’s tendency to notice and pay more attention to objects and experiences that match its preexisting thoughts and beliefs. It does this for the simple reason that it is biologically economical and efficient.

BUT – the truth is, by sitting on your coach and wishing your extra 10 lbs of fat away, no magical Universal energy will bestow its blessing upon you and have you instantly shave off the extra weight. You have to put the work in.

Mark Manson dives deeper on why ‘The Secret’ is one of the worst self-help books ever written, feel free to check out why.

There is also a physiological response that occurs within your body that acts as a detriment to your future goal planning when creating vision boards, TODO lists and similar things – and that has to do with your systolic blood pressure.

When you create a goal for yourself in one of the aforementioned methods, you simultaneously create the goal and then immediately feel satisfied with yourself for doing so. This satisfaction is the result of your systolic blood pressure lowering, causing your body & mind to relax. Now, why would that be a bad thing? Isn’t relaxing great!?

Turns out, systolic blood pressure plays a key role in driving UP your motivation to set out and DO the task you created for yourself; it’s what helps you take the first steps towards your goal. By lowering your systolic blood pressure, you actually reduce your motivation to go ahead and accomplish what you set out to do – you’ve already given yourself a mini dopamine spike and now just want to sit back and relax. This is why these methods fail us, we trick our brains into thinking we’ve accomplished the things we set out to do prematurely.

I should add that I’m not bashing the vision board approach. Most people don’t have a clear direction in life, and by having a vision board in place that shows them where they want to go is already a huge win, but it’s important to realize the consequences of such a method and how we can better optimize the approach.

How To Set Goals & Achieve Them in 2 Steps

Step 1 — Don’t Plan Abstract, Be Concrete

Stop setting yourself 5-10 year goals, they will not help you stay consistent because who the f*** knows what’s going to happen so far down the line. Instead, focus on planning your next 2 weeks, and be realistic with your expectations. Break down how you will reach your short-term goal by painting in detail the steps you will take within your daily routine to help accomplish your goals. Rinse & repeat the process for 3 months and reevaluate your progress. Brush up on what worked for you, and what didn’t; analyzing your process is critical in creating a system that works for you.

Step 2 — Plan For The Worst

Sometimes it’s necessary for us to foreshadow the worst case scenario because by doing so we are better mentally equipped to deal with that situation should it arise; we can’t do our best thinking during a crisis. Marcus Aurelius talks about this in MEDITATIONS…

“Begin each day by telling yourself today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness- all of them due to the offenders ignorance of what is good or evil.”

Another way of thinking about this, is imagine you’re on a sinking ship, you would want to know where the life jackets & emergency boats are located before the ship starts to sink – treat your life in a similar way.

By planning for the worst, you are mentally preparing yourself for that situation and 9 out of 10 times it never comes, but at least you’ll be ready for it.

Consider the story of Micheal Phelps, who was on track to become the first person in Olympic history to win 8 Gold medals within a single Olympics. At the time of this story, he was on his 7th Gold medal, with only the Men’s 200m Fly left to secure – his most favourable swim; this event was going to be a piece of cake.

He gets up on his starting platform and jumps in. Except this time, unlike his previous swims, his goggles weren’t properly secured, and they started to leak. By the time he was on his last lane swim return, the remaining few meters of the race, his goggles had completely failed him – he was swimming blind. Now, most people would panic, but not Micheal. Him and his couch had deliberately practiced for an event like this; swimming with impaired goggles. During the last few moments of the race, Micheal remained calm and defaulted to his practice – he began counting his strokes. He knew exactly how many strokes he needed to take to reach the end of his swim lane; he had prepared for this scenario countless times before and his body reacted in, not in shock, but in action. Micheal went on to win his 8th Gold medal and become the most decorated Olympian of all time.

The lesson here? Plan for the worst and put yourself in a solid position to tackle the situation should it arise.

aaaaand that’s all for today. I hope you found this article insightful and useful for your next goal-planning session. If you have any questions/concerns/rebuttals feel free to leave a comment and lets spark a conversation.