3 Goal-Setting Mistakes Holding You Back From Success

In today’s newsletter we’re going to talk about the biggest mistakes most people make when it comes to goal setting.

Think about the last time you set a goal and accomplished it?

Learning how to set and accomplish goals is a life changing skill. Goals help you move from where you are now to where you want to be.

The sad reality is that only 8% of people who set goals actually achieve them. It’s time to change that.

The Self Help Lie

The reason a lot of people don’t achieve their goals is because they listen to self help BS:

• If you merely think and visualize about your goals it will magically become true

• You need to set big ambitious goals to motivate you

• You need to find your why to achieve your goals

There’s a quote from Charlie Munger on inversion:

So rather than talking about all the things you should be doing, we’re going to talk about what to avoid when it comes to goal setting.

Mistake 1: Setting Yearly Goals

The most common mistake people make is setting yearly goals. On the surface it does have a nice ring to it.

New years comes around and people start thinking about the new years resolution aka yearly goal.

They have a ton of motivation and hope that this year will be the year where everything changes.

They start to turn their life around for two months and then they burn out. Their motivation seemingly disappears overnight and they fall back to their old routine.

The reason is that yearly goals are way too long. Especially as someone with ADHD I get insanely bored working on the same thing for a very long time.

Instead, I like to stick to quarterly (3 months) and weekly goals. 3 months is enough time to make meaningful progress in your life while also giving you faster feedback loops.

So instead of reflecting at the end of the year to see what you could have done to achieve your goals, you get that feedback loop 4 times every year.

I also create weekly goals that ladder up into my quarterly goal. This helps ensure I’m making consistent progress.

Mistake 2: Setting Ambitious Goals

I truly believe that the biggest reason most people don’t achieve their new years resolution is because they set unrealistic goals.

They think that they can become a different person overnight. Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way.

And this is where the self help industry has failed you. Telling you that you need to set large goals.

That all you need to do is think about achieving your goals and you’ll accomplish everything.

I tried all that and it never worked.

If you’re overweight and never lost a pound in your life how do you expect to become jacked and shredded in 3 months.

Setting ambitious goals make you overwhelmed and burnt out.

If you believe that the goal is impossible to achieve you’re going to end up thinking “what’s the point” and fall back into old habits.

Instead set realistic goals. If you genuinely believe that you can achieve the goal you’re more likely to take action and stay consistent over the long term. Change doesn’t happen overnight.

I use the half and half method. This is what it looks like:

• Set a goal ie. lose 20 pounds

• Take that goal and divide it by half (10 pounds)

• Take that and divide it by half again (5 pounds)

This is a much more realistic goal that you can stick to over the long run without getting burnt out.

Once you achieve your goal you’ll have the confidence to keep going and following through on your intentions.

If you continue to do this over the span of multiple years your life will look completely different.

Mistake 3: Setting Multiple Goals

Finally I want to talk about the problem of setting multiple goals. It’s easy to create a laundry list of goals that you want to accomplish.

Back to my earlier point this will lead to overwhelm and you burning out.

Instead pick one goal. One that will have the highest impact on your life.

The greatest superpower in today’s world is the ability to focus. When people think about focus they think of concentration.

But focus is greater than that. It’s your ability to say no to things that aren’t important. Setting a single goal for the next three months helps you focus. Otherwise you’re going to dilute your attention.

It’s much better to make meaningful progress towards a single area of your life rather than making a tiny bit of progress in a bunch of areas.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this helpful.

I’ll see you next Saturday.