What are your goals in life?
I'm thinking about building a simple website where people can post their goals / dreams / bucket list ideas, then get advice and motivation from others. I think it would be interesting to see if any common themes emerge, and find out what really inspires us!
What do you think? Would you be happy to share your life goals if I went ahead and built the site? What info would you like to see on there?
Works well before you get a kid..
Spot on :D
I suspect people would use it as a chance to dream and vent but barely follow through. Some goals often stay as goals because they're half-baked, pie in the sky, or have competing priorities. The wisdom of the masses isn't going to easily overcome budgets/costs, convincing partners, factoring in the kids, accommodating family/friends, etc.
Unless maybe the angle was something like: people proclaim their grand dream, and the masses brainstorm a realistic, affordable shortcut of addressing just a tiny part of it, just to scratch the itch.
e.g., if one of my dreams is to live in the country, the response might be to rent a place for 3 months rather than sell up and move completely.
It's hard to anticipate the superset of goals and dreams.
Mine, for example, would include: living overseas for a bit (I'm well-travelled but would like to stay put for a few months), living in the countryside, roadtrip in a van for a year, walk across a country, become more self-sufficient with my side projects, etc. But I'm married with three children, and these are difficult goals to achieve with all of that to accommodate (childcare, schooling, wife's work/family/friends).
You’re right, I think this is the biggest problem with “bucket lists.” It’s so easy to dream but extremely hard to follow through on anything.
However I think there is value in letting yourself dream and think about those crazy goals!
This is actually one of the reasons I want to build the site. I’m working on a calendar app that will help with time management and achieving goals, but it needs to work in a way that is realistic. Too many systems forget we also have “life” stuff to think about.
If we can figure out what’s needed to achieve our life goals as a community, I can then feed this knowledge into the product and hopefully help a lot more people!
As someone who has tried to live with this kind of systems for years, and has had moderate success/failure with lots of things I think this sounds like a great idea if you manage to pull it of. I have tried using excel/printed schedules/to do lists/daily trackers (never managed to follow with them though)...
One way I feel it could work is by separating it into abstraction/time layers:
*Use a habit planner to keep them on check.
Like @Isaac said, the main problem with this stuff, is the "abstract" nature of many peoples dreams. But if you granulate it into levels I think it can work out.
i.e:
Life Goal: Be a great tattoo artist.
b) Tattoo 100 great pieces on people
c) Create a website to promote myself and find clients
d) Write website content
d) Buy Wordpress template
c) Make a portfolio of X drawings to show to clients
d) Edit/clean all pieces drawing scans etc...
c) Have a desirable drawing level
d) Draw 100 back pieces (Totals tracking)
d) Draw every weekend (Habit tracking)
Hope it helps. In my own experience at last I got overwhelmed trying to control so much stuff and finally resorted to just using Wunderlist with 3 lists: Life, Year and Inmediate.
Life - Very abstract, like my "compass"
Year - Actionable goals I can accomplish in a year with hard work
Inmediate - Stuff that keeps evolving to get me to year goals.
But even if simple, definetly having them written down makes a ton of difference.
As of getting the social part in, I think where it would really help me is in getting the actionable tasks defined. For example one of my goals is: Become a good web developer. I see how having people recommend me stuff/helping me to define a series of steps on how to get to it (study patterns, learn unix basics etc...) would help a lot. Learning from the experience of other people can get you a lot of steps ahead in no time.
Best of luck with the project!
Great post and example about breaking down goals into smaller things.
I think if you continue to this logic, you'll end up here: to become good at XYZ, you have to make time every day to practice the skill.
If your goal is to become a good web developer, you HAVE to program. And you have to do it consistently.
It's just like athletes. They practice ALL the time. And that's how they get better.
Here is a great coding course if you are looking for one: https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/
Here's the rub though:
When you do it sit down and code everyday, it'll eventually just become part of your daily routine. However, in the beginning, it takes an incredible amount of discipline to consistently sit down and put in the time.
I believe that accountability buddies are a "hack" that'll help you follow through more consistently especially when you are starting out.
Check out my project, Tribe of Five (www.tribefive.me) if you are looking for an accountability buddy.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Thank you for your advice and ideas, this is extremely helpful!
Would you be willing to give me some feedback on the app once I have something more substantial together? It sounds like you've been disappointed by similar apps in the past and I really want to create something that helps people achieve more
Have you seen https://www.aha.io/
It’s used to track long term company goals and then map them into smaller and smaller goals down to sprints and stories.
Very good parallels to the parent’s suggestion around personal goal tracking.
Wow I can’t believe I’ve never came across this before. It looks really good!
Sure! tell me whenever you have something to test.
Yeah I have tried a lot of stuff regarding this topic during the years, more than happy to help you out :D
Hey James,
I'm tackling this problem by getting people to focus on small daily habits. We use the power of accountability to drive people to follow through to read / journal / meditate consistently. For reference, my project is here: www.tribefive.me
Ultimately, the idea is that if you focus on the small things first, then you'll be in a better place to make moves on the bigger things next.
The main problem I've identified when you start at high level goals / dreams is that there aren't any actionable next steps.
Example of top down approach: I want to build a product that generates $100k revenue per month
Next steps: crickets
Counter-example of starting bottoms up: I want to read more consistently
Next steps: start reading for a few minutes everyday
What might happen next: you get inspired from the book you read, and then it takes you ONE MICRO step further on your journey.
Continuing with the second example, the changes are so small day-to-day that you can barely feel it at first. Over time though, it compounds. You read more, you get inspired more, and you start tinkering on your side project. You get stuck on your side project, and then you read more books, meet new people, get more inspiration and eventually build the MVP.
Eventually, if you keep focusing on doing the right things each day (get enough sleep, read, journal, meditate, etc), you'll find that bigger things tend to work themselves out too. And if all goes well, you'll find yourself firmly on a trajectory to build that product that generates $100k / month.
Of course, all of this is just my worldview of the best way to reach the big goals in life. I'm sure other people have a very different opinions.
To help you flush out your own idea, I suggest you look at Everest. They started from big goals and then tried to help you break them down into smaller goals. Unfortunately, they shut down when they couldn't find product-market fit.
Link to article about Everest: https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/18/everest-the-peter-thiel-backed-app-for-achieving-your-dreams-shuts-down/
Happy to chat more and share any lessons I've learned along the way. Reach out at jonthan@tribefive.me.
Cheers!
Jonathan
The angle you’re tackling this from is so clever. You’re basically helping people create serendipity, I love it!
Thanks for sharing the info about Everest, looks like there are some good lessons there.
Not in any way to discourage you, but this site does something similar to what you've described https://smartprogress.do/
Cheers for sharing that site. The idea looks great but the content seems to be quite low quality. It looks like people have posted goals and then forgotten about them :( This is definitely a potential issue I’ll have to think about!
As far as I understand they have two approaches. One is when people create their goals and share the progress with community. And another one is when someone creates a progress that helps achieve certain goal and people subscribe to that program.
I would love to share my goals and have help achieving them.
I've done several blogs recording them, and even a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PathofaTrillionaire
But I find that if there is no persistent follow-up system than it is just too easy to fail.
I've been ideating how one might create the 'perfect' productivity app.. I think a large part of it is in automating the follow up conditions and the tracking of your progress.
Feel free to listen to my podcast about it: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/14619131
But in short, that sort of product will need as little work as possible to add ones goals, but still get tons of value back by automating accountability and progress tracking.
I'm reminded of this TED talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself
I think on IH we mostly share the goal of generating a passive income or at least being able to live from our little* products. In short, enjoy more freedom and time for ourselves.
What you suggest already existed/s as 43goals and even though it was great it didn't work out... maybe you can find the twist that makes it work!
I try to dream less and act more. That's why I try to breakdown my goals into habits and try to execute on them EVERY DAY! No surprise that I came up with this :) -> https://everydaycheck.com
My current goal is to make a product that helps me (and others) reach our goals.
I am always looking for things like this!! Your site is really cool, but it is lacking important features for me. If it was an app that had mobile notifications or maybe even SMS, then it would be more effective than email notifications which are too easy to ignore nowadays.
Also, if there was a built in accountability partner feature where you can invite someone else to check up on you on a regular basis, that would help tremendously!!
Thank you! :)
I am about to release the mobile app which will have push notifications you can set :P
I'm also working on the idea of being able to share your board with an accountability partner / friend / family :) Lots of work to do still! :)
I look forward to that!!
You've almost described my project. The one wrinkle is that we help you find accountability buddies instead of asking you to do that.
Check it out: www.tribefive.me
Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
Awesome!! I will definitely check it out!
Ha ! My goals in life...
I really don't have a supreme goal but I try to define short term (1-2 years) goals because :
1- Short term are more doable
2- I can have more idea, and define more relevant goals with experience I gain from life itself.
I started working 4 years ago, have completely achieved a set of (relatively great) goals for now :)
I am searching for the next goal.
And finally : I just want to be rich :)
Make enough passive income to do what ever I want when ever I want... the dream!
Same. The funny thing is that at the current point in my life it would only take about $500 - $600 to pull that off but I'm still nowhere close after 3+ years of trying to make money outside of my day job. It is quite disappointing at times but all one can do is persevere.
Keep going dude! Focus on building stuff that solves real problems. I'm a firm believer that when you do, people will happily pay for the thing you've built.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Nice goal ;) I'm sure most of us here are after that same freedom!
What's the biggest thing stopping you from getting there?
In my opinion most people are stuck with the daily chore of life and being able to contribute to their goal in some meaningful way. If you could somehow find how people could stick to their goals, I feel that is a more needed product.
Think of new year resolutions and how many of us fail at it.
Hello, https://everydaycheck.com :-)