The 2024 evidence-based goal setting system in Notion (with template)
Pursuing our desires is a natural part of being human. We are wired to set goals, which is often depicted as a heroic journey with obstacles to overcome and determination as a vital aspect of the plot.
Goal setting, at its core, is a simple process: you decide what you truly want and take the necessary actions to achieve it. However, desires and their fallibility can make this process more complex. Desires can be influenced by others and can lead to a never-ending cycle of unsatisfactoriness, where fulfilling one desire does not bring any substantial change.
Moreover, goal setting can be daunting because defining your desires precisely can make you aware of your shortcomings if you fail to achieve them. The fear of experiencing negative emotions can discourage you from setting goals.
Despite these challenges, setting goals can be highly beneficial. It provides you with a direction in life and a sense of purpose. A goal helps you develop a vision, which motivates you to move forward one step at a time, keeping you intrinsically motivated.
How to set goals
One common approach to goal setting involves maximizing the surface area of the possible goals you pursue, so that you may feel less discomfort from the process because you do not come to terms with the finite nature of your existence. You hope to do many things during the days, which will leave many open doors for you and attenuate the possible feeling of unsatisfactoriness and potential boredom.
This approach does not seem effective, because the purpose of goal setting is to reduce the number of things you pursue in the infinite pool of possibilities you encounter every day in your life. This is an inherent tension within human beings, who are often trying to soothe the harsh reality of our finitude through manufactured busyness (see Oliver Burkeman, Time Management for Mortals for more details).
Yet, as highlighted by Dr. Andrew Huberman in this episode on goal setting, current scientific evidence points to the value of prioritization. Not many priorities at one time, but one priority at a time, to the content avoidance of all other possible priorities, which you may store for future consideration.
This concept is similar to the tale usually attributed to Warren Buffet, where the successful investor advises his pilot to write down all his goals, and then circle the 5 most important ones. All the rest become part of the “avoid-at-all-costs” list because they are distractions from the priority goals.
A priority goal can last about 12 weeks (3 months), or less, or more, depending on the nature of the goal and the most appropriate timeframe you know it will take to effectively pursue that objective. This means that you can re-prioritize your goal at the end of every cycle, and continue the process indefinitely over time to keep a focused mindset to your daily actions.
Sometimes, a goal may correspond to establishing a habit (e.g., training 4 times a week, writing once per day, etc.). In that case, you could move on to the next priority goal once you can prove and are sure that the habit is successfully established and an inherent part of your identity.
As pointed out by Dr. Huberman in the goals-setting episode, the most effective approach to goal-setting according to current evidence is this:
Brainstorm all the possible goals you may pursue on a sheet of paper. Then filter down the goals until you identify the most important one for you right now. This is your priority goal; the goal you will pursue for the first cycle. Consider choosing lofty goals, as they can be a source of higher motivation compared to smaller, less ambitious objectives.
Define the priority goal precisely. Include how you will track performance, how long the goal pursuit will last (12 weeks by default if you are not sure), how many days per week you will take action toward the goal, and how many hours per day. Make your vision as clear and practical as you can. The biggest obstacle to pursuing a goal is lack of action. Taking action toward the goal is the most important aspect of all of this. Defining exactly all these details will help you make your pursuit real and tangible. This is what distinguishes a goal from a mere dream or desire.
Write up all the micro-actions (verb-driven actions) that compose the action of goal pursuit. This involves what you will do to pursue the goal on the days established. Each goal can have multiple micro-actions. Be as specific as possible in defining the micro-actions. A micro action can be “Every weekday, I am going to write for 30 minutes in the morning after eating breakfast, where the first 10 minutes can be mere journaling, and the remaining 20 minutes involve writing content that will be part of my book.”
At this stage, you have a well-defined, vivid vision of the daily actions that you will take to pursue the goal. However, taking action is the most likely point of friction, because you have been developing beliefs and habits that may be holding you down over many years, and changing your identity through disciplined action is one of the most psychologically uncomfortable things one can do.
So, it is time to identify and write up possible points of failure and how you will guard against them. For each micro-action, what possible obstacles will you encounter along the way? What will stand in your way of taking committed action? This can be a feeling, a competing commitment, a limiting belief, or any other practical element that may create friction in your process. An obstacle can be “when I sit down to write, I feel completely blocked and don’t know what to write about.” When this happens, I will “merely begin journaling about how I am feeling, why I don’t want to write, and what I could possibly write about. If nothing comes out even after 10 minutes of journaling, I am allowed to stop writing for the day.”
Now your full plan is laid out in front of you, and the time to start taking action (the most important part of all of this) is very near - the time to take action is now, no need to wait. You can now define what success on your priority goal exactly means. What is the endpoint? What conditions will need to be there for you to consider the goal achieved?
Those are the key steps for effective goal setting, after which the action begins. During the whole action phase, it can be helpful to write down your priority goal on paper or digital system every day anew. Avoid the “post-it note fallacy”, where you stick a physical or digital post-it note somewhere for you to see every day. After a few days, that becomes part of the environment and naturally canceled away by your consciousness, until you won’t even remember the Post-it is there.
Instead, when you write the priority goal anew each day (whether on paper or screen), you actively remind yourself of the goal and bring it back to life within your brain, hence keeping its value as a priority goal.
During goal pursuit (action-taking), sometimes you will feel motivated, and sometimes unmotivated. Motivation follows action. When feeling motivated, you may visualize the positive new reality as you will achieve the goal shortly. When unmotivated, visualize vividly the negative consequences of not achieving the goal for a few minutes, and then take the necessary minimum effective action.
Finally, you may use a random intermittent reward system throughout the pursuit of the priority goal when you have completed the desired action for the day or achieved a goal. This involves flipping a coin. If it is head, you reward yourself practically or psychologically (with a positive thought). If it is tail, you merely continue with your activities for the day.
Goals setting Notion template
All of these principles are in the Notion template that you can find here. In this digital system for goal setting, you can follow all the steps outlined above in this post, centralized in one place and built for infinite scalability.
Automation - how to use the pipedream workflows included in the template
The Notion template includes two automation workflow templates, to make the system work well and reduce the friction of data entry. These automation workflows are built in Pipedream, which you can use for free. To set up the automation, you will find a detailed checklist on the usage guide of the template.
Automation workflow #1 - random intermittent reward
This automation flips a coin with a 50% chance of head or tail. It logs the outcome in a Notion database, which you can reference to decide on whether to reward yourself or not at the end of a goal or successful daily action.
Automation workflow #2 - automatic day of the week for action tracking
This automation automatically adds the day of the week to the new pages you create in the “Action Tracking” database. This database allows you to track your habits and actions that move you closer to achieving your priority goal.
With a systematized way of setting and tracking goals, you empower yourself to achieve your desires through disciplined action instead of mindless rumination. You may find out that what you desired is not exactly what you expected, or that it exceeds your expectations. Regardless, finding out by yourself through first-person experience may be more fulfilling than fantasizing about it.
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