Goals

Goals for this Lesson

1. Describe goals.
2. Consistently set and reach the best goals.

Goal (What)

The present state refers to conditions as they currently exist for an actor (a person or group).

A goal state (or simply goal) refers to conditions in the future that the actor desires and intends to achieve through purposeful actions.

A condition is something that can be observed or measured by multiple people. It serves as objective evidence of what exists or has been achieved.

Examples of Goals

1. Lose Weight
   • Present state: overweight
     
   • Goal state: healthy weight
     
   • Typical actions: Learn key fundamentals, exercise regularly, change eating habits, adopt a healthier diet, reduce alcohol intake.
2. Camper Van Modification
   • Present state: cooking with a propane stove
     
   • Goal state: cooking with an induction stove and expanded battery capacity
     
   • Typical actions: Learn required fundamentals, purchase hardware, design layout, modify the van, build new battery cables, do electrical wiring, and buy cookware compatible with induction.
3. Increase Sales (Business)
   • Present state: low sales
     
   • Goal state: 4x increase in sales
     
   • Typical actions: Learn key principles, improve products, conduct customer interviews, upgrade the website, enhance marketing efforts.

Best Goal

A skilled actor can set and achieve nearly any goal they choose.
However, they cannot pursue every goal they might want, due to limits in time, energy, and resources.

Thus, skilled practitioners focus on identifying and pursuing their best goals.

The best goal is the one with the highest payoff—meaning it offers the greatest internal and external rewards with the fewest drawbacks.

Choosing the best goal often involves considering: - Importance: Does it truly matter to you? - Feasibility: Can you realistically make progress? - Timing: Is now the right time to pursue it?

Rationale for Goal Setting

Here are some reasons why becoming skilled at goal setting and goal attainment is worthwhile:

1. Turn your dreams into reality. Continually create a better future.
   
2. Live life to the fullest.
   
3. Gain focus and direction.
   
4. Spend your time on what matters most.
   
5. Feel a deep sense of purpose.
   
6. Experience personal power—like a sorcerer conjuring magic.
   
7. Wake up excited and energized. Feel fully alive.
   
8. Inspire group passion and unity—esprit de corps.

Concerns and Cautions

1. Too much goal-drive can cause stress, frustration, or overwhelm. Balance and rest matter.
   
2. Goal pursuit includes frequent failure. Grit—the combination of resilience and passion—is essential.

Goal Setting (How To)

Principles

1. Goals reflect what an actor (person or group) most wants if they can attain anything possible for their context (surrounding circumstances).

2. Not goal setting. It’s goal setting and attaining. Focus on reaching goals by taking actions.

3. Payoffs. Ensure that your rewards greatly exceed your drawbacks on a holistic and ongoing basis.

4. Best: Describe the best conditions that are possible in the future given your context. Best means the most rewards and the fewest drawbacks in a holistic sense.

5. Roles: Set goals for each role you have. A role is an area of concern or responsibility for an actor (person or group).

6. Focus: Only set a few goals that reflect what you most want. You can achieve just about any goal, but you cannot achieve very many of them.

7. Journey: Ensure that the journey (process of goal attainment) is the best it can be. Maximize rewards like learning, satisfaction, appreciation, social-connections, and discovery. Minimize drawbacks like stress, frustration, feeling overwhelmed, cost, time, effort, conflicts, hassles, and so on.

8. Analysis: Break big goals into subgoals.

Framework

Repetitions: For each role, repeat the following design-action-improvement loop until you have reached your current goal.

1. Design. Figure out what you most want, the most important thing. Write this down as a set of conditions that will exist in the future. Figure out how you are going to make these. As appropriate, break down your big goal into right size subgoals.

2. Action. Figure out the best actions to take today and perhaps this week. Take these actions.

3. Reflective Thinking. Think back on your recent experiences and figure out useful things such as next steps, actions that are useful, how to lessen or extinguish concerns (improvements), useful information, …

Tips

1. The best goal setting approach is John Doerr’s OKR Goal Setting Method.