How I changed my life in 334 days with Reverse Goal Setting

in 334 days I went from being lost and confused about what type of future I wanted for myself and generally not very happy to being fulfilled and excited about life and I did this not by just changing how I felt about things I used a method of goal setting and planning that allowed me to literally change the way that I spend each and every day giving me the confidence to know that every step that I'm taking is helping me to craft the future that I want it's a method of goal setting and planning that I now teach and train to thousands of students and professionals around the world and I firmly believe that it is one of the best ways of goal setting and planning that allows you to make a real difference in your lives rather than just feeling good because you have set goals so in this video I'm going to break down those three methods step by step and then at the end of the video I'll give you three extra steps that you can use to massively improve your chances of reaching your goals if you need to the channel welcome I'm Dr Justin sung I'm a full-time learning coach learning researcher a lecturer and the head of learning at I can study I'm also a former medical doctor and for the last decade I have worked with tens of thousands of Learners from around the world helping them to learn more efficiently in 2017 I started working as a junior doctor actually that's my stethoscope right here if you can see that that's my adrenal doctor stethoscope and I was at the time working 60 to 70 hour shifts and it was grueling these 10 hour shifts at a hospital are so much more tiring than any other 10 hours of work that I've done in any other job it is so fast paced and you're just under the pump all the time but at that point in my life I had already been running my non-profit education business here in New Zealand for four years so after work I then spend an additional three to five hours every evening just working on my business and helping my students and to be honest I actually liked it in this weird like masochistic kind of way I liked being pushed to my limit I I learned a lot about myself I really feel like I thrived in that kind of environment but fast forward six months and I was not at all having fun in that job I started really hating work yes the hours were long but the thing that really started getting to me was that I just did not feel like I had control over my life if you are working as a doctor or a nurse you're in the hospital you probably know what I mean by this your life is really dictated by like the hospital administrators and this roster and the schedule and you just don't feel like you really have any control over where your life is going anymore I was working so hard and it felt like the impact that I could make was just being absolutely crushed by this hugely inefficient system and I knew that my work was important like technically but I stopped feeling that it was important and I think that's really important that you feel connected with the work that you're doing I really stopped feeling that while I was working as a doctor so I know that it's a little bit ironic in a way to say that my work as a doctor didn't seem fulfilling even though the work of a doctor doctor is so impactful but like working in that system just took all of that human element out of it for me at least personally and then it was kind of this like double frustration for me because I was also business minded so I could see how the system could be improved but then at the same time I felt like even more frustrated because I couldn't actually do anything to change that so that really really bugged me and I became very disillusioned with the idea of clinical practice and I felt like my soul and energy was just being completely drained like I remember that there would be these times where I would wake up in the morning and I would legitimately feel like I wanted to be sick like I I wished I was sick just so that I would have a real reason not to go into work that day or like I would hope that there would be this natural disaster that occurs it cuts off all the roads and access to the hospital so it's like oh I really want to come into work but there's no possible way that I can get there I guess I'll just have to stay home today like I would legitimately feel these things I would dread waking up going into work and that's a terrible way to feel and I know that that's the way that a lot of people actually feel about their jobs and so after months of feeling this way I eventually decided to leave full-time medicine and swap into education full-time and that's been like four years ago so on the 26th of May 2019 I worked my final day as a clinical doctor actually technically not true because like a year later I picked up a Locum shift and I absolutely hated it and then I just never picked up another shift again but officially 26th of May 2019 that was my final day as a doctor and when I talk about now I can talk about it really objectively but at the time I was really uncertain like can I make it on my own can I be successful doing this what type of Life am I even gonna craft for myself what is it going to look like what do I need to do to make it work and this is when I use reverse goal setting and by using this method I was able to create a plan and a structure of exactly how I would spend every single day and every single week to get to the goal that I wanted to get to and then on the 24th of April 2020 exactly 3 134 days after my last day I was able to create this map and this is a map that eventually became the basis for the I can study learning program which is now used by thousands of people around the world it's also at the same time when I was working out of this office which you may recognize as a backdrop for my older videos since then I have felt so much more control of my life I wake up feeling energized I look forward to working I feel like the way that I'm spending my time is helping me to build the future that I want I'm excited about it I feel fulfilled more fulfilled than when I was working as a doctor especially you know some of the messages and reviews that people and emails that people are sending me about the impact that it's had on their lives reading these kinds of messages it makes me feel like my impact is being Amplified rather than being just like smushed into nothing so although my story is about leaving medicine I think that the uncertainties are really the same for anyone who's kind of unhappy about their current situation and wanting to know how to make a change the questions like will things get better can I even make it what if I fail what am I even meant to do ultimately I think the question is I feel bad about my current situation what do I do about it and this is where reverse go setting would come in handy so here's how the framework goes the idea with normal goal setting is we say where are we now where do we want to get to and then how do we go from where we are now to where we want to get to it's very logical and there's nothing inherently wrong with this but it can be complicated when your goal is very long term or very complex and it's actually unclear how you can actually get to where you want to go from where you are and these are the types of situations where reverse goal setting really shines now I've I call it reverse goal setting I think it's also called backwards goal setting I'm sure lots of other people talk about this topic I've been using this for such a long time I actually don't remember if I thought of this myself or if I read it from somewhere so I'm sure this is not going to be like a super original concept but I think it's very helpful regardless so let's go through the Steps step one is to ask ourselves where do we want to get to what is the goal and this can be a long-term goal it can be a medium-term goal I'd recommend choosing something that's at least sort of six to nine months away otherwise it's not going to be as useful and there's some issues with this that we're going to cover at the end of this video if we choose a time period that is too short so this here is our goal and for me that was for me to have my own business I wanted to be in control of my hours and my time and my energy and what I was doing with my days I wanted to produce an impact and help people in the realm of Education where I used my expertise and I wanted to do this at a massive scale those were really important for me so that was my goal and then what you do is that you imagine the person who could definitely already achieve this goal this is like this hypothetical person who is the perfect person that would a hundred percent achieve this goal if no one else in the world could achieve this goal except for this person this is the guy that's gonna do it or the girl and you ask yourself for this perfect hypothetical person what are the skills and the attributes and the assets and the knowledge that this person has that makes this goal inevitable for them and so by the end of this stage we've created like this artificial person that would be perfectly primed to have achieved the scope here are a list of some of the categories that I use for thinking about all the different attributes feel free to pause on the screen and take a screenshot if you need to each of these items is related to Something in the research that's called employability capitals which is a little bit more recent in the research but it's about looking at the factors that contribute to and influence a person's ability to succeed especially in their career and what we're going to do is we're going to work back from these so for each of these items we actually want to rate and score this hypothetical person we've imagined out of 10. so you don't have to do 10 out of 10 for everything of course that's going to be the best but it's not always going to be necessary to achieve this goal like you don't have to have the literal perfect specimen of a human to achieve a goal that is not you know like to become you know like a crazy astronaut person although if your goal that you're using here is to become an astronaut maybe you do need to have 10 out of 10 for everything so by the end of this you're going to have a list of all of these ratings 7 out of 10 for some of them six out of 10 for some 10 out of 10 for some of them and you'll have this character profile file of this ideal person that you want to craft yourself into becoming so that you can reach this goal for each of these items as well as scoring them also leave a little comment about what that really looks like so that's specific you want to be able to look at this list in the future and be really really clear about what particular aspects this person is good at and what they're bad at so when you know the item says time management gives the rating for time management but make a few comments and remarks in terms of what time management means for you or means for this person and why they're so good at it now in addition to this list of items another thing that we know really helps you to succeed and thrive in whatever goal that you have planned is to like this video And subscribe so anyway for me when I did this I found that I had some high priority gaps and especially my business knowledge and Acumen and my networks and some of my qualifications so that formed part of the plan for my next steps so step three after we've done this is we're going to look at our current state and use the exact same items and do the same process so how do we score ourselves on each of these items and leave a few comments rationalizing and explaining why once we've done this we're ready for step four which is to do a force field analysis which is a type of analysis that we can do that helps us to identify the barriers and drivers to helping us achieve our goals so on one side of this force field you're going to draw the barriers so these are the things that would prevent you from developing your skills and your attributes and your knowledge and whatever you need to do to grow into becoming this person what are the things that stop you and prevent you on the other side we put down our resources when we think of resources we can think of the physical resources tangible things such as access to books and and technology and the courses and you know like literal physical things that you can use and activate to help you achieve these things as well as the time we have available to invest the money we have available to invest and the people we have access to so you can think about resources in these four categories and then finally we're ready for step five which is to then create the plan and this is focused on the immediate Next Step the idea is how do we use the resources at our disposal to overcome the barriers we have identified and help us incrementally slightly improve and develop closer to becoming that ideal person that we have already envisaged envisaged in envisaged envisioned um thought off at this point when you're making these really really short-term goals like what can I do in the next day or the next week that's going to get me that one step closer you can use you know smart goals or any other type of goal setting framework here's an example of smart goals that I just picked up off indeed.com I'm not going to go over smart goal setting here there is 100 million other videos that can explain this it's a very well established framework of goal setting you've probably already heard of it yourself using this type of goal setting can help make your goals more actionable more measurable more concrete and therefore overall more likely for you to actually reach it and achieve it so this is the situation where you might use one of those types of techniques and so this is really the summary of reverse goal setting and you can see why it's reversed because we're starting with the goal where we want to end up and then we're thinking about what type of person would be able to achieve that with carrying that back in terms of what are the attributes and the skills and the knowledge and the assets that this person has that allows them to so easily achieve this goal and we're saying well how can I become that person so that achieving the goal becomes an inevitability for us and then we can take the immediate Next Step which is to bring ourselves a little bit marginally closer by using reverse goal setting settings as a very process oriented very actionable way that gives us the highest chance of success for achieving our goals but wait there's more there are actually three more things that you can be spending extra time doing we're spending a little bit more time on these three things will massively increase your chances of being able to achieve your goals the first one is in spending more time to learn about the actual goal itself obviously in order to know what type of person you need to be to achieve these goals you actually need to know about the nature of the goal so if you are unable to accurately identify the attributes and how good you need to have those attributes then it affects everything else with regards to your plan and that can mean that you spend a lot more time and energy either developing skills that are actually unnecessary or maybe neglecting skills you didn't realize were really important to develop so spend some extra time to talk to people gain more information about this do some reading and here's a pro tip for you observation is often better than Insight a lot of people often don't actually know why and how they were able to succeed and I see this a lot especially in learning a lot of top achieving Learners they're not really aware of what it was that helped them do well academically or in learning they're not able to distinguish between what methods were useful versus what methods they used but actually it wasn't that the method really helped but that they were able to just make it work for them because it was smart enough or there were some other factors at play so just observing what people that are successful are doing that is unique to them can actually be more helpful than just taking what they say at face value sometimes likewise for number two I would really recommend that you spend more time to learn more about yourself again if you're not able to correctly rate yourself then your plan is going to be wonky in all sorts of ways it's worthwhile to spend the months or even longer actually observing and reflecting on the methods and the skills and the techniques and knowledge and assets that you use or have access to so you can give yourself a proper rating when you do this process you may actually realize and and learn more about your methods and techniques than you realize and that in itself is actually going to be hugely beneficial for you and because both number one learning about the goal and number two learning about yourself affect every other part of the plan moving forward spending that extra month for example upfront pays off big time and preventing wasted time and effort especially if you've got a goal that is going to take like one or two or three or four or five years and finally number three is to spend more time to like these videos I mean uh spend more time to play want a realistic timeline one thing that I would strongly recommend that you do is to look at each of your items and think how long would it take to improve each item by just one so if you're a three out of ten right now but you want to get to a seven out of ten then how long will it take to get from three to four then four to five and five to six on and so forth until you hit seven or whatever your goal is you then want to think about how many items you can realistically improve simultaneously because you can't cover everything all at once in my experience having done this activity and taught this technique to so many people now I can say as a general rule of thumb that it's not easy to improve on more than two or three items at a time otherwise you end up getting overloaded and you risk not making good progress on anything and there's another rule of thumb I've generally observed that you can improve each of these items by one out of ten each month if you're diligent but then it starts to slow down so it might take you months to go from seven to an eight and then seven more months to go from an eight to a nine years to go from nine to a ten and this is just the nature of becoming an expert getting to 10 out of 10 for anything takes years not months now when you do these three activities especially the last one you will find probably that in a lot of cases you may not actually know how to improve in the first place like you're three out of ten now you need to get to seven out of ten but you don't actually know how to go from three to four in the first place if that's the situation then the most important thing for you moving forward is your next step needs to be to learn how to improve otherwise you really can't plan for anything you're not going to be able to make an estimate of how long it's going to take you you'll only be left with an intention and this is a trap and a lot of people fall into when they're goal setting is that they think well I intend to get better but they don't really have a mechanism for how that Improvement is going to take place time passing does nothing is what we do in that time that matters and speaking of time you may also find that when you do this activity the time that it takes for you to get to your desired attribute profile is longer than the time that you have available to reach that goal if this is a situation you may need to reconsider your goal and I know that that can be really really challenging but it's just the truth sometimes if you leave things too late there's only so much that you can do I'm not saying give up on the go but at least you'll have to acknowledge that there's going to be an element of luck in trying to reach that so in my example because I'd already been doing the coaching and the learning Consulting thing for years six or seven years by the time I was doing this plan for myself the specific knowledge around learning science and the coaching practice there wasn't a big gap there a few things that I wanted to refine and so it was realistic for me to try to refine that within a year if that wasn't the case and I'd only been doing this for like one or two years then creating a life transformative program for people to use all around the world within one year that wouldn't have been realistic so I would have had to reconsider my goal in the first place now a common example of where I see this is with people setting really short-term goals for these exams and this is the reason at the very beginning why I said use a longer term goal a lot of people will use an exam in like three or four months and they're really deficient on a lot of these attributes so it's not very practical or realistic for all of those things to improve the amount that they need to in just three or four months in that situation it may actually be wiser to forego that exam and just accept that you're not going to do very well in that exam but then work on creating a plan to develop each of these skills so that next year if you can reset that exam you absolutely crush it but then now you're actually prepared for every exam and every year that comes up after that because your skills are fundamentally higher whereas if you were to create a plan that only optimizes for that short-term goal then your plan may just be like study study study study every single day and then if you aren't able to do well because you didn't have the skills and the attributes now you've actually failed at reaching your goal in the first place and also you didn't develop any other skills needed to tackle it moving forward so you kind of like screwed yourself twice there and again it's really really really hard to reconsider a goal I fully get that and that's like a personal decision I'm going to leave that up to you but just some thoughts to think about now to make this all a little bit easier for you let me help you with some of those first few steps if you want to learn a little bit more about how you can improve your learning efficiency and how to think about that and what you can do to set up a plan then I would recommend starting with this video here around how you can train your brain to become smarter if you're wanting to learn a little bit more about time management how you can improve that then you might want to start with this episode here where I talk about why time management is a lot of cases a little bit overrated and if you want a step-by-step guide on how you can improve almost all of these items in the fastest possible way then you may be interested in checking out my program at icanstudy.com everything that I've talked about in this video and a lot more is covered in the earlier modules of that program so you can check the link in the description to watch more otherwise thanks for watching appreciate your support see you next time [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Justin Sung

Views: 578,273

Keywords: justin sung, dr justin sung, studying

Id: bq1x659j8mA

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023