The Simplest Way to Set Goals You Actually Achieve

Inspired by James Clear’s Goal Setting Method, Motion helps you set better goals using 4 main strategies.

Hi friends,

Let me confess. I’ve always been struggling to set goals and achieve them consistently. I’ve tried multiple goal setting methods and habit apps in the past but normally I would find them pretty complicated after 1–2 uses. However, since I heard about James Clear’s Goal Setting Method, I’ve been using it actively since. Personally, I think it’s a super clean, simple, yet effective way to set better goals using 4 main strategies:

1. Besides asking “What do you want to achieve?”, it’s worthwhile to figure out “What sacrifices do you need to take in order to achieve your goal?”. For example, if your goal is to get stronger, your sacrifices would be spending 3–6 hours every week after work to exercise consistently no matter how tired you are. At the end of the day, the hard part is to accept the sacrifices required to achieve your goal.
2. Instead of focusing on goal setting alone, focus on designing a good system. For example, if your goal is to get stronger, your system could be to exercise 3 times a week and eat healthy every day.
3. For each day that you make a progress, you would want to note it on a calendar. You’ll have a chain after a few days. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks done.
4. Finally, only by measuring and clear tracking can you verify if you’re getting better. For example, if your goal is to run 10 miles after 2 months and your system is to run every day, you can start with a version that is incredibly easy, which is to run for 5 miles. Each time, you increase it in an incredibly small way such as 5.1 miles, then 5.2 miles, and so on. If you’re able to increase 0.1 miles each time, by the second months, you could cross out your goal to run 10 miles easily.

For the longest time, I’ve been using the above method on a piece a paper or a spreadsheet. Until recently I came up with the idea of putting together an app that helps me keep track of them better.

You can see my actual progress day by day here: https://motion.hoanhan.co/goals/hoanhan.

For more information on how it works, feel free to check it out at https://motion.hoanhan.co.

If you have any questions/comments/feedback, please let me know. Otherwise, have a good day!

Best,

Hoanh

Also published at https://hoanhan.co