It’s December, and I just spent the last weekend in my two favorite coffee shops in Asheville (Rowan Coffee and City Bakery) working on my goals for next year. I realized that my process and mindset last year yielded by far the best results I’ve ever had. As I was doing this, I was thinking of ways to refine my process, and remembering all the ideas that it’s built around. Here are my goal setting reminders and SOP.
Reminders:
1. The main priority is wellness.
2. Do it.
If you aren’t doing it, change it to something you’ll do.
3. Worry about the next brick
Don’t burn out from getting excited about a huge goal that suddenly appears insurmountable when you start working on it.
You’re emotionally detached from the goal. Just care about the next brick.
“You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say, ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ And you do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”
— Will Smith
Care about the inputs and outputs, not outcomes. The desired outcome is only for planning and reviewing, not for motivation. Control the controllables.
4. Strategy matters
Define the constraint. If you don’t know what is constraining your progress, your lack of knowledge is the constraint. A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved.
“What’s the one step I can take that will make everything else easier or irrelevant?”
— Tim Ferris
Decide to commit. Focus is the elimination of alternatives.
The Latin root of “decide” is literally to cut off / prune:
“He prunes every branch that bears fruit so it will be even more fruitful.”
— John 15:2
Don’t spend time on pointless tasks.
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes”
— Naval Ravikant
5. Treat yourself like an athlete.
Track KPIs around wellness.
Build a team to help you focus.
Win the game by just trying to play better.
6. Don’t tell people about your goals
It activates the brain’s reward systems prematurely.
“When you tell someone your goal, it creates a sense of satisfaction in the brain, particularly in the dopamine system, which makes you feel as though you’ve already accomplished something. This can reduce your drive to pursue the actual work required to achieve that goal.”
— Andrew Huberman
Goal Setting / Review SOP:
Big Picture
- Review general life mission
- Review life priorities
- Think about stuff that gets you hyped
- Define success
- Define a successful year
- Define a successful half-year
- Define successful inputs for year
- What one thing will make the most other things unnecessary
- Define successful inputs for the next month / the next big domino
Input very short notes of all this in the “Why” document to read one part of daily.
Make simple KPI sheet
Link to my KPI sheet if you want to copy it into your Google Drive to use
- Budget, income, hourly wage
- Primary thing
- Time spent doing
- Simple KPI of my output
- Wellness KPIs (e.g., daily rating of stress, days worked out)
Create calendar events:
- Next year, first or second weekend of Dec. Date for myself at a place I like to work on this.
- In May, condensed run-through of this SOP.
- End of each month:
- Review – did I do it? What happened?
- Define next big domino.
- Define the most important input.
When setting and tracking goals, use this structure:
How will this improve my life?
If I do x, then y will happen.
Define x, define y.
Did I do x? Did y happen?
Have a great 2025!
I hope you found this helpful or inspiring! It has been good for me to tidy it up and talk about it.