💯 Here is How You Should Set Goals.

Humans are the most irrational animals on planet Earth, let's be honest, we've all created the least practical to-do lists, filled with tasks that are just not realistic enough for us to achieve. We either fill them with tasks undermining us or tasks that require us to push ourselves over the bar aka being productive every literal second. Setting tasks this way: 🏛️ Tuitions: 9:00 am to 11:00 am

📝 Write Essay: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

🍽️ Eat Lunch: 12:30 to 1:30 pm for our everyday lives has become a bad habit. Writing down such shallow tasks that have no impact is nothing but living in an imaginary world without distractions & the "unexpected," rather it is harmful to your personal productivity levels.

Shallow Tasks: 👎 Game Over

Writing down shallow tasks with no meaning is quite literally a waste of time/energy, not to mention the quick dopamine hits of "how this day is going to be extremely productive." Nearly <1% of the population actually manage to stick to their "goals of the day" to the tee, the rest spend one half of their night feeling guilty of procrastinating and the other half of how tomorrow is going to be the day I become a productivity guru. This is nothing but leaving the tap of running water open, except that it isn't the water that is running but it is your life. A hazy mind with the lack of clarity on "what to do? "and more importantly "how to do?" is a harmful one. If you are a victim of unorganized goal setting, don't worry, I've got your back. This blogpost is going to be an ultimate guide to setting achievable goals to lead a happier, more productive life. Let's dive right into it. I'll be using a plate of Nachos to explain the three types of goals!

The Cheese Coating: ⚖️ Outcome Goals Outcome based goals are goals that resonate with a result in the end, they are result oriented and expect a "finished task." An example of this would be:

💪 Getting six packs by the end of the year.

📚 Complete reading 10 books in 10 months.

⚽ Winning a football league in 2022.

These goals definitely give you a target to achieve, but they do not provide a path to clinch them. These goals do not direct you towards achieving them rather portray your ambitiousness to accomplish them. Outcome goals often answer questions like: "What you want to be?", "Where you want to reach in a definite timeframe?" These goals are nice to have to remind you of what you are working for or who you want to become but they aren't ideal when it comes to nailing them because they are huge chunks of goals with no predefined ways of achieving them.

The Guacamole: 🎯 Output Goals

Output Goals are inclined towards the things we do, that include projects, essays, etc. They don't confirm success, they are just goals that you wish to achieve in order to check off your long-term/outcome goals. Ever wondered why New Year's Resolution fail? It's because these outputs are shiny and sometimes are set at a bar that is "too good to be true." An Output Goal would look like this:

📝 Write 1 Article of 1000+ words.

🏃‍♂Burn 2000 calories.

👟Run 10 km.

📑Finish 2 physics chapters.

These goals are purely driven towards deriving a so called "measurable result." you can set these goals to bring in clarity on your target but at the end of the day they focus on the destination rather than the path or the journey it takes to get there. Along with Ali Abdaal I am a huge advocate of this wise quote by Brandon Sanderson;

Journey Before Destination. -Brandon Sanderson

"Journey Before Destination" talks about how the systems you put in place are what gradually drive you towards your acquired destination (pun intended) focusing on the output stand-alone will tarnish the whole idea of putting a system/path in place in order to achieve the goal. Setting goals pertaining to outputs without a system is something that James Clear highlights in his world-famous book specifically in the productivity sphere - Atomic Habits, he talks about how the systems we put in place are what leads us towards achieving the goals. That brings me to the crispy nachos or the Input Goals. Let's have a look at this type of goal setting.

The Nachos: 🧠 Input Goals

System orientated goals > Systemless goals

Input goals are inclined towards the systems that need to be put in place to achieve your goal. Input goals would look like this:

📜 Write in 2 hour blocks to complete 2000 words.

🏋️‍♀️ Hit the gym for 2 hours.

📖 Spend 4 hours studying physics (sit in a quiet environment and give 100%)

Input goals give you a sense of control, they provide a set path to the "output/milestone." They are easier to track because they are actionable in contrary to output & outcome goals that are in laymen's terms shapeless destinations.

A trick to setting input goals would be treating them like your side-quests, an example of that would be:

• I want to build a 🧑‍💻website of my own:
  

Now the website over here is the output/big goal, and educating yourself on code would be a side quest rather a by-product of building a website. if you set input goals as side-quests towards the main thrill of the adventure then I'm sure you will hike faster.

A big part of setting input goals is asking yourself the right questions. Asking why you want to achieve the "output" over and over again will eventually lead you to the cause behind why you want to achieve that particular thing. Input goals are embedded in those answers, you just have to extract it.

I believe smaller steps (input goals) build momentum which equates to the increase in likelihood of a more "sustainable" progress. Input goals are like the coffee grounds that when poured onto with hot water of consistency and passion extract the fine coffee ☕ that slowly drips down in the jar which is essentially outcome goals.

I seemingly spent this entire blogpost convincing you to stick to "only" input goals rather than the other ones on the whiteboard, but:

I believe these goals complete each other, as each one of them according to the hierarchy of importance leads one to another.

Hierarchy of important goals: input goals -> output goals -> outcome goals

Let's say I want to write a ✍️ book this year, It is in my ✅ control whether I write 1000 words today or not. Now let's say I chose to complete 1 chapter of the book today, now that doesn't give me 100% control, it is vague and cannot ensure anything. But if I choose to become a best-selling author by the end of the year, I am definitely not going to have any ❌ control over it and that explains the hierarchy of important goals. Without the nachos, the guacamole along with the cheese coating would be incomplete rather weird. Now you might ask? "Rhythm, what goals do I set?" The simplest answer to that is: Let 🧠 input goals decide the system, Let 🎯output goals decide the direction, Let ⚖️ outcome goals decide the destination.

That's it for this blogpost! I'd love to know if this post helped you out in any shape or form, do not hesitate to reach out to me on my socials! This post was written on 08/08/22. Stay tuned for more, and show some love by spreading the word about it! Thanks, Rhythm Doshi