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How To Actually Achieve Your Goals in 2026 (Evidence-Based)

2024-12-20 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 14:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Ali gives five quick, evidence-based ways to stack the deck towards achieving your goals: write them down, look at them every week, monitor your progress, visualise obstacles with mental contrasting and the WOOP method, and tie each goal to an identity.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Why five easy evidence-based things stack the deck towards your goals

  • ★★★ Ali says what mostly separates people who achieve their goals from those who don't is the action they put in, but five straightforward things from the science stack the deck in your favour. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Ali describes Jim Rohn as a multimillionaire US success coach who was completely broke at 25 and was then mentored by a business tycoon, Mr. Shoaff. — 00:00:58

00:01:12 — Strategy 1: write your goals down, from Jim Rohn's list of goals to the Dominican University study

  • ★★ Jim Rohn (quoted): Jim Rohn tells how his mentor Mr. Shoaff asked to see his list of goals and, when Rohn had none, guessed his bank balance within a few hundred dollars; that day Rohn became a student of setting goals. — 00:01:41
  • ★★★ Ali cites a Dominican University study that compared writing goals down with not writing them down: those who wrote their goals down were around 42% more likely to achieve them. — 00:02:49
  • ★★★ Ali's first evidence-based strategy for achieving your goals is simply to write them down; the format does not really matter. — 00:03:18
  • ★★ For the last couple of years Ali has kept his goals in a Google Doc he named goalkeeper. — 00:03:18 · Google Docs
  • ★★ Ali sets quarterly goals, which he calls quarterly quests, rather than annual goals: three or four every three months, because with more than four he makes progress on none of them. — 00:03:18

00:03:47 — Strategy 2: look at your goals every week, the reticular activating system, weekly reset and morning manifesto

  • ★★ Ali describes the reticular activating system as a bundle of nerves at the base of the brainstem that filters what the brain pays attention to, generally based on your goals and priorities. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ Ali's example of the reticular activating system: once you set the intention to buy a Fiat 500, you start seeing Fiat 500s everywhere, because your brain is more likely to notice them. — 00:04:16
  • ★★★ Ali's second strategy for achieving your goals is to look at the goals you have written down every week, if not every day. — 00:04:45
  • ★★ Ali names three goal-setting mistakes: not setting goals at all, not writing them down, and setting goals at the start of the year and never looking at them again. — 00:04:45
  • ★★ Ali reviews his goals once a week: his weekly reset has a journaling prompt asking what his quarterly quests were and how they are going, and each week he also sets three main priorities. — 00:05:15 · weekly review
  • ★★ In his daily morning manifesto journaling practice, Ali asks what his weekly priorities were and how they are going. — 00:05:15
  • ★★ Ali says looking back at your written goals or priorities takes about ten seconds a week and is so needle-moving that he is amazed more people don't do it. — 00:06:13
  • ★★ Ali says he still sometimes forgets his weekly reset; when a couple of weeks pass without looking at his goals, he has been less consistent with them. — 00:06:13 · weekly review

00:06:42 — Sponsor read for HubSpot's newsletter report

  • ★ Ali has had his own email newsletter since April 2018, over six and a half years, and has sent it every week. — 00:07:12 · Sunday Snippets

00:07:41 — Strategy 3: monitor your progress, with red, yellow and green project checks in Things 3

  • ★★★ Ali cites a meta-analysis of about 138 studies with nearly 20,000 participants which found that regularly monitoring your progress improves your odds of reaching your goals. (hedged) — 00:07:41
  • ★★ Once a week, when he updates his project list in Things 3, Ali marks each project green (on track), yellow (a bit off track with a plan to recover) or red (off track without a plan). — 00:08:39 · Things 3
  • ★★ Ali splits his projects in Things 3 into work and life; his work projects include the company relocation, LifeOS, the mastermind and learning AI agents, and Irem and Angus are team members he delegates to. — 00:08:39 · Things 3, Angus (general manager)
  • ★★ While writing his book Feel-Good Productivity, Ali monitored his progress by word counts for specific chapters, to make progress more visible. — 00:09:18 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali says monitoring progress also makes working towards a goal feel better, like the levelling-up bar in a video game. — 00:09:18

00:09:47 — Strategy 4: visualise obstacles, mental contrasting and the WOOP method

  • ★★★ Ali's third strategy is to monitor the progress of your goals: it takes little time, and not doing it leaves free goal attainment on the table. — 00:09:47
  • ★★★ Explaining Gabriele Oettingen's mental contrasting, Ali says people who spend too long visualising having achieved their goals are in some studies less likely to achieve them, while also contrasting the goal with obstacles boosts goal attainment. — 00:09:47
  • ★★ For the wish and outcome of goal setting, Ali names the GPS system as his personal favourite, alongside facts, feelings and functionality. — 00:10:27 · GPS: goal, plan, system
  • ★★ Ali's WOOP example for a goal of writing his next book by mid next year (2025): obstacles are lack of time, running out of ideas and demotivation; the plan is a three-hour calendar block each morning, brainstorms with his team and VoicePal to write by talking. (hypothetical, hedged) — 00:11:09
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth strategy is to visualise obstacles and make a plan with the WOOP method (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan): each time you set a goal, spend three minutes on what could get in your way and how you will overcome it. — 00:11:38

00:12:08 — Strategy 5: tie your goals to an identity

  • ★★ Ali cites a voting study: people asked "will you be a voter in this election?" were far more likely to vote than those asked "will you vote?", since the first is an identity and the second an action. — 00:12:08
  • ★★★ Ali's fifth strategy is to spend an extra 20 seconds tying each goal to an identity. — 00:12:08
  • ★★ Ali's goals include improving his bench press and reducing his visceral fat, as he wants to live longer and healthier and has been reading Outlive by Peter Attia; he says tying them to the identity "I am a healthy person" makes him likelier to stick with them. — 00:12:36
  • ★★ Ali says leaning into the identity "I am a YouTuber" is what let him stay consistent with making YouTube videos in the tough times. — 00:12:36
  • ★★★ For ages imposter syndrome kept Ali from identifying as an author or writer; once he leaned into that identity, deciding in the mornings to do some writing became much easier. — 00:13:06 · imposter syndrome
  • ★★ Tony Robbins (quoted): Tony Robbins says the strongest force in human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves. — 00:13:35 · first in: 2024-06-06, What Identity Do You Want To Embody? 🫵
  • ★★ Ali says you stay consistent with how you define yourself: as a procrastinator you stay one, while defining yourself as a YouTuber or, past imposter syndrome, a high performer makes you more likely to act like one. — 00:13:35 · imposter syndrome

00:14:04 — The remaining mistake of setting too many goals, and Slow Productivity

  • ★★ Ali says that even with all five strategies, one mistake remains, setting too many goals; Cal Newport's Slow Productivity makes a strong case for doing less but better, without burnout. — 00:14:04 · Cal Newport

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: identity-based habits · mental contrasting · reticular activating system · WOOP

Also: People: Angus (general manager) · Cal Newport · Gabriele Oettingen · Irem · Jim Rohn · Peter Attia · Tony Robbins

Projects: Life Operating System · Sunday Snippets

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Outlive · Slow Productivity

Organizations: Dominican University

Concepts: GPS: goal, plan, system · imposter syndrome · morning manifesto · quarterly quest · stacking the deck · visceral fat · weekly review

Products: Google Docs · Things 3 · VoicePal

Also centred on identity-based habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results - Atomic Habits by James Clear · I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to · What Identity Do You Want To Embody? 🫵

Also centred on mental contrasting: Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You · How to Be Effortlessly Disciplined: 5 Mindset Shifts

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