I WAS WRONG - How I Set Goals

so for a long time i used to think that goals were a bit pointless what is the point of setting a goal if we can't control the outcome and we're just going to be unhappy until we hit the goal and then when we hit the goal we're just going to set a new goal why can't we just forget about goals and instead focus on just being satisfied in the present in the here and now but i am pleased to say that i was absolutely wrong about this and so in this video i'm gonna break down why i used to think that goals were pointless how i now approach setting goals and how i'm now thinking of goals moving forward in terms of setting goals for the new year part one forget goals focus on the system instead so for this youtube channel for example i've never really had any goals for it like i couldn't care less how many subscribers i have or how many views i get because all of those things are outside of my control and as the stoics would say there's no point in worrying about something that is outside of your control for me what was more important than having a goal of a certain subscriber count or a certain view count what was more important than the goal was actually the system to getting there so my system was of just i want to release at least one to three videos every week without fail and that's the only thing that i care about this is something that james clear actually talks about in atomic habits he says that if you want better results then forget about setting goals focus on your system instead for example if my goal is to get absolutely hench and become a gymshark athlete then just having that goal isn't really important what's more important is the system the process the working out every day the eating healthily the taking steroids not that bit and there's two main issues that i've got with setting goals the first is that they encourage us to focus too much on the destination and not enough on the journey and i'm a big believer of journey before destination as brandon sanderson would say and secondly goals restrict our happiness in a way because when we set a goal we're making this implicit contract with ourselves which is that once i reach this goal then i will be happy and that means that we're constantly attaching our personal happiness to these goals and so if we hit the goal then we just get a slight release of happiness and then we just set another goal and if we don't hit the goal then we'll be unhappy because we didn't hit the goal so because of all these reasons until recently i'd come to the conclusion that okay goals are a bit pointless let's screw the goals and just focus on the systems instead but i was wrong about this and actually in doing my deep dive live stream interviews with lots of cool people over the last few months i have started to change my mind about the goals thing part two how to actually think about goals one the goal is the compass you don't want to just have a system and process just for the sake of having what's it trying to what's the point of that like what's the direction the goal is the compass at the same time a goal by itself is isn't anything you need a system and process to get there it's you need both of them now yeah at the end of the day the system and process i think requires a lot more focus and energy and matters more but the goal is where you're trying to get it there's it makes no sense to try to say one is better than the other they work complementary they're perfectly in tandem that was august bradley who i interviewed in september and who's an expert on systems thinking he says that yes systems are really important but without a goal we don't really have a direction that we're going two a goal doesn't have to be a traditional smart goal a goal doesn't have to be a traditional goal like a goal could be i just want to be more relaxed in my life i want to reduce my stress stress level like that's a goal a peaceful existence yeah with no schedules on nothing scheduled on my calendar could be a goal like it could be you can pick the goal you want like any goal is a valid goal if it's what matters to you so if you just want to have a chill life yep frame that is a goal this is really important it's like technically traditionally we're supposed to think of goals as specific measurable achievable realistic time boundaries and all that stuff but what orchestra's saying is that we actually don't have to think about him in that way a goal of having a peaceful life or having an empty calendar or is this like completely legit to have as a goal three we all have goals even if we're not articulating them this was where august called me out on my bs when i said to him that well august i don't really think i've got any goals first of all i suspect i don't know you that well but i suspect you have some goals you just haven't articulated them but instinctively there are certain things you want clearly you're a hard-working ambitious person building interesting things that doesn't happen randomly by accident like whoops i built a million plus youtube channel how'd that happen no you had some things you were reaching for and so it's helpful to be explicit and intentional about them i think i i don't believe you don't have goals i i do believe you might not have clarity on them but i don't believe that they're not in you this was a really good point like i could convince myself that i didn't have goals but actually it was probably a failure of my imagination to actually articulate the goals that i did have four all our behavior is outcome oriented so in philosophy there's a concept called teleology and basically it's the idea that every human action is to create an end so like you and i right now we're both actually trying to create an outcome we're having a conversation which might be just the outcome is for us to learn from each other or it might be to produce this video every human behavior is to produce an end in psychology it's called perspective but basically perspective is the idea that the thing that makes us conscious human beings is that we can imagine a future and so for me when i say that i don't really have any goals for my youtube channel because i don't care about the numbers i just want to upload one two or three videos a week ben hardy is saying that that is actually a goal itself everything you're doing right now is in my opinion to achieve goals even if you're not admitting at their goals even if you don't want to call them goals you're getting up to produce youtube videos you know and so to me those would be called goals but what's in my opinion more exciting about that is the idea that you get to choose the future that directs your present and that's called living consciously five be honest about what you want i get the idea that goals can be limiting but the idea is that everything you do is to create an outcome anyways and so why don't you just be honest about what the outcome is that you want this is what i want this is what i'm going for it's okay if i don't i mean you can do whatever you want psychologically to make yourself feel better if you either achieve it or don't but the point is just to be honest and blunt that you know motivation is a lot more easily created if you're clear about the outcome you want and if you're explicit about it and flow is a lot easier if you're just if you're just focused on one thing at a time i think the whole argument against goals goes against human nature to be fully honest with you one issue that i've always had with goals is this niggling feeling that if you set a goal then you're just unhappy until you hit it like my goal is to become a gymshark athlete and so in a way i am actively choosing to be slightly less happy because of the fact that i'm not yet a gymshark athlete but when i said this to ben he again called me out on my bs because this is totally wrong six goals don't have to make you unhappy my major goal is to sell millions of copies of this book but that does not make me unhappy in the present and actually dan sullivan has a antidote for this as well he calls it measure the gain not the gap and it's an ebook i would recommend everyone read it's free he gives it away but basically he says rather than measuring yourself against your ideal you measure yourself against your former self you measure yourself against where you were so if you measured yourself against where you were three months ago you probably have made progress towards whatever goal you've made and if you're measuring yourself against your former self rather than your future self then you're always going to be recognizing progress and you're always going to be feeling good seven goals give you purpose this is one of the key ideas in man's search for meaning which is a book written by dr viktor frankl who was a psychiatrist who was in the concentration camps and survived and he wrote about the experience of his life and the life of his friends in the concentration camps in world war ii the thing that he figured out is that if we don't have a purpose towards our future like if we're not striving for certain goals then our present doesn't have any meaning either he said that what man needs is not a tensionless state but a striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal part three yin and yang so after all that i realized that i was wrong about goals i used to think that if you set a goal you're going to be unhappy in the present and if you hit the goal then whatevs and if you don't hit the goal then you're going to be sad about it but now i've realized that goals are actually useful for all these different reasons and it's really about the yin and yang balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance like it's totally okay for me to be fully satisfied with my life right now which i am but at the same time having a goal of becoming a gymshark athlete or whatever and this tension between these two states of self-improvement and self-acceptance we don't have to resolve it and apparently this is one of the key differences between eastern and western styles of thinking like in the west we are very keen to have a logical conclusion to every point and this is how i definitely think where it's like okay well how do i reconcile this idea that on the one hand goals are kind of legit but on the other hand i want to be happy with where i am and i used to think that i had to resolve this conundrum if we think about it more like yin and yang as like apparently eastern philosophers and eastern things would think about it it's like on the one hand you've got self-improvement on the other hand you've got self-acceptance and the two can coexist in harmony and it's really just about navigating a balance of the two rather than trying to solve the equation and come to the bottom of it all so moving forward i am definitely planning to set goals for the new year in terms of having this self-improvement aspect so i want to become a gymshark athlete i want to train in emergency medicine and maybe work abroad outside of the uk i want to get married and have four kids probably not this year but maybe at some point but the point is that all of these goals are just directions like if i actually want to hit them then yes the systems and the habits are what is important but if i don't have the goal then i don't have a direction to go in in the first place in fact one of my goals for the new year is to understand a lot more about how computer science works now when i was applying to university i was torn between applying to medicine and applying for computer science i went for medicine in the end which was actually a great decision and one that i don't regret but i still like computer science and i want to kind of take it a bit more seriously so getting more pro at computer science is the goal and the system that's going to help me get there is by taking online courses over at brilliant who are very kindly sponsoring this video if you haven't heard brilliant is a fantastic platform for online courses on maths science and computer science their courses are fun interactive and engaging and they teach stuff in a really first principles way that really helps you understand what's going on these days i'm taking brilliant course on cryptocurrencies which builds it up from the ground up and teaches you about things like cryptographic signatures and how this sort of stuff applies to currency like bitcoin and actually i lost about i think it was 30 000 pounds in 2017 on bitcoin and i'm hoping that i don't make that mistake again because now i actually wanna i'm you know understanding how bitcoin actually works if like me you're also interested in learning how to code then brilliant has a fantastic introductory and advanced course on python which is the world's most popular programming language if that sounds up your street and you want to join me in leveling up our collective knowledge and understanding of math science and computer science concepts then head over to brilliant.org forward slash ali and the first 200 people to hit that link which is also in the video description will get 20 off the annual premium subscription if you like this video about goals and you want to build better systems and habits which are the things that will ultimately help you hit those goals then you should definitely check out my video over here which is all about my summary and discussion about james clear's fantastic book atomic habits thank you so much for watching happy new year and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Ali Abdaal

Views: 398,842

Rating: 4.9590673 out of 5

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali abdal, how to set goals, goals, new years resolutions, how to actually set goals, how to set new years resolutions, how to reach goals, the importance of goals, why goals matter, do goals matter?, 2020 goals, 2021 goals, 2021, productive goals, targets, systems thinking, goals 2021

Id: 0rkRC728rIU

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020