19 Comments

Thank for sharing, Ryan.

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Thanks for sharing! I'm in the process of setting a range of goals at moment and find myself overthinking of detail and devising methods of how to track - not productive. Journaling has long been a place of comfort and challenging myself. Interestingly, in re-reading previous entries I find that I'm dealing with the same issues and wishes(?) as the present. Just start is the message here. If they need to be adjusted - more detail, unrealistic - then so be it.

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Thank you for sharing your experience, Ryan! I really appreciate it.

I particularly enjoyed this sentence: "Knowing yourself is an important part of coming up with a system that works for you."

Additionally, I’ve read Atomic Habits and came across this principle: "Promising myself a reward."

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Would love to read some real life examples of the goals you had in the last decade :)

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Sure thing, happy to share. One of the benefits of writing is it's easy to share. Here's my goal list from H2 2019:

• Promotion to Senior Engineer (IC5)

• 12% body fat and good posture

• Join SF Toastmasters, give 1 speech per month

• Read one book per month

Was super focused on getting promoted at that time. Aside from work, one of my favorite goals during COVID was trying to go from 0 chess knowledge to 1200 elo

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Nice, thank you!

What would you say was your success rate over the years? :)

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The P50 idea is a very interesting way of approaching ambition! might try to think about sprinkling that into my life haha

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Thanks for sharing, another mistake I often see people make is waiting for x date to start. That can be next Monday, Month, Quarter, Year,...

I always advocate with starting now and not waiting for stars to align or a specific moment in time.

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Yep agreed, goaling timelines are contrived and don't need to be waited on. Nice thing about personal goals is you don't need to get any stakeholder alignment to change things up mid half haha

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Ahah so true, I think for me the biggest changes is really not waiting end of the year. You said it right, it's such a long time to wait before adjusting and with no alignment needed you just.. Go for it!

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One of my favorite rules of thumb/reminders to my self to mitigate this is: Start Before You're Ready

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Big time! I do that too but also because sometimes the "ready" state is not even that well defined, so what am I really waiting for?

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Promising myself a reward never worked either. Neither did gamifying it with points etc. I think earning XP is motivating in video games because the tasks are so incredibly easy (just clicking buttons, and no real stress involved). For real-world things involving real-world effort and difficulty, motivation must come from a deeper place.

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Agreed, I think it could also be due to the goal being so far away. Gamifying could work if there's breadcrumbs of dopamine along the way

If there's one payout at the end of a 6 month goal it's too far away to be behavior altering

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Thanks for sharing Ryan! 🙌 do you use any tools/apps to keep track of these goals?

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Happy to Elsa! For tracking and reflections, I just use Google Docs/Sheets

I used to use some habit tracking app but found it’s better to keep it simple

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Thinking is so the same in the world. I have been categorizing goals into Health, Relationships, and Work. It is interesting that you’re separating hobbies as well. I guess I have been adding those to health since it gives me happiness.

If you don’t mind sharing, what are the benefits you see after separating hobbies?

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My thinking was that purely focusing on health, relationships and work would lead to a boring life. I wanted to make sure I never become too work focused and one dimensional

Being well rounded and having fun outside of work was important enough for me to make it its own category. I've seen some other people call this category "fun" rather than "hobbies" but the idea is the same

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Make sense. Thanks for sharing

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