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Comment by mr-wendel | Hacker News Reader

My contrarian take:

1) Write out your goals in the form of a personal letter to yourself. Focus on the things you think are making you unhappy, not what you think will make you happy. Read it out loud in private. After that, hide it away for a while where only you will find it.

2) Keep your goals private. Especially keep progress private. Trying to stop smoking/drinking? Folks will notice, but politely decline to answer that infamous "how long since...?" question. Don't externalize the rewards.

3) Focus on very small results. Find a way to make them stick. Build on that and in time you'll find that amounts to a LOT more progress and personal satisfaction.

IMO build from the ground up and the fancy big goals will come more easily and naturally. You won't have to game it.

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Definitely agree with #2, especially with big goals (or what they call BHAG in the article).

Seriously, go around and tell people that you want to write a new york times best seller and see what kind of reactions you get lol. Talk about destroying your motivation quickly.

I think it's a trap either way. The flip side can also be just as problematic.

Having people sincerely wishing you the best, congratulating you on your initiative and dream-chasing tends makes it feel like you're doing something positive. All you've done, however, is talk about it and are already getting rewarded. That undermines real motivation to start/continue far too easily.

Let those rewards come naturally and from within with actual progress.

There was a discussion here on HN perhaps 8 or 10 years ago that led me to realize I was doing essentially that. I talked about getting in shape and other goals, and got an emotional high (of a sort) from the response I got and from thinking about what I would do to get in shape and be able to do once I was in shape. But I never followed through.

Then I shut up about it, and actually got in shape. And when I ran into some people who I rarely saw, and they were shocked by my 40+ lb weight loss and how good I looked, I got that same emotional reward but also the actual reward of being in shape and being able to do the things I'd only imagined being able to do.

Now I discuss what I'm doing with some like minded friends and we keep each other accountable (Hey, how's the running going? Made it a full 10k yet?). But I don't discuss it with other people in general unless it's brought up by them. A kind of happy-medium between the talk-too-much and just-shut-up-and-work modes of operation.

Another problem is subjecting your goals to backseat driving. I think this is most commonly seen with weightloss goals.

I also find that setting goals from ground up works better for me.

I find it very hard to believe in audatious goals so that makes them really unmotivating. But there are many directions where you can achieve small victories.

I think happiness comes from contentment more than achieving goals.

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