Every Sunday, Prompted delivers insights and prompts designed to help you become a bit better each day.
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There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
The biggest mistake we can make is pursuing the goals.
If we choose the wrong pursuits, success will move us farther away from the person we want to become, and failure will waste our time.
If we choose the right pursuits, even failure will move us closer to the person we want to become.
It’s easy to get caught up in exciting goals, but accomplishing something on its own is often hollow and disappointing. It brings us a fleeting moment of joy and pride, but once the achievement wears off, we’re left with the sinking feeling of what to do next.
Goals are useful for directing our actions, but they are not worthwhile on their own. The point of goals is not to accomplish an arbitrary objective. The point of goals is to move us closer to living our ideal lifestyle and becoming a better person.
Beginning with the end in mind
A life well lived is not a random collection of trophies, titles, and accomplishments. Nor is it a checklist of daily habits or routines.
A life well lived is doing what we want, when we want, with whom we want, for as long as we can, while becoming a bit better each day along the way.
When planning for the upcoming year, we should start with the life we’d like to live instead of starting with goals we’d like to accomplish or habits we want to maintain.
We might want a promotion at work, only to realize that after we “accomplish” our goal, we’re working more hours, with more stress, and spending less time with our family. If we begin with our ideal lifestyle instead, we could have negotiated a raise with the same title, so we can progress our career forward without sacrificing the quality of our day-to-day lives.
Focusing on goals and habits before defining our ideal lifestyle is like getting in the car and driving for hours before we decide where we want to go.
A framework to become better
Goals and habits are still powerful tools to become better in the upcoming year, but they shouldn’t be our starting point.
Instead, we should start with our vision for a random Tuesday.
This allows us to define and understand what our ideal lifestyle looks like. The more detailed we are about what we’re doing, who we’re spending time with, and how we feel, the more likely we are to make this vision a reality.
Visualizing our ideal lifestyle forces us to start with our desired result and use goals and habits as tools to build the life we want, instead of chasing goals and implementing habits that create a lifestyle we never considered.
To create our ideal lifestyle, we should define the following in each area of our lives:
Desired Outcome - a detailed vision of our ideal lifestyle in a specific area of life
Measurable Goals - quantifiable milestones that are met if we’re living our ideal lifestyle
Daily Habits - actions that contribute to achieving our measurable goals
For example, if our desired outcome is to feel effortlessly strong and energetic, then our goals would be squatting 2x our bodyweight and sleeping for an average of 8 hours each night. Our habits to achieve these goals would be weightlifting 3x per week and getting into bed before 10pm every night.
This framework makes everyday life our north star, not accomplishments or external titles. It transforms goals from hollow check boxes to meaningful milestones so we can measure meaningful progress and stay motivated.
If we’re not careful, we can optimize our entire life around high-performance habits and exciting goals, only to realize we sacrificed all our time and energy to trap ourselves in a life we don’t want to live.
Creating the perfect routine and accomplishing exciting goals only matter if they create a life we’re excited to live every day.
Prompts
Consider a random Tuesday a few years into the future. If everything goes right, what does your ideal Tuesday look like? What time do you wake up? What do you do during the day? Who do you get to spend time with? The more detail you provide, the better.
What measurable goals need to be true in each area of your life to live out your ideal lifestyle?
What habits do you need to integrate into your daily routine to make meaningful progress on these measurable goals?
Deep Dive
A compelling case for focusing on why we’re doing things instead of what we’re doing.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin