How Goals changed my life

Hey guys,

You may not know me well, but I'm a huge productivity nerd. While being a student, I'm already trying to pursue my dreams and goals by working towards certain things, and what I've learned is that goals are vital for disciplined work.

Don't get me wrong, goals can be a bit misleading in a fundamental way. They may cause too much focus on the destination while the journey is more important.

When entrepreneurs sell their company, it often goes into some newspaper with the title “person sold his company for 15 million dollars!”. It is always interesting, but it regularly blends out the process it took that man to reach that particular event. Still, you should have some goals and make sure that they make sense. I tried to learn many skills, but I eventually realized that it actually wouldn't be that useful and worth the time. It emphasizes the principle that:

Around 70 days ago, I started my fitness journey. I almost exercise daily, and it made me feel a lot more healthy and energetic/happier. But at the beginning of my fitness journey, I just wanted to do it. But it often didn't really push me to go beyond my limits, which is important for muscle growth. Still, about 45 days in, I started tracking how many push-ups I could do every week to document my strength improvement. Furthermore, I wasn't able to do a pull-up, which also became a goal of mine.

So by setting goals, I tried to do more and more push-ups every time I tried. And soon, my first pull-up was done, then two and now three. Goals helped me to actually notice progress of my strength and forced me to go beyond limits every week. It also shortened the feedback loop (the return for effort) because I wasn't looking at my biceps every day/my motivation wasn't dependent on that factor anymore.

If the feedback loop of exercising was shorter by just getting a six-pack after the first ABS workout you did, then everyone would do it. Things just don't go that way. But luckily, as I mentioned, shortening the feedback loop is absolutely possible. It's just a matter of mindset and perspective.

Have an extraordinary week and I hope to see you in my next blog :)