Just Start: Some Quick Thoughts About Goal-Setting

Hey all,

This was going to be a post called The Tiny Robot Maximiser (and you’ll still get that! Next week!), but since it’s January, and I’ve been talking to some friends about this stuff, and I realised that even though I’ve done a video where I mention this but not many people have actually watched it because it mentions piano in the title, I should probably talk about how I do goal-setting. There’s a thing on Twitter called ‘Say the obvious’ where people are encouraged to quote-Tweet with stuff that is maybe self-evident but actually maybe not to everybody, and so this is my attempt at that. Sorry if it’s too obvious: robots next week, I promise.

Now: here’s how I think about goal-setting.

We can probably all agree that vague goals are unhelpful: “I want to get in shape” is not as specific a goal as “I want to deadlift double my bodyweight”, and “I want to write a book” is not as clear as “I want to write a space opera from the perspective of a faceless hive-drone caught up in an intergalactic conflict it isn’t equipped to understand.” Lots of people like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) goals for this reason — they’re more clear, and seem more manageable.

The problem is, a double-bodyweight deadlift and a drone-based space opera are both good goals, and with a bit of finessing they can be SMART, but there’s absolutely no way you can guarantee achieving either of them: life can derail them, or they can just be harder than you thought they were going to. I think of these as performance goals: it’s easy to feel like a failure until you accomplish them, and then only feel good about actually achieving them once, on the day you get there, just before you start worrying about the next thing.

What I’d like to suggest instead is using process goals.

Process goals are the things you use to get to the things you want, and ideally they’re as close to completely-under-your-control as you can possibly make them.

So if your performance goal is a double bodyweight deadlift, your process goals might include eating 30g of protein with every breakfast and deadlifting at the gym once a week, along with a whole bunch of other stuff that will support your efforts.

If your performance goal is playing Maple Leaf Rag at King’s Cross station (this was one of mine, which I’ve now done), your process goals might be practising the sections you can’t yet do for 15 minutes a day, practising on at least two different pianos (you really don’t want to get used to always playing in the same place), and doing the piece, without the sheet music, once a week.

If your performance goal is writing a book, one of your process goals is writing just a little bit of what you think should be in that book, every day.

Process goals are simple. They help you move forward. And you feel good every single day that you hit them.

Sorry if that’s too obvious.

Have a great weekend!

Joel x

Stuff I’ve done

Video - What I wish I knew when I started piano

This one goes out to the new year enthusiasts — if you’re thinking about an instrument, maybe you can avoid making the mistakes I did. It’s also got a bit of that King’s Cross performance in.

Stuff I like

📖 Book - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This is one of those books that wraps dozens of should-have-been-obvious observations about life, relationships, and art into a page-turning, non-predictable story, and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to read it. Obviously, it helps that it’s about videogames — Zevin obviously knows a lot about them, and is really insightful about the ways they help us navigate life — but it’s also a love story that might make you think differently about love. If you thought Normal People was great but could have used more Donkey Kong, read this immediately.

📝 Webcomic - Life and Donuts by Pablo Stanley

My six-year-old recently realised that we’re all going to die, and since then we’ve had a couple of tearful (him, and me) conversations that remind me a bit of the conversations I had with my own parents at that age. It’s not an easy conversation to have! But if it comes up again, I might try using some elements of this webcomic, apparently inspired by answers to a Quora thread.

🎶 Hype Music - This Is The Day - The The

I watched Guardians Of The Galaxy 3 the other day — I think it’s maybe the best Marvel film in about four years? — and the soundtrack is just as full of lesser-known gems as the other two films’. This is one of the highlights — a bit more elegiac than my usual workout nonsense, but come on, it’s January.

🪶 Quote of the week

“There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.”
From Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Like this newsletter?

Please forward it to someone else! Also, if you’ve got a book or an article you think I should read, or something you think I should watch or try, please send it my way.

And if you haven’t already, please check out my YouTube channel, where I deep-dive into stuff like productivity, lifelong learning, piano and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Or follow me on Twitter, where I mostly post about films with pianos in.