Goals, Anti-Goals, and Habits for 2023 | #02

Goals, Anti-Goals, and Habits for 2023

No. 02 — read time 4 minutes

Welcome to The Soloist, a weekly newsletter where I share timeless ideas and insights about life, business, and art.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Family. Presents. Hot chocolate. What's not to love?

My friend Ilana would always say December is a "contemplative time". She's right.

Once Christmas and Hanukkah pass, and we go into the last week of the year (i.e. when nobody wants to work), thoughts start racing.

What am I going to accomplish next year?

How am I going to finally get in shape?

What am I going to do to better myself?

Ah, yes. New Year's Resolutions.

I have an open secret—I hate New Year's Resolutions.

I can't remember ever sticking to a New Year's Resolution. I'm not alone.

Stats show only 9% of New Year's Resolutions stick. That's bad.

At a Friendsgiving last year, a buddy of mine patted my stomach and said "looks like you've put on a few pounds". Ouch.

I weighed 181 lbs on November 28. By April I was under 160 lbs. By the end of June I completed my sprint triathlon.

I did this with a toddler at home and while working at an intense high-growth startup.

How? I followed the same approach I take to any big, hairy, meaningful goal.

Here are 3 frameworks to accomplish big things that stick:

Framework 1: SMART Goals

SMART stands for:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time Bound

Specificity is key.

Instead of "I want to get in shape" (super vague), make it "I want to be sub 15% body fat" (very specific).

If its specific than the way to measure it becomes obvious. The goal here is the ability to track progress over time.

Attainability is just your belief system of how realistic it is. Me playing for an NBA team is unrealistic. But if I wanted to make owning a private jet my goal (it definitely isn't), I'd say that's attainable even though a lot of folks would disagree.

Self-limiting beliefs are a real thing, so try to gauge whether the goal is theoretically attainable (what would need to be true for this to happen?).

Relevant relates to your values, dreams, and ambitions.

And finally, time-bound. There needs to be a Due By date.

In my example above, it was:

Lose 20 lbs and get below 16% body fat in 120 days.

To track progress I weighed myself every morning at the same exact time, tracked my calories in MyFitnessPal, and did a DEXA scan at the beginning and at the end.

Framework 2: Anti-Goals

Anti-Goals are powerful because its often easier to think about what we don't want.

For me, I don't want to be so out of shape I don't have energy to play with my kid.

I don't want to stress out about money.

I don't want to work with toxic people.

I don't want to look back on my life with regrets.

Those are my anti-goals.

Now I can flip those anti-goals around:

1. Be fit, active, and full of energy

2. Sleep peacefully at night knowing my family's finances are in order

3. Work with people that give me energy

4. Embrace adventure and randomness in life so as not to have regrets

These aren't SMART goals yet but they get the juices flowing if you're stuck thinking about what your goals should be.​

Framework 3: Habits

A few years ago one of my employees turned me onto James Clear and his book Atomic Habits.

If you haven't read it I highly suggest grabbing a copy.

Think of habits as the day to day actions that Future You does. Future You being the version of you that achieves the goal you set out.

In my example above, Future Me would probably be making time for exercise daily or at least 4-5x per week. Future Me would probably cook more at home instead of ordering DoorDash all the time. And Future Me probably opted for meals that were higher in protein and less likely to cause a blood sugar spike.

The trick with habits is that they need to be consistent.

So you need to eliminate things that make them less likely to be consistent, and also not stress out so much on changing your whole life in one go.

1% better each day is what we're striving for.

The following 3 graphics from James Clear's blog post tell you everything you need to know to understand how to think about (good) habit formation:

Takeaways

1. Create SMART Goals to have a solid plan

2. Use Anti-Goals to know what to work on

3. Focus on habits and consistency

I hope this week's newsletter was helpful. Saying I'm going to accomplish something and then achieving that thing is one of the best feelings in the world. Hopefully you'll have some big wins to share in 2023 after reading this. If you do, please reach out—I'd genuinely love to hear them.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Reply back with your goals for 2023, I'll reply back with suggestions to make them more actionable

P.P.S. Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!

​P.P.P.S. Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. If you save a lot of bookmarks on Twitter (like me), try dewey. —
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2. If you're looking for coaching on audience growth book a slot here.

3. I’m putting together a course on how to network online to grow faster. If you’re interested sign up here.

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