Why Traditional Goal Setting Advice Doesn’t Work

Traditional Advice #1: Visualize Your Success & Positive Thinking

Gabriele Oettingen has studied this extensively and written a book called Rethinking Positive Thinking. In her book she shares that the more someone visualizes themselves having achieved their goal, the less likely they are to actually achieve it.

Her research (as well as other's) has shown that positive thinking by itself is often counter-productive.

NOTE: This doesn't mean that positive thinking or visualization are always bad. These things can be effective, but it really depends on how we do them and in what context.

Traditional Advice #2: Follow Your Passion

The underlying idea behind this idea is that if you’re following your passion, everything should be easy and effortless. If that’s not the case, then you’re not following your passion! Or ‘you just don’t want it hard enough’ and you need to somehow try harder.

The idea here is that if you want it hard enough, it should somehow work. This is not true.

What Actually Works

Push & Pull forces. And Process.

The next lesson will cover how to use both forces to our advantage for goal-setting. And how we can connect our daily actions (the process) to the big-picture goal so we always know why we’re doing something.

Bonus Exercise:

The main exercise is in the following lesson. However, there is a bonus exercise that you can do right now: take the VIA survey to uncover your primary strengths & values.

The VIA survey is a free, science-backed survey for finding strengths and values. Personal values are an important factor in goal setting and defining the "process" part of the framework.

The survey can be useful in two ways. It may confirm what you already knew about your values and your character strengths and give you some extra insight. Or it may uncover some values you weren't aware of, that will change the way you think in the coming exercise.

Push & Pull Goals (and the Pitfalls of Goal Setting)

Week 0: The focus & action Difference

Chapter 1 - The Mindset Shift

Chapter 2 - Your New Way of Working From Now

Week 1: Goal Setting Done Right

Part 1: Goal Setting Done Right

Part 2: The Mantra Doc - How to Stay on Track All the Time

Week 2: Design Your Environment

Part 1: Your Digital Workspace

Part 2: Digital Environment

Part 3: Physical Environment

Part 4: Noise

Week 3: Freedom Time

Week 4: Flow States

Week 5: Efficiency

Week 6: Do What You're Afraid Of