🚀 30-Day Productivity Challenge — Day 5 — Manageable goals
👋 Hey Friends,
Welcome back to the 30-Day Productivity Challenge by the famous YouTuber, former doctor and now writer Ali Abdaal.
In the last two days, we have figured out a vision for our life, and we have started to prioritise between goals that we want to accomplish. I have personally struggled with this a lot since I find prioritisation a little frightening. I have plenty of life visions in my mind, and only fixating on one seems to omit chances. On the other hand, I also know that it is the right thing to do because only through setting my most important goals I can accomplish what is the most important. Today, my and your goal is to make our goals manageable.
🙋How and why make our goals manageable?
Making our goals manageable is all about dividing our big pieces into smaller, achievable chunks. We therefore get immediate response when we achieve a small advancement to our initial yearly goal. Let’s revisit the five goals I set for myself yesterday:
🥇My 2024 goals
- ✏️ Write 1,000 words a day
- 🏃Run a half-marathon
- 📕Read 40 books
- 👨👩👦 Improve connection to elder family members
- ❤️ Go on at least two date nights a month
Most of them are countable, and it is now my job to cut them up into little pieces. This way I can create a new overview of my quarterly goals, meaning a goal that I want to achieve in a quarter of the year. Breaking up my goals into a table, and breaking them up into quarterly goals, can look something like this:
We can see that my goals are now more quantitive, and I have something to work for not 365 days from now but only 92 days or three months from now. By visualising my goals into quarterly segments like this, I can see what actions I need to take to fulfil my life vision and make my 2024 goals happen.
This way, I can start by thinking about what immediate actions I can take to come closer to my dream future.
Personally, while writing this, I am a little frightened by this approach because it is a lot different from what I usually do. Seeing now that I can take immediate action at any given time feels like I have lost so much about my life already in the past by not doing so. I think the best reaction to this is to let it slide and focus on what is important now.
From his quarterly view, I can now think of what are the weekly goals that I need to hit to progress towards my year's vision. Let’s break down my weekly actions for all my goals:
🥇Weekly actions
- ✏️ Write 7,000 words
- 🏃Follow the training plan (run a 500m progressive long run starting with 12k)
- 📕 Read around one book
- 👨👩👦 Spend one day with family
- ❤️Have one date night
With these weekly goals in mind (they work for all weeks this year) I know what daily actions I need to take to come closer to my dream self by fulfilling my yearly goals.
I can now design my life around simple actions I have to take on each day and through accurate planning, we can get there.
For example, I can now say that before I go to bed I read a one-seventh of a book that I currently read. If the book has 350 pages, then I read 50 pages a night. If I do, so I will get closer to my daily goal, not just my weekly goal, not my quarterly goal and not just my year goal, but my whole life vision instead. As James Clear, the author of “Atomic Habits” likes to remind us:
"All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow.“
How we create a clear vision of our perfect week is the subject of tomorrow’s blog. See you then. :)
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Thanks again and I'll see you soon.
Victor (@observethecosmos)
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