
Ask HN: Failed to meet all my 2019 Goals, how to make sure 2020 is better? - loftyal
I only successfully finished around 35% of the goals I set. Multiple reasons - mainly due to not taking initiatives when I had free time to work on these (procrastinating) and secondly overestimating how much work some of these would take.<p>How have others dealt with setting goals, and how did they achieve all of them?
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animesh
Look into goals vs systems.

Here's the thought process, at a high level:

Goal - I need to shed 5 kgs in 3 months.

System - Everyday I eat healthy and do some exercise with no specific focus on
what to accomplish. I work toward a healthy living and at some point further,
I may shed X amount of weight. Important thing is that I do this activity
daily (or whatever frequency I decide upon).

Read the scott adams article on this.

[https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-
systems/](https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/)

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muzani
Don't pay too much attention to the goal. The purpose of the goal is to get
you to plan. Plans are worthless; the act of planning is invaluable.

Once you have the goal and the plan, design a process for it. It should excite
you. If it doesn't, you simply don't have faith in the plan and need to fix
the plan until it's something you're excited to do.

Sometimes plans are hard, and so get a mentor. A mentor can be as simple as a
book. Or sometimes pay to have an hour long chat with someone. But you need to
trust the process.

Then ditch the goal. Don't look at it. A runner doesn't look at their
stopwatch. Just have faith in the process and keep at it.

If you didn't do well that year, then you rip apart your process like a
machine and analyze what you did wrong or could do better. You're doing that
now. Just keep at it.

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a3n
There's a "theory" about moving residences: If there's a box that you haven't
opened a year after moving, you might not need the stuff in the box.

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karmakaze
Overestimating? As in you didn't take on a project because you thought it was
too big? If so plan to start things--starting isn't proportional to total
effort. Or do you mean underestimated as in things took more time than
expected? In which case you put too much on your list. Prioritize and remember
Warren Buffet's 'two lists' top priorities and other priorities (aka. avoid at
all cost) if you really mean to achieve your top priorities.

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matthewcanty
Cannot recommend Atomic Habits enough.

Basic theory is: Don’t focus on goals. Aim for processes which are easy,
repeatable and rewarding. Before you know it you’ve blown the goal out of the
park.

I had a job where an aspect was handling internal tickets for our team, a
shared responsibility. I paired my habit of making a coffee with reading an
open ticket. I also added a bookmark to make getting to the ticket list easy.
Team’s open tickets quickly reduced and I didn’t even make _closing_ them part
of my process... it just tended to happen.

Get the book though, it’s a quick read and packed with solid advice.

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Spooky23
I like to brainstorm and throw a lot of goals on paper and prioritize them.

For work I have “must do”, “should do”, “would be nice” goals. For personal
goes I do the same, but I tend to set fewer musts and more “would be nice”.

I do it that way to capture stuff on paper without incurring guilt.

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cvaidya1986
Pick one.

