Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last news post, but I'm back. One of the biggest changes in my life since I last posted here is that I can now walk again! After months of physical therapy and exercise, I've regained the balance that I lost from the tumor. No more walker necessary. It feels good to be able to achieve that goal.
I've been thinking about goal-setting a lot lately. I love to read productivity-related content. It's like potato chips for my brain. Yeah, a lot of it is just fluff designed to get me to pay for overpriced courses, but a lot of it also contains valuable and interesting information to me. Some of the topics commonly discussed are goals and systems, and which one is better to focus on if you want to be successful.
The advice here tends to be conflicting. To my understanding, there are 3 main sides:
Side A: Goals are not good; systems are better, because they ensure consistent progress. The problem with goals is that once you reach them, you don't know how to proceed next. If you end up setting a goal that's too difficult, you'll just feel demotivated. Some things are also genuinely out of your control.
Side B: Goals are good; systems should be used to advance goals. Goals give you something to strive for, and motivate you to work hard to achieve something. They give you purpose and a clear challenge where you feel like there are real stakes that have to be met.
Radical Centrist Option: Goals are good. Set something realistic, but don't be upset if you don't reach it because it's just a benchmark. Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
The Radical Centrist Option is the most sensible theoretically, but I also see no way that I can actually put it into action. To me, the whole point of goal-setting is to invest yourself in the process, and do everything in your power to reach it. I feel like to even get to a point where you can say to yourself, "oopsie I didn't reach it but that's ok lol XD" would have to mean there was no actual emotional investment being made in the first place.
What do you guys think about this? What are your goals, and/or systems? Leave a comment; I'm interested to know.
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AlienPlay
I think that, as with most things, answer lies somewhere in between, but I'm mostly on Side B.
I tend to give myself a large goal and then try to break it down into smaller ones.
I'm a game developer so usually I come up with the idea, prototype it and then break the game down into smaller pieces which I write down in notepad. Then, when I finish those smaller goals I add "(DONE)" next to them. This keeps me on track, motivated to keep working on my project. Basically, this is my way of gamifying my work (which is kinda ironic).
Those smaller goals help me stay consistent as well because I can finish most of them in less then 15 minutes.
So yeah, in my opinion there's no clear way.
Hope this helped someone.
MistyE
This is something I try to implement too myself - something I struggle with is writing for long sessions, so I try to break it into 15-minute blocks. It's a pretty good technique, if I can muster up the will to do it, that is. Gotta make it easier to digest, y'know?
I also incorporate gamification a lot. I go by my own points system, so sometimes I view task completion as a sort of time trial or speed run that I give myself bonus points for. The points themselves are arbitrary but it's a wildly effective system for me personally.