How to plan for a fulfilling year?

9 min readDec 29, 2023

The time when I created this is near the end of December (26th-30th). So it’s that time of the year where everyone is talking about new year resolutions and goals that you would like to achieve in the new year and how to make the next year the best year yet (classic).

It has almost become a ritual and routine to set goals for a new year.
How many of you actually achieve the goal Last year?
In fact, do you still remember the goals that you set at the end of last year?

Everybody’s heard of smart goals.
Specific
Measurable
Achievement /Actionable
Relevant
Time bound
Goals.
This is like the common acronym. Everybody’s heard about smart goals but there are a few issues with smart goals:
They are not quite helpful in the process of execution to achieve the goal.

Here's what normally happen:
We can definitely remember that from December 31st to January 1st every year, we always spend half a day to seriously set many goals, such as improving English, learning programming, and working out once a week. Keep writing, losing weight, reading a book every week, etc.

It’s easy to start ( Because we were excited) but difficult to keep going the process.
We fall off track and fail to achieve the goal, it causes shame.
It’s a shame cycle. The more excited we were when setting the goal, the more disappointed we would be.

There is a joke I made: Whenever January 1st comes, everyone is like Cinderella past 12am midnight - magic gone and back to their old self.
However, it is nothing funny really.I know that most people will come up with almost the same list on December 31st of the following year.

Why would that happen?
The problem is not actually your desire, but the skill of "setting goals" itself.

You don't rise to the level of your goals, but you fall to the level of your systems James Clark says.

If You set goals and only set the goals, it is doomed to fail.
You only plan what you want, but you didn’t plan the path to attain it (ops) . And even if you plan to pass to attain it, you didn’t bring enough supplies to support you along the way(ops) .
So on the road when you lack supplies ( running out of food, insufficient clothes for changing weather, shoes broken, Tent being blown away, Money being stolen or lost, etc)
If you don’t have support on the process,you have to come home. You have to go back to your old place because you don’t have the process support you to follow through to get to the destination.

And the problem is it gets harder and harder for us to regroup ourselves and go out on the road again to pursue the goal.
The more we come back to home, the more we would be trapped in the comfort and warmth of home and don't want to go out and adventure.

That is very usual and common. That’s why people reaching the mid life would suddenly wake up and feel like they haven’t done anything worthwhile in life, haven’t really tried hard enough to achieve what they really want. (Also called midlife crisis)

In other words, the moment we set goals, we know if it’s going to be attained or not, we know it will be a win or lose already, before we ever do anything about the goal.
It depends on how we set the goal.

So in today’s article, I’m going to Breakdown have to actually set goals so that as long as we execute the process, it is a definite, absolute guarantee to achieve the goal.

Very briefly first, looking at the bigger picture, I've created a goal pyramid, which shows you from a high level view the relationship between our dream or goal, our habits and our process.
I have introduce the goal pyramid in another articles and will explain more in Profitable Learner so not going to repeat here, but very briefly to set the field for today's discussion of how to set a winning goal:

we can’t just focus on setting goals. Beyond that is our dream, where our goals are derived from, and underneath it is our habits and process.
Without aligning all of these and having a clear system for these items to support each other to form a strong pyramid, we can hardly get what we want simply focusing on the goals.

The discussion point of today’s article is winning goals, so we’re going to focus on goals, but by no means is goals the full picture of the goal setting system.

Okay, let’s start by sharing about what a goal is.
Many may think, are you kidding?
How can I not know what a goal is?
Hey, this is really not necessarily the case.

Let’s look at three goals:
1. Learn better and faster;
2. Read 50 books a year;
3. In order to make a shiny appearance at the college reunion in three months, start losing weight from now on. Skip dinner every day, quit sugary drinks and have homecook meals, and lose ten pounds.

Among the three goals, which one do you think counts as the goal?
3 seconds to think about that.
3
2
1

Ok, actually only the last one can be counted as a goal.

Why?
Because a reasonably achievable goal has four conditions:

The first one is context.
Context means: if I achieved my goal, I need to be able to verify it somewhere; if I learn something, I need to be able to use it in at least one place.
If you just say that I must lose weight today, then you will definitely not be able to lose weight because there is a lack of context.
One slight adjustment makes all the difference :
If you said you lost weight in order to make a shiny appearance at the class reunion, this gives you the context. And also the motivation to really implement the process.
Therefore, goals with context are good achievable goals, and goals without context are just mere wishes, and self deceiving goals.

I will give you another example, I have never been able to learn spanish well, though I really wanted to.
The essential reason is because there is a lack of context.
Suppose I send myself to work in Europe for three months next year. My goal suddenly becomes one with context!
The goal becomes "having a Spanish level that allows me to work independently in Europe for three months."
This would not only to the maximum extent increase the chance of the goal being achieved, but also my learning efficiency will of course be magically enhanced.
Additionally it adds a sense of urgency to the goal that prompt us to take action to execute.
This is the value of having a context.

Second condition of a reasonably achievable goal is distance.

That is, there must be a gap between your goals and your current situation.
For example, some girls who are shouting about losing weight and keeping fit, but They are obviously very slim , weighing 90 or 100 pounds.
You can’t achieve it. Because the goal is too close to the current situation, it is difficult to see the effect, and you lack the motivation to fight for its attainment.

If you are already reading 1 book per week, and you should go to read 52 books next year, there is no distance between the current situation and the goal. And so it’s actually a fake goal.

The reason behind having distance as one of the key and necessary conditions of a reasonably achievable goal is because We don't learn in the comfort zone, our optimal learning and growth happens at the stretching sides just outside of our comfort zone.
Too much outside of the comfort zone would be irrelevant and to remote to motivate us into action.
The stretching zone just outside the comfort zone that we could possibly achieve with a stretch (that wouldn't break us) and with going the extra mile is where the best learning and growth opportunities lie.

Therefore, a good goal should be at a certain distance from your current situation and can only be achieved by jumping and taking a leap of faith.

The 3rd necessary condition to a recently achieved her goal is handle.

When we are on transit, we have those handles every few steps for us to hold our hands with to maintain the stability and balance, so that we are safe on the journey.
That’s the same thing for goal setting. We need to have some kind of handle once in a while on the journey to keep us in check.

The problem with traditional goal setting is that if you think the goal has to be something dreamy, has to be the ideal that you want, then you probably would be setting a goal too high.
And if you fail to achieve it, it will hurt your self esteem and self confidence.

I understand there are books and there is that encourage people to have big goals to dream big, I see the purpose of that on the dream level as north star (referring to the goal pyramid)
Yet, on a goal level, we need to consider the achieveability. Because if the goal is never achieved, it may as well never be set.

So how to set a goal and the right distance and with handles?
First, there must be a starting point for implementation. That is, there must be a specific place to start.
Many people set goals without paying attention to details,
such as a goal to read 50 books a year.

But where to start?
What kind of books do you read?
How much of a book do you need to read to consider completing reading a book?
(these questions are examples of some handles that need to be in place with this goal)

Most of us have no idea.
The result is that is, over time, you fool yourself.
For example, telling yourself to read 50 comic books is also called reading 50 books.
Flipping through a book quickly is also called finishing a book.
Until one day you will ask yourself, why should I lie and torture myself?

In the end, the goal would be forgotten and abandoned.
Indedd, most people have experienced the inner drama of giving up a goal halfway.

So, when we say that this year’s goal is to read 50 books, having a starting point becomes particularly important.

For example, what kind of books should I read?
How long does it take to read a book?
How do you count it as finished reading?
With these few handles, the goal can become more achievable and more operable.

Generally speaking, when you set a goal, you should at least clarify these few things as handles:
First, the start time and where to start with.
For example, what kind of books to read.
Second, specific execution actions.
For example, if you say I want to lose weight, it is an abstract action.
But you said I won’t have dinner tonight, this is a specific action.
Third, the number of actions performed.
For example, if I want to read more, I don’t have a quantity.
I need to set a fixed quantity, such as reading five pages a day.
Fourth, the degree of completion of the action.
Be clear from the beginning to what extent this action is truly completed to avoid fooling yourself.
Fifth, the end time and what is the specific ending outcome.
For example, for reading 50 books you would end up with 50 book reviews published on your social media this year.
These are called "handles".

The design of the handles is very important, because only when the handle is clear can all your strength and passion can be released.

Learn the 4th necessary condition to setting a winning goal in Profitable Learner.

Speak again soon and Merry Xmas,

Connie

Have you subscribed yet?

Written by Connie C

Responses (1)