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I WAS WRONG - How I Set Goals

2020-12-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, August Bradley, Ben Hardy · recording, 10:31 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: He changed his mind, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present, His medical past

Ali says he was wrong to think goals pointless: clips from his Deep Dive interviews with August Bradley and Ben Hardy (the goal is the compass, we all have goals, behaviour is outcome-oriented, measure the gain not the gap) bring him to a yin-and-yang balance of self-improvement and self-acceptance, and he names his goals for 2021.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introduction: I used to think goals were pointless, and I was wrong

  • ★★★ For a long time Ali thought goals were a bit pointless, since we cannot control the outcome and stay unhappy until we hit them; he now says he was absolutely wrong about this. — 00:00:00

    “But I am pleased to say that I was absolutely wrong about this.”

00:00:29 — Part 1: forget goals, focus on systems

  • ★★ Ali says he never had goals for his YouTube channel: subscriber and view counts are outside his control, and as the Stoics say there is no point worrying about that; his system was to release one to three videos every week. — 00:00:29 · stoicism
  • ★★ James Clear (quoted): In Atomic Habits, James Clear says that if you want better results, you should forget about setting goals and focus on your system instead. — 00:00:58 · James Clear, Atomic Habits
  • ★★ Ali's first objection to goals was that they make us focus too much on the destination and not enough on the journey; he believes in "journey before destination", as Brandon Sanderson would say. — 00:00:58 · Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★ Ali's second objection was that a goal is an implicit contract to be happy only once it is reached, so hitting it brings a brief release before the next goal and missing it brings unhappiness. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Ali says his Deep Dive livestream interviews of the last few months have started to change his mind about goals. — 00:01:56 · Deep Dive

00:02:04 — Part 2: how to actually think about goals, with August Bradley and Ben Hardy

  • ★★★ August Bradley says the goal is the compass: a system and process need a direction to point at. — 00:02:04
  • ★★ August Bradley says you need both a goal and a system: the system and process take more focus and energy and matter more, but neither is better than the other, as they work in tandem. — 00:02:20
  • ★★ August Bradley says a goal need not be a traditional SMART goal: being more relaxed, reducing stress or a peaceful life with nothing on the calendar is a valid goal if it matters to you. — 00:02:49
  • ★★ Ali notes that goals are traditionally meant to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound, but takes from August Bradley that a goal of a peaceful life or an empty calendar is completely legitimate. — 00:03:12
  • ★★ August Bradley tells Ali, who said he had no goals, that a million-plus YouTube channel does not happen by accident: Ali was reaching for things, and it helps to be explicit and intentional about them. — 00:03:42
  • ★★ Ali says his belief that he had no goals was probably a failure of his imagination to articulate the goals he did have. (hedged) — 00:04:11
  • ★★ Ben Hardy says all behaviour is outcome-oriented: in philosophy, teleology holds that every human action aims at an end, and in psychology, prospection, imagining a future, is what makes us conscious. — 00:04:11
  • ★★★ Ben Hardy tells Ali that even his aim of uploading one to three videos a week is a goal: everything Ali does is to achieve goals, even if he does not call them goals. — 00:04:11
  • ★★ Ben Hardy finds it exciting that you get to choose the future that directs your present, which he calls living consciously. — 00:04:58
  • ★★★ Ben Hardy advises being honest and explicit about the outcome you want, since motivation comes far more easily when you are clear about it. — 00:05:28
  • ★★ Ben Hardy thinks the whole argument against goals goes against human nature. — 00:05:28
  • ★★ Ali's lasting worry about goals was that setting one leaves you unhappy until you hit it. — 00:05:28
  • ★★★ Ben Hardy says goals don't have to make you unhappy: his major goal of selling millions of copies of his book does not make him unhappy in the present. — 00:05:28
  • ★★★ Ben Hardy recommends Dan Sullivan's free e-book on "measure the gain, not the gap": measure yourself against your former self rather than your ideal, so you always see progress and feel good. — 00:06:13 · choose to be satisfied
  • ★★ Ali takes from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning that goals give purpose: if we are not striving for goals in our future, our present has no meaning either. — 00:06:42

00:07:11 — Part 3: yin and yang, self-improvement and self-acceptance

  • ★★★ Ali now finds goals useful and sees a yin-and-yang balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance: he is fully satisfied with his life now while still having goals. — 00:07:11
  • ★★ Ali has heard that Western thinking wants a logical conclusion to every point, while Eastern thinkers, as with yin and yang, let self-improvement and self-acceptance coexist without resolving the tension. (hedged) — 00:07:45

00:08:14 — Goals for the new year

  • ★★ Ali plans to set goals for the new year, 2021, for self-improvement. — 00:08:14
  • ★★ One of Ali's goals is to train in emergency medicine and maybe work abroad, outside the UK. (hedged) — 00:08:14
  • ★★ Another of Ali's goals is to get married and have four kids, probably not in 2021 but maybe at some point. (hedged) — 00:08:14
  • ★★★ Ali says goals are just directions: to hit them, systems and habits are what matter, but without a goal there is no direction to go in. — 00:08:43
  • ★★ One of Ali's goals for 2021 is to understand a lot more about how computer science works and take it more seriously. — 00:08:43
  • ★★ Applying to university, Ali was torn between medicine and computer science; he chose medicine, which he calls a great decision he does not regret. — 00:08:43

00:09:12 — Brilliant sponsor read

  • ★ Ali says he lost about 30,000 pounds on Bitcoin in 2017. (hedged) — 00:09:12

00:10:11 — Atomic Habits video pointer and sign-off

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: August Bradley · Ben Hardy · yin and yang

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · Dan Sullivan · James Clear · Viktor Frankl

Projects: Deep Dive

Works: Atomic Habits · Man's Search for Meaning

Organizations: Brilliant · Gymshark

Concepts: choose to be satisfied · Emergency medicine · journey before destination · prospection · SMART goals · stoicism · teleology

Products: Bitcoin

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