The new way to set goals in the AI Era

The New Way to Set Goals in the AI Era

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In the era of AI, we need a more sensible way to measure our personal progress. Things are changing so rapidly that using the SMART goal method feels like a Stone age way of doing things. And for most people, let's be honest, it leads to failure or dissatisfaction.

Not to say that five year and ten year plans do not have their place, but in a world where things are changing every six months, how do we begin to grapple with what progress even looks like now?

I wanted to focus this newsletter on a concept that I discovered from Tiny Experiments by neuroscientist Anne Laure Le-Cunff. It has completely revolutionized the way that I look at goal setting and really productivity overall.

Let's be honest, one of the things that we're all looking for is a process or method that we can enjoy, something that we can stick with. Something that's not just another New Year's resolution that fizzles out.

And I think something that doesn't just require all or nothing because so many goals that are set for us externally or versions of goals that we see are basically really extreme versions that come at a cost of so many other things.

The Failure Loop Problem

One of the biggest issues I've noticed with most goal setting frameworks are that they ignite subconsciously a failure loop. And this is very dangerous because what this does is every time you do not reach a goal that you have set for yourself, whether it is small or big, it withers away at this trust that you have with yourself.

And this is dangerous because if you do this long enough, it's that feeling of not hitting your goals. Every year when you come back to New Year's time, you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't actually do that more than a couple of weeks. That feeling you experience that on a micro level, on a daily level, eventually you don't really desire more or you don't even question what more you can achieve. You feel a little more scattered.

Similar to downloading a bunch of productivity apps or habit apps, but then never really opening them up again. That is a common problem. That is faced with this big surge of motivation that we have for when we want to plan and think about our vision. But there's a couple biases that come into play.

One of them is the overconfidence bias. So when you are planning similar to when you do a to do list for the day, you might put way more items on there than you actually have the time to complete. And this is something that comes into play when we set things like SMART goals for ourselves.

Linear vs. Experimental Mindset

There's a wonderful chart on page 69 of this book that shows side by side, the linear mindset and then the experimental mindset. So the linear mindset shows the goal setting framework that is the SMART goals. And then the more experimental mindset is what we call the PACT method.

What I really love about this is the first part shows the response to uncertainty. In the linear mindset, not knowing the destination triggers anxiety. Having this uncertainty feels really bad versus in the experimental mindset, not knowing the destination triggers curiosity. It's kind of built into the process.

The mental model of growth has in the linear mindset, you've got ladders - lists of milestones with predictable outcomes. And then the experimental mindset has loops. So these are cycles of experiments with unpredictable outcomes. Notice we're comforting and welcoming the fact that uncertainty is okay versus it's a sign of failure.

Then the definition of success in the linear mindset you've got it being very outcome based. So it's a predefined success focused on a fixed destination. For example, publishing a cookbook by the end of the year. Now the experimental mindset version of that is output based emergent success focused on deliberate experimentation. One new recipe every week until the end of the year. Notice how that is very process focused.

The goal setting framework shows how you've got SMART goals in the linear mindset, which stand for specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and timely. And then in the experimental mindset this method is called the PACT method. And PACT stands for purposeful, actionable, continuous and trackable.

What's really cool is I found that this is like minimalism for your mind, so you can still do a lot of the complex things that you might be doing, but you need a simple way to frame that in your brain so it doesn't feel so overwhelming.

The way that you write this PACT is: I will [action] for [duration].

It sounds super simple, but this is what's so profound about it, is that the duration is the really important part here. So you are setting a certain number of trials that you are going to basically conduct for this experiment.

Instead of a habit that is never ending - "I'm going to write one recipe every single day for the rest of my life" - this duration of writing one recipe until the end of the year, or writing one recipe for 100 recipes, writing one recipe for 12 weeks or four weeks. One of the cool things about the PACT is that the shorter the duration, the better.

So you want this growth loop, which is the opposite of this failure loop to be a common thing. Where trial and error is very normalized. Because we know at this point how we learn best is when there are micro struggles and failures and things that make us really wrestle with certain processes. That's when our skills really develop and flourish.

It's normalizing that instead of when you look at SMART goals, you're constantly faced with what you don't have. And there's this not really being satisfied until you get there. And it takes your focus away. Even if it shifts by just a few degrees onto things you can't control and away from the process most importantly.

What I love about the PACT is it's very, very process focused. So if you set this experiment of writing one recipe for ten recipes, that is something that you can repeat over and over. So once you get to the end of ten, you can actually ask yourself, okay, what do I want to change? What do I want to improve, what do I want to refine? And you could repeat, technically, writing one recipe for the rest of your life like you would maybe a habit you're trying to ingrain. But what's really cool is it's something that you can pivot. It's something that you can refine. It's an experiment, and it's a trial.

As long as you complete the trial, as long as you show up, that is what success looks like. The trackable part is simply considering did you do it or not? You're trying to set up a scenario where you can answer that question. And of course you want to do this in a way that is very, very doable. It's not very resource intensive, and you'll actually be able to complete the trial.

The Plus-Minus-Next Method

This next tool is called the plus minus next method. The plus minus next method is simply three columns. And this is a way of observing and questioning and thinking about your own thinking. It's called metacognition. And basically this tool is something that takes like five minutes. You can do it weekly, you can do it daily if you want to. I do it periodically every couple days or so.

Plus column: You notice what are all the positive things I've noticed, or that have happened around this experiment or outside. And you basically list those things.

Minus column: What were the obstacles? What were the challenges? What were the things that didn't go as I expected? Notice how even the way that you question the minus part of this is not like an attack on yourself or a failure for not meeting this goal yet. It is very process focused. And that distance allows you to point out some of the things that are essential for growth.

Next column: This is where you actually implement certain things from the plus and minus section, where it feels like you're actually directly going to implement them in the next 24 hours into your tiny experiment.

So let's say my PACT is I'm going to work out for 30 minutes, every day for 30 days. And then I might back it off and do five days or three days a week or something like that. What I might note in the minus column is, "hey, when I worked out or when I planned to work out at the end of the day, I missed a lot of the workouts, I was not able to keep up with it."

So in the next column I might say, "okay, try working out first thing in the morning, try working out midday." And that might be something that I actually implement, but notice how you normally don't get the chance to frame it that way when you are using these other linear frameworks, where if you miss a day and you break the chain, all of a sudden everything is screwed and it's over.

Why This Works in the AI Era

The reason that I feel that this is so applicable in the age of AI is because things are changing so rapidly and we can no longer look at something and go, here's what I want to achieve in five years, because things may look completely different.

You can have a version of that. But then really, what motivates you day to day is going to be something process oriented like this. And I found that the serendipity that can occur from some of this, is very awesome. That's what we want to happen is cool stuff that comes out of an opportunity that we didn't expect because we were just so focused on the process.

That's what happened to me with my very first podcast, The Airborne Mind Show. Within a year of doing that show once a week, I got my dream job in the Bay area coaching Fortune 1000 executives, athletes, and high performers from all walks of life. That is something that I could not have planned or predicted. It's something that was born out of just me trying to keep up with doing one episode a week on the show at that time.

The Diary of a CEO is an example that was listed in here. The CEO, Steven Bartlett, he basically decided that he wanted to write a tweet, screenshot the tweet and share it on his Instagram every single day. And what that turned into after a long time was 2 million followers. And it of course, wasn't just from doing these written tweets. He has crazy epic shorts and all that stuff too. But it's the idea that he really got people connected to him through his writing by committing to this process of sharing his writing every single day, and he did this at 7 p.m. every single day and spent about an hour doing it. So invested that hour.

And he did that, I believe, for a year before it turned into something pretty substantial.

Becoming a Scientist of Your Own Life

The coolest thing about all this is you become a scientist of your own life. You set up these growth loops and you experiment for life. You're going to be doing this forever. And so this allows you to do things I found even on like a ten day or seven day basis, where I'm going to run this experiment for seven days, I'm going to know what happens, and then I have a chance to actually reflect and run the next seven days, maybe slightly differently. And see the results of that. This is something you would not always get the chance to do in traditional frameworks.

And it reminds me of my programming days when I was writing fitness programs for clients all over the world and for gyms as well. And the way that you would structure these programs week to week, they would build upon each other. And you would have these testing periods of, hey, every two weeks or so, we're going to observe what happened in the past two weeks and were our assumptions correct? And so similar to that you're applying a similar type of philosophy to your own life and the things that you want to achieve.

So I think what's exciting about this is when you design your PACT, it gives you the space to actually think like, what's a tiny thing I want to experiment with? Similar to the author here, experimenting with a writing career, she wrote an article every single day, Monday through Friday. Because she had no other commitments at the time. And then was able to back that down to basically three times a week and then eventually once a week without lessening the impact. And she's able to still do that. And it's flourishing years and years later.

This is a process that I think you can implement immediately. I really recommend you check out the full book, Tiny Experiments by Anne Laure Le-Cunff here.

What tiny experiment will you start this week?

In your corner,