#1077 - Chris Bailey - Why Some Goals Feel Effortless (and others hurt)

Given all of the work that you've done, why is it that some goals

feel effortless and others feel like a chore?

It's such an interesting question and that that was what I

Wanted to figure out with this book because I find with my own life

I'm productive on a daily basis. I'm focused on a daily as you would hope get given I study this stuff for a living

Looking at the research for this stuff for a living, but there were still

Goals that kind of fell by the wayside for me

You know, they're exercise equipment that was in the basement that I hadn't really followed through with

You know things that didn't really fire me up inside that I found that I wasn't really accomplishing and so

That that was what set me on this journey to write this book is seeing that we all have a sort of graveyard

Forgotten goals every single person on the planet does and so what is it that actually separates the goals

That we're able to achieve and follow through with

From the ones that were not and you you when you dig into the research on this topic

So I dug into the academic literature on this topic. I actually spoke with a lot of Buddhist monks who you know

No more about intentionality than

Almost any demographic I would argue even the scientists that study intentionality and goal attainment all in an effort to

Untangle that web of

Essentially goal attainment, right?

Why is it that we attain some goals and others they feel meaningless?

We procrastinate on them that we

You know, we kick them down the street for another day or they're just not something that fires us up inside and so

You discover a web of factors. You discover, you know procrastination is his one

Angle right we procrastinate on some things when we follow through on others

Values are another angle actually where you know values my eyes have always glazed over when I've heard the be drinking there

By the way looks pretty old. This is I this is one of the rare times that I'm drinking something that I'm not sponsored by this is a while

This is a bloom pop

Hold on. By the way, everybody everyone's like, I want to know what it is after procrastination. He was talking about values

So this is this is a bloom pop so my friend Greg Levakia

He owns this company called bloom. They do green strings and this is a

Like a poppy or an olipop if you're familiar with that. Um, is that a you think? No, I mean it takes us dude. Oh, okay

I'm Canadian though. Well, okay, you maybe it hasn't got there. You guys have just received the fucking wheel jacks. Um

This bloom pop stuff fucking reps dude. It's so tasty. I'm a massive fan of a chilled beverage. I'm a big chilled beverage guy

so highly recommend this is the

Raspberry lemonade and I'm not sponsored, but Greg wasn't my house for

The Super Bowl and he brought around cases and cases of it. So I'm nice. Well

For not sponsoring you first of all, but yes, there's this web of of things that

That affect how much how many of our goals we attain from you know procrastinate the answer

For procrastination to to values

To desire there's a lot of science behind desire as well and social contagion

And so you discovered just how many little nodes there are but a lot of the little things

That that either lead us to do something or not they seem to orbit around both a version

Which leads to procrastination as well as values which sounds like an incredibly

Fluffy topic, but I promise it isn't there's real science behind that too. Okay. He talked to me about the science behind values

Okay

Yes, so whatever I hear the word values my eyes have glazed over because I think you know some corporate

Consultant will come in and they'll give you a sheet of paper and there's a hundred values on it

And this is exactly what comes to my mind when I've heard it and

That there'll be a hundred words on the page and they'll say circle the the things that you value most on this page

And there'll be words like humor and grace and love and health and fitness

So you know all the things that we all care about

And so you know part of me will want to circle the whole page because I think how can I be against any of this stuff

But all you have to do to figure out values is go to Google scholar and type in values the research does come right up

There is

Incredible research in my opinion that was started by Shalom Schwartz

He's probably the world's foremost expert on values in the world where essentially there are 12 different

Fundamental motivations that we all have on a deep and fundamental level

So these vary from you know

Looking at you you self-direction right would be one aspect the accomplishment is another strong value for a lot of people

But they vary right pleasure is a fundamental human value as well

Which is one of my highest self-direction and pleasure are my highest

So I love going my own way doing my own thing thinking my own thoughts, but I love

A gigantic

Plate of butter chicken at the end of the day for example, so we all have the a different combination

Of these 12 values you know from self-direction to

conformity is actually a fundamental value to tradition humility is a fundamental value as well

To benevolence so kindness universalism

Which is protecting the welfare of people and of nature

I have the wheel in front of me here

So I'm cheating a little bit with the ones I miss so self-direction

Stimulation, which is loving novelty

um pleasure which is called hedonism in the research, but that has a lot of you know

Sultry connotations I guess

Achievement power is a fundamental human value curious. It's it's lowest overall

Cross culturally especially face is a value. So how you come across to other people? That's what that means

Security is a fundamental value. So that's personal security and societal security

That's been going up in recent years

Tradition got that conformity think I mentioned yeah humility universalism and benevolence

So these 12 fundamental values we are all a a distinct

Combination of these 12 we have some in spades like for me self-direction and pleasure slash hedonism and some are super low for us

So powers one of my lowest value conformity is one of my lowest tradition is one of my lowest

And you know like attracts likes so we're probably very similar listeners are probably very similar in these regards

But we all have

Different values that are strongest for us and these are what motivate us

The most on a deep fundamental human level

Goals on values though

No, no, so

So goals

The interesting thing about goals that I really

Started to believe in speaking with the monks you're right goals are not values

But I think goals and values are both almost intentions in our life

Right because a value is something that we intend to be over the course of our life right we intend to be

Somebody who is secure and so that might lead us to different

Priorities like fitness for example a lot of people invest in fitness for that value of security other people might value the

Accomplishment value and becoming fitter other people might you know to have a body that they feel proud of for example

and and goals are

Intentions as well right because there's something that we plan to do over a longer period of time

And values are intentions as well because there's something that we intend to be

And so this is this was the very interesting connection is

You know an intention is just a plan that we're going to do something and

So that values are a type of intention

Priorities are a type of intention right because there's something that we plan to be they kind of live between

Our values and our goals goals are a type of intention because there's something that we plan to do

Priority you know priorities our goals and also the plans that we make our intentions and the things that we

Are on our to-do list on a daily basis our intention

So this is the fascinating this is why the book is called intention because we have all these different

Layers of intention in our life and so by understanding these layers and

How they can work together with one another

That becomes a superpower that is one of the best things that we can do for goal attain

Okay, explain to me how all of these different things slot together

I imagine that you must have a hierarchy of the way that these things end up becoming a pyramid

Yes, oh yes, they are kind of shaped like a pyramid because you can think of the I'm flipping through the book

I don't what what what's the ratio between how many people

Listen to these things versus watch your interviews now that you can do

Video on Spotify

It the audio platforms aren't even

Insulated from having to look at us. So it's it's a it's pretty high. I mean if you even just

YouTube versus Spotify is nearly pretty 50 50 there's a lot of audio audio is huge

Yeah, it's audio is actually probably about 60 percent but um

Yeah, it's uh

A lot of people will be looking but you might have to describe what you're about to show

I was just flipping through the book while you're chatting and there's one of my wife's hairs on the book

For some reason

So this is something in the book that I call the intention stack. It's flipped on my screen

But it'll probably flip it looks like proper. Okay, perfect. So you can see

How's this for production quality holding up a picture from from elite absolutely elite

This is this is top tier s tier production quality right here

So you can see that the width of one of our intentions is

How long we we express it over right? So at the very bottom of this

It's kind of shaped like a like a funnel all most

We have our present intentions. These are the things that are honored to do this right

You know, we have a tiny intention to tie our shoelaces to go for a run or something

And then we have above the present intentions now now you got me all self-conscious because so many people watch your podcast

I think it how are my nails today because my nails are you look fantastic

So

Above the present intentions we have our our plans which are a bit broader

So the present intention to tie your shoelaces might fit into a plan to go for a run

And that might fit into even something broader than that which is a goal to run a marathon in a certain amount of time

Which might fit into a broader intention than that called a priority which might fit into becoming

Ultra fit which might fit into a value which we talked about so fitness value it

Actually it varies depending on gender which is interesting for fitness

Type priorities where as women are more likely to

See becoming fitter as an expression of pleasure right because they feel better in their bodies

Whereas men tend to err more on other values like security right feeling

Strong and stable in their body as well as values like accomplishment. So

So this is what I call the intention stack in the book

Where

There's this beautiful alignment that can happen when we have a goal that we set which is kind of a medium

Term intention in our life

When that is aligned with a value

That becomes far far more motivating than a goal that isn't so you know to keep with the fitness example

I think a lot of us build our

Fitness goals around the value of face right how we come across to the people right I want six pack

Abs by beach season so I can look incredible whatever whatever it might look like

Um, I like butter chicken too much for for goals like I'd like a true Canadian

Yeah, yeah, Poutine beaver tails, you know, hit all the Canadian staples

Poutine is actually do you know Poutine right yeah, okay? Okay, good. I'm happy that that is one of our

Strong cultural exports

But if you don't value face that goal to look a certain way by a certain amount of time

That's not going to be motivating for you

And you're going to find that you have this this headwind for the goal all throughout the process where

If you value security or benevolence for example having a goal to

Develop an incredible cardiovascular system for

Longevity and to be able to play with your grandkids late into late age whatever it might look like

That's far more aligned to not only your values, but because your values make up who you are

There's that motivational alignment too and so goals feels the far more effortless in that way

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Why is it the case then that intentions feel slippery

Because a lot of the time we have

We start off with an intention

And over time we end up doing things that aren't aligned with that intention

Now sometimes that's because we've genuinely upgraded

To something new our intention has become has been supplanted by a different one

But other times it just feels like we're not acting intentionally

We kind of look back on our day

And we ask ourselves what did I contribute to or what did I do

And you don't really know

What do you think about intentionality as an idea

Yeah, so that's the interesting thing about intention

So intention at the same time is not only the key to accomplishing our goals

It often leads us to not accomplish our goals

So we have the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions

And it's because

And I've really started to see goals as something different

Over the course of writing this book and chatting with the the scientist

But also more so chatting with the Buddhist monks

In writing this book where there's kind of a reframe

I think that we have to go through with the goals that we set

Where we see a goal as something that we are going to accomplish

Sure that you know that that we should compare our results to right

But I've started to view goals and I think this is a much better frame for them

As almost a prediction

Right every goal is a prediction

Where you believe your current and your planned actions will take you

Right and so

So often those predictions those goals which are really predictions in disguise

They turn into expectations

For how things will go

Which then turn into

Disappointment when we inevitably aren't predicting the future properly

Which we're horrible at predicting the future right

We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow let alone oh

We don't know if the hot water tank is going to break in our house and flood our basement and up and all of it

We don't know if a kid is going to you know get sick and have to stay home

We don't know how things are going to end up

But when goals are just predictions in disguise

I really think we have to internalize that idea and edit our goals as we go on

Right because we we develop this attachment to how we believe things are going to go

And so we set a goal we develop an attachment to it turns into an expectation which turns into

Inevitable disappointment usually

To take New Year's resolutions for example, which you know are have mostly fallen by the wayside by the time people are

Will listen to this podcast or watch it

You know 92% of us fail at the New Year's resolutions we make because we set them with these beautiful hosts

Right we're like

We're like you know that that classic trope of somebody who just arrived in New York City and they you know

She she hops off the bus and she's got this big smile on her face

And then you know cut to a year later when all the future that she didn't predict ends up happening and then you know

She's in her one bedroom apartment looking all sad or something

The same thing happens with her goals because they really are predictions in disguise

So holding them a bit more loosely and I think editing them and dropping them is also a really helpful strategy

Seeing them is not something that's fixed

But that we need to revise over time and then often drop

When they're not working out is an incredible strategy

For actually following through with them because we get closer to what we actually want

There has to be a difference between

Default intentions and deliberate intentions though. Yeah

Yeah, and this was a surprising

Thing that really came up in the research where you think of an intention as being always deliberate right

You know we intend to do something so we do it

Or not

Right a lot of the time

But there really are these two types of intentions so

Like I was saying a little bit ago and intention is just a plan that we're going to do something

And we set plans to do things both

Automatically right which are called habits right

So you wake up in the morning and maybe your phone wakes you up and so you you tap you swipe around between a few different apps and you respond

That's habit energy which is what monks call you know just living on our default intentions

but eventually

A time will come when you

Snap out of those default intentions that you have when you're lying in bed

You know you're not really feeling

What you're doing and so you think okay? What do I really want

Here in this situation. What do I really want to get out of my day?

What do I really need to accomplish? We all have these little moments of awakening where we go from

Being on autopilot mode

Just doing things in response to whatever is happening around us to tapping into something that is called our self reflective capacity

Which is our ability to look inward to where we really wish to be going what we really want to be getting out of a situation

And interestingly the that you know, so we go from living on default intention to these deliberate intentions

And we snap out of just this autopilot mode and really decide where to go. It's quite a beautiful

A transition actually and the more we do that the more

You know deliberately intentional we become and the more we end up accomplishing of what we want right we need these moments of awakening

Where do our defaults come from?

Oh, I love these questions um

They come from a lot of different places so I remember early on in the writing journey asking

Among where do intentions come from in general and he listed a lot of different sources that actually mapped on top of the research from

The social environments that were a part of right we have these this phenomenon of social contagion where you know

There's the classic saying we're the average of the five people we spend our most time with

We have our desire to avoid pain and experience greater pleasure

We have

You know, and so that leads us to you know walk up and say hi to somebody at a cafe or just connect with somebody or go on tinder

Whatever it looks like right um, but we have our biology too, which you know, it's probably connected a little bit with the tinder example

But you know, we're on a road trip for example, and we feel the urge to go the washroom

And so we set an intention to stop at the next you know, rest stop for example

Um, but we also have so those are the more

Default places that intentions tend to come from

But then we have this gradient where we transition from living on default

Living on autopilot mode just not really achieving the goals that we set but you know doing fine

We're kind of

Maintaining the life that we have we go from

Being on deliberate on or default autopilot mode to being more deliberate about what we do

So one of those places that intentions come from are the lessons we've learned right see listen to an incredible book

A great podcast you read a book you listen to Chris or the other Chris me you know sharing ideas or whatever it might look like

You learn something

And what that does is it puts a learning loop in your mind so that when you encounter

The same situation in the future you'll respond with a different

Intention from the one that you had originally

Um, and the deepest ones come from a place beyond that right I think what one of the times I was on in the past

You know, we were chatting about scatter focus this mind wandering mode where we just let our mind roam free

And we find that it wanders to the future a remarkable amount of time

48% of the time that our mind is wandering. It's thinking about the future

So you know, we're taking a shower for example

We're going for a run. We're going for a walk and we're listening to classical music or something

It with a notepad in our pocket and we always unearth ideas. We always unearth plans and we always tap into this

Intentional

Capacity that's in our mind to set different intentions

From the ones that we would be would be doing on default. So

It looks very interesting in practice where you know often becoming more intentional

To break out of the mold. It looks like more wandering

Sometimes because that gives us a different way to go

Then the one that we would be inclined to do by default

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Yet interesting the difference between

Giving yourself enough room

so that you can

Actually allow ideas to come to the surface. You can't white knuckle creativity to the line that I love

Um, so it sort of needs to emerge spontaneously

But also that gets perilously close to not taking the wheel

Which is just living on default intentions and not really having that much structure

And not really choosing the direction that you're going in or taking agency life happens to you

You don't happen to life and yeah

This uh, I think a lot of people struggle with the tension

between

structure and

Sort of serendipity might be a good way to to put it from a cognitive standpoint

Yeah, and it's very

Interesting the the little gaps in our day as well where that that's sometimes where our greatest intentions come from

You know, it's in these little moments between things. So you know if if we're having a conversation if we're right after this conversation

We pick up our phone or something

You know intentions might never occur to us that would be incredibly valuable to us

If you're walking to a meeting or something right you're at your office or something

You're walking to a different office in your building and on the way there you're on your phone

Intentions aren't going to occur to you because you don't tap into this wandering boat

So that there really are these two levels of wandering where we have the little gaps in between the things that we do

Right, especially before and after we do something that that's sometimes the most fruitful time to wander because

Beforehand you set an intention because you're thinking about the future and the the impending thing is so front of mind

That you're more likely to wander to it for about you know, then about half the time

It's probably closer to 75 80% of the time that you'll be thinking about the future just automatically

Setting intentions and after two right it's the learning loop where you can set different intentions or

Think of action items from a meeting or you know something as simple as that or you know, you have a meaningful conversation

So at a coffee shop with a good friend or something and so you can reflect on it on the walk back home instead of just

Filling your attention to the brim or distracting yourself

You'd actually internalize something that leads you to set different intentions

Later on and so so the default intentions that we have you know a lot of them are habits

but we need some

Reinforcement mechanism almost so that the more deliberate things we do can change our defaults if that makes that

Yeah, it does. I think I had a I got a bit of stick for suggesting that New Year's resolutions are important

On a podcast a couple of months ago

And I'm not saying that there's anything special particularly about

January 1st, but the point that I did think was kind of interesting is that people are already

Obsessing over the future and ruminating about the past. They're just doing it in an unstructured way

Yeah, right. It's just invading your life. Yeah, it carines into consciousness

You don't know where it came from you don't know how long it's gonna linger you can't get rid of it

Yeah, and then it leaves and you go I guess that was kind of like me

Planning and reflecting except for the fact that it felt bad

I didn't mean it to happen. I was supposed to be doing something else and it wasn't in any way productive or contributing to my life

Well, okay, why don't we then

Every so often just take a little bit of time take it down beat

But speaking of that you know New Year's resolutions kind of one of the go-to

Garden variety productivity tools smart goals or another one

And you seem to take a a bit of issue with smart goals something that every business

Undergrads from all times just become familiar with what's your issue with smart goals? Yeah, yeah seriously

I actually have never had an issue with them

Until I encountered the research on them. So I I personally thought smart goals would be a shoe in for this book

And because I've written about them in the past they sound incredible right these goals that are specific measurable

attainable realistic and time-bound smart right it sounds

Like it should work right, you know, they're smart. Do why would you set dumb goals or something

Um then you look at the research on them where

And if you don't believe me, you know

And I hope to actually stir up a bit of

Controverted mercy with this, but I can't wait for the productivity community to be up in arms

They'll be using the fucking Alfred extensions and then notion templates to send you big long arguments about why smart goals are actually underrated and overrated

They're gonna they're gonna have their keyboard, maestro

Scripps automatically interact with clod co-work to do a deep research and to just what's wrong with me or something

I don't know

But it's it's so it's so interesting because I thought they'd be a shoe in for the book right aren't specific goals incredible

Aren't you know, don't we want our goals to be attainable that sort of thing

But the when you look at the research and if you don't believe me go to google scholar and type in smart goals

See what comes out you might be as surprised as I was

um

It turns out realistic goals often aren't good enough

Right we're limiting our potential when we make a goal merely realistic

um because

When we make a goal challenging the research shows we actually achieve more than we would otherwise by simply

Making it kind of a low hanging bar or something that we can just step over and there's also redundancy

In the criteria right so aren't specific aren't measurable goals also specific for example

Um, and what I looked into the into the research on where did this actually come from and it came from the smart goals originated as

An article in a management review

uh

It wasn't an academic journal. It was just kind of an article somebody wrote on how to better manage your employees

And it didn't stand for what the current acronym does today

And so it's kind of like the you know the 10,000

Uh

Step rule or the 10,000 hour rule these nice kind of things that sound like they should work and so there's a

Virality that's associated with it that you know kind of gets morphed in a

Cultural game of telephone ever since they were introduced and so I

This was actually quite a big surprise for me because these sounds so good and I remember you know

Encountering this research writing about it in the book um, I actually had a little bit of a chapter drafted

About smart goals inside but I thought okay need some research backing here

You know did did a deep dive into the research and found that there's you know a lot of researchers say that there's even research

Waste that occurs around smart goals because it seems like they make sense to study so many businesses do them

I can't wait to hit the the speaking circuit for this book and and tell every business

Yeah, exactly really just

You know cause controversy within all these companies and stuff

Productivity controversies are probably the lowest

Stakes and least important controversy you can ever imagine some political ones at the moment that seem equally stupid

But yeah, yeah, there's stupid controversy and enough of it to go around it

At any given time and this kind of outraged

Driven algorithmic world that we're in but yeah smart goals

Maybe we should have something because then we could say actually better goals that are rooted in

Not only our values, right? We can edit our goals over time so that they're better fit for our values

We can actually overcome a lot of the things that are getting in the way of our goals too

Like a lack of alignment with the social environments. We're a part of like procrastination which is another

Huge huge

Inhibitor to just how much we're able to accomplish and in our day in our life

Yeah, let's talk about let's talk about procrastination like I have to assume

It

Procrastination gets in the way for lots of people

That there's a thing they understand their intention. It hasn't got slippery

It hasn't dropped out of their mind and for some reason the thing that they need to do in order to move themselves toward achieving

the intention

for some reason

They can't get started or they keep on stopping or something so what did you learn procrastination big picture?

Yeah, so big picture

Very big picture there are for any goal

We have this function of desire

Where we either desire doing it which is usually aligned with our values actually so the more aligned

Something is with what we value that's our motivational nature are unique

Motivational nature I should say

And so that's the desire component the values component but then there's the aversion component where

To get the how much you actually care about something or want to do something you have to subtract

How much aversion you have to doing it from the amount of desire and sometimes we end up in the negative

And so there's a lot of goals that we don't want to follow through with there's the negative amount of energy around that goal

And so we punt it down the street for a later day. It's called procrastination

But the interesting thing about procrastination is it's a purely visceral and

emotional

Reaction to something that we don't want to do there's very little logic embedded within it whatsoever. So

You know, it turns out that there are certain

Triggers that a task can have that lead us to a greater amount of aversion which leads to procrastination

So those are whether something is boring

More boring something is the less we want to do it

frustration

Is another one so the process of doing something is very frustrating unpleasantness

Right, it's just something is just not pleasant to do when something's far away in the future

Right, the further away something is

The less we desire to do it because we can

Justify to ourselves. We don't feel you know that the impending deadline of having to do it

When something is unstructured as well

That's another trigger of procrastination and the interesting thing about that is that one kind of frustrates me because

You know you can structure things

You know if you if you feel aversion for that reason

You know if you don't want to go to the gym because you have no workout plan or something

Um that is very solvable, right? The other ones are kind of uglier. They're messier

Taking the list from the top again

Yeah, so boring

Frustrating unpleasant far away in the future unstructured and the final one is meaningless

So it's not aligned with our values which we've which we've covered. Okay

What are the

Easiest solutions for people

Yeah, there's some of those feel a little redundant like boring frustrating. Yeah

meaningless

They feel I'm aware we're playing semantic games here, but they seem a little similar

What's the 80 20 what's the 80 20 of people overcoming procrastination?

Hmm

Is something unstructured

Structure it

You know that that's the lowest hanging fruit for for for procrastination and usually you'll find when you cross reference and you're right

There there is overlap you know, there is some debate in the research on whether these are distinct characteristics of tasks

But generally, you know, you can kind of

Because you'll find that when something's aversive it sets off multiple ones, right?

You don't want to do your taxes because they're boring. They're unstructured. They're frustrating. They're unpleasant

And so you procrastinate and maybe they're they're you know, you kick them down the street for a later day

But structuring things is some of the lowest hanging fruit you can do for so how can you add structure to doing your taxes?

Can you just hire somebody to do it right delegating something is the easiest way to overcoming

Procrastination on it when it's something that's a delegatable

So add structure and go back to goal editing right if you have a goal that's really aversive for you

But it's still on your list and you really

See the tangible payoff of having done it right not of doing it

Not the enjoyment of doing it, but the tangible payoff of having done it

Edit the goal so it's more in line with your values right turn the goal from that

Six pack abs by beat season face goal into that goal of you know having a feeling secure in your body

That your heart isn't going to attack you in retirement or something right connect with the deeper meaning behind it

And connect with that you know your top two values for example

But also, yeah, make it do what you can to make it an actual enjoyable process for you

And this goes back to the unstructured nature of a goal

Where also unpleasant presumably yeah also unpleasant also boring, you know

Frustrating you know a few of these different things at once

Can you do it over I don't know a fancy latte can you do

Can you you know have it a resistance list? This is one of my favorite productivity strategies where you know

Make a list of everything you're resisting doing and then a set of rewards that you can treat yourself

When you do those things right?

Maybe assign a number of points that you can redeem for those rewards or something I call them habit points in the book

So you know there there are ways of making the process more enjoyable making a game out of something that you don't want to be doing

So upping that enjoyment level however you pause having a you know

Glass of wine or whatever that colorful drink is that you're having what while you're saving it for that period period of time

Habits stacking right where you invest in the habits that you

Are kind of like guilty pleasures almost on some level

Investing in those when you do the adverse of things, but there's so many different

You know overcoming the resistance level we have to things

That that we can do

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what about the

I get

I'm thinking about stuff that's just going to be tough

That you're just sort of facing and there's not really anything. There's sacrifice reward dynamic

There's no way around this and it's just going to suck

I guess you could try and stack listening to good music that you enjoy at the same time you could go to the coffee shop to try and make it a little bit easier

Uh, I'm just wondering how people get how many times there's someone right. I've got my favorite song on

I've gone to my favorite coffee shop my latte and fuck I opened Instagram shit. Whoops

Yeah

Yeah, and so so this comes down to often giving yourself

No choice but to do something. So um, you know freedom is one of my favorite apps on the computer for this reason

I'm not affiliated much like you in that drink. You know this but I guess should be sponsored by what's the name of it again

Bloom pop bloom pop um and freedom

Freedom is one of my favorite apps. So are you are you familiar with it? Do you use it?

I use cold turkey, which I think is something similar. Yeah, the same difference freedom cold turkey

I think self-control is another one where essentially you disable access to a lot of the things that you find

More attractive than the thing that you really ought to be doing

Than the thing that you want to be doing over a broader period of time

So personally whenever I write I find I gravitate the things that are more interesting than writing

I'll want to check my email one more time. I'll want to you know fire up social media

I'm not you know big into social media

But sometimes I'll fire up social media see what my friends are up to check the news

You know whatever might look like

And so freedom

Disables the things that are more attractive on your computer than what you ought to be doing

You can specify a block list ahead of time. So even if you you want to access these things

You have to restart your computer if it's in the time period that you specify

Another one of my favorite habits is a version journaling so

So what I'll do is I'll grab my notepad which is always by my side as I work in my

Pilot precise v5 RT pen, which you know as long as we're throwing productivity

Uh fire out there or whatever it try trying to cause controversy. This is the best pen available

You can come out and available. Yeah, it's the best pen available. What what makes it the best pen? Oh, have you tried writing with a

What's it called pilot precise v5 RT Chris? No, no tell me about it. What's the experience like? Oh, wow

It what the it won't come through a video right?

Okay, yeah, this is the same as who's your girlfriend in school?

And it's like how she goes to a different school you wouldn't know

Hey, no, no, no, no, I promise. I promise. It costs like two dollars

People can try for them. So you'll never go back

My wife and I got in an argument one time

Because I said the pile you know, I know what the best pen is you and she said no, I know what the best pen is

And we had this argument before sharing what pen we were talking about turns out we were both talking about the pilot

Precise v5 RT, but what I'll do with the pilot precise v5 RT is

Real is right off the tongue doesn't it?

It is I'll grab the notepad and I'll do some I call it a version journaling

Where when I find that I'm resisting doing something I'll write down why you know and it won't sometimes it'll be as

methodical as going through each of the triggers, you know, is it boring?

Yeah, is it frustrating? No, but it's really boring. So I'll go through the triggers sometimes or it can be more

Lucy goosey more casual, you know, I'll just grab the notepad and start writing

Why do I find this thing so ugly and what can I do about it to counterbalance that ugliness?

Right to to make it less aversive and I always leave with some tactical thing that I can do

To make it less ugly for myself

And if not that, you know my relationship with a change is a little bit

I understand what makes it so aversive

And so give yourself a choice to either do some aversion journaling or do the thing

And so eventually the time will and you'll gravitate to the journaling at first

But you'll end up untangling the knots that you have to doing something

And overcome that resistance to doing it so the interesting tactic, but it works

Almost without fail for me personally

I might I think it will for readers listeners to viewers

What about the

difference between ugly goals and attractive goals

Because there's some again, I'm trying to think about as much objection handling as possible

There are some things that are just funner goals than others

There are some goals that are uglier and some goals that are more attractive

Hmm

Yeah, it's just every goal is a bit different on that fundamental level

And so you know often you'll edit a goal

And you'll get it to as good and good as shape as you possibly can

And it's still ugly it's still fugly in a lot of cases

And so you got no choice at that point to decide it is this goal worth pursuing

And you know sometimes the fact that you have tried to edit a goal

Um

extensively and you still find it ugly

You know sometimes that's a sign that it could be worth dropping when it's just fundamentally not

Aligned to who you are and what you care about

But then you have the goals on your list that's like you know lower my cholesterol or something

Which probably a few people want to do but if your cholesterol is high you should probably do it

And so then you have the goals that you really

ought to be achieving and so the limous test is you know is thinking okay

Will I be happy that I did this thing and what tangible difference will it make to to my life because

I forget who said but the somebody said you know for our days

To for our our days to be different our life needs to be different

I think you know you can kind of transpose those for our life to be different our days need to be different

What what do your goals look like on a tangible daily basis

Because another trap we fall into a lot of times and I call them sepia tone goals where you know we have these beautiful

fantasies of you know just exactly how different our life will be after we integrate a change into our life

The one that comes up from me

Is waking up at 5.30 every morning

So I love this idea of being an early rise you know and I've struggled and I've

Integrated this goal into my life several times actually where you know

I'll wake up at 5.30. I'll do all these you know things that

Feel like they should be good in my head. I'll meditate like I usually do and I wake up. I'll go to the gym

I'll read the paper. I I was gonna say still get the physical paper, but I'm not that old

Um

I read the physical paper though that arrives every morning

You know all these holy things with the morning, but then I realized that I

Absolutely hate the ritual right

I have to go to bed in order to get a good enough sleep when people want to hang out when good hockey games are on when

When she's actually happening. That's interesting in my life

Um, and so there's this idea of a change sometimes that is sepia tone

That leads to these tangible changes that we don't really actually

want um, and by the way for waking up early if you're a

A night owl like I am that actual research on it. I believe by Till Ronenberg

Um has found that there's no difference in somebody's socio economic standing based on their wake-up time

So people wake up at 8 a.m. Are just as successful as people wake up at 5 a.m

But it's how deliberate how intentional we are with our time uh, that makes the biggest difference

You know still wake up at yeah 738 read the paper meditate just everything is just shifted over

Do you think? How many goals do you think people have that are just kind of

socially acceptable cause plays of ambition? I think so many people love the idea of saying that I have this goal

the big and

Maybe the reason that lots of people

aren't achieving their goals and their intentions is that if they were to look a little bit more closely

They'd realize that they weren't theirs

They're doing it is this sort of cool trendy t-shirt that they can wear that when other people ask them what their goals are

They can say oh, I'm I'm I'm doing a keto diet or I'm doing meat and fruit at the moment. I'm I'm micro-dosing

Well, you know, I'm do I but that's not actually what they want. It's what they want other people to hear them saying that they want

Yeah, yeah, I'm micro-dosing meat and fruit. You know whatever it is

That's such a big part of it and so you know one

Tactic that I'm a big advocate for is keeping a list of your goals

Yeah, and I divide mine based on context

So personal and work and inside I list the goals under the values that they're a part of

And when I started doing this I did realize that there were a lot of goals on the list like waking up early is one of them

Where I feel

It's still interesting, you know that the the guilt that we experience when we don't follow through with

The expectations that other people have of us like waking up early or so I know all the research

And I know what works for me. I know what my biological prime time is which is when we're wired to perform

I know all these things. I know I

Have a better life. I enjoy life more. I do better work. I create better things when I wake up later

But still I feel guilty when I roll out of bed at a later hour than you know then whatever I

Deem justifiable in my head and so there there is this, you know, I love I love the cosplay

A phraseology that that you use and it's interesting because I feel our relationship is different depending on our

Values in that context where you know conformity is one of the fundamental human values

Some people do value conformity and so if that's you which is

Probably unlikely if you're listening to this podcast

But I was hanging out with with a couple people last night who's you they identified that as one of their highest values

Which I found interesting

But if that's a high value for you and there's a goal that other people expect you to achieve

What the research shows is you will actually find it meaningful

To achieve that thing because you're living within the expectations that other people have of you

But if you don't have that value which it's low for me. It's probably low for you too knowing knowing you to some extent

You're not going to find much meaning and you know for me my value of self-direction is so high as the highest

By a wide wide margin and my value of conformity is so low that if I feel I have to do something

That'll make me

Not want to do it. It'll make me want to rebel against the expectations of the other people have of me

But there still is that fundamental guilt so it really is a you know

So it's kind of like when you ask somebody how you know how's work for you in this? Oh, I'm so busy

You know, I have so much going on

Where the busyness you know people overestimate how long they work for first of all

But second of all they wear that busyness is almost a badge of honor of you know, oh the

The world needs me so much, you know and I'm so wanted by the world so needed by the world and be so I'm so busy

We have kind of a similar status projection with our goals sometimes

But you know tapping into that this what makes tapping into that self-reflective capacity just so

Much more important if we never tap into our self-reflective capacity

We'll never truly get what we want

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Look social pressure is a hell of a

Improver to hell of a assistance when we want to try and get something done

It's why you train harder when you're in a class than when you're on your own typically

I guess

How can people make their

Goals and intentions feel deeper there's certainly some that resonate with us a lot

And then there's others that don't so much but we wish we

That they did is there something we can do to make goals sort of feel deeper

Yeah, so the values component is one and that's a big one

And there is you know you're touching on the social environments that we're a part of

There are kind of a lot of productivity extremists out there I'd call them you know

People who you know, they'll say never surround yourself with people who don't support you and your goals

But life is just more complex than that, you know, we have good friends that have bad habits, you know speaking personally

What when I'm around family a lot of their I'm not gonna call anyone out

But a lot of their habits aren't conducive to you know the goals that I have but still

I'd be a cold and heartless to to weed them out of my life or so, you know some

But but but there are it's kind of positive social contagion

That I think we can introduce for a lot of our goals where if you have a big new goal a big new habit that you're trying to integrate into your life

You could really reflect. Okay, how can I actually double down on how much contagion I'm experiencing for for this goal?

And so there is that level of deliberateness that we can layer on top of whatever that goal is

Where is it can I join a running group?

You know if if my intention is to

To you know get a certain workout time or a certain run time

If you're joining a knitting group, right?

I used to be a bigger knitter than I am right now

And I wanted to get more into it because it's a great way to scatter your

Yeah, yeah, and so it's all like for people to get yeah, and there's a knitting store in the city that I used to live in

Um, I'm not a good knitter

You know by any stretch, but I found it a great way. I love the smirk that you have right now

It's like I'm blown away by the fact that there's people getting together like CrossFit on an evening. Oh, yeah

Cross knit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be good

Yeah, well, I'm no good like I can make dish claws and stuff, but

But when I was a part of the knitting group in in the city that I used to live in

Man, I like my level of improvement with that habit was a different curve than it is right now if anything

It's uh, I'm kind of letting the habit die right there's a knitting store in the city that I used to live in which which hosted this kind of meetup all

You know older women the some of the

Like my favorite people in the world

We're in that group um, and

And so you know having that social k-tage and because of root can really support you in the habits that you want to form

Um, that's one way to make it deeper and that nothing feels deeper

Um in our life than uh human to human connection

All right

Taking all of this together

What's this what's the structure someone

Is bought into the fact that intentions are important

They realize the procrastinations there. They've got goals. They've got actions. They've got daily daily purple all the rest of the stuff

What's the best way to put this into a format to follow? How should people design better intentions?

Mm-hmm

Yeah, so it's interest something that I really believe now is becoming

More intentional is a skill that we can get better at over time. So you know, if you look at your level of follow through

um

The book was originally called follow through but it has a weird weird connotations in the UK that I was not aware of

Uh, if you're probably familiar with them right follow through it. Yes. Yeah. Yes

People can go on urban dictionary in their own time

But if you're looking to increase your level of follow through with your goals. I should say

It'll make sense when you look it up

Um, that was like totally out of left field for me having to rename the book because it's such a good

It was such a good encapsulation originally called follow through. Yes, it was

Wow, yeah, well, no, you only need to re-wit rename it into you uh in the UK who'd have been fine in the US

Well, yeah in the US it would have been fine if the UK publisher really

Ray and marketing is so awkward when you have differently named books

I'm fortunate that only my subtitles have been different across geographies

But but realize that

Increasing your level of follow through is really a skill that you can get better at over time

So it may be you set goals you set intentions right now and maybe

For a given goal you follow through with it. Let's say the default right 8% of the time

We follow through with our New Year's resolutions

Maybe when you resolve to do something big you follow through with it 8% of the time

But you can build this skill of intentionality and you can build these practices of intentionality

For you know, there's the obligatory

Ugly stuff lowering your cholesterol you can deploy the

procrastination habits on those so just looking to get started on something one of my favorite

Tactics out there is shrinking your resistance level to doing things

So if you're writing a book for example and you have free to mom or something cold cold turkey on but you're still resisting it

You can shrink how long you do it for and tell you overcome that resistance right it adds structure

It makes the less boring less frustrating all that stuff. So you might think okay. Do I want to write for an hour

No way in hell. What about 45 minutes?

No, what about 30

Mm-hmm. What about yeah 20 I could write for 20 that and and so you overcome that resistance

By shrinking how long you do something for being kinder to yourself in the process so you know

So the procrastination for the obligatory ugly things

The procrastination tactics are very helpful for those but usually

There's more latitude in editing our goals than we believe right so

Maybe there's some project that you don't want to do what one one you know this one example right

Maybe you have to write some employee handbook or something and so you know on your to-do list

It's right employee handbook or maybe you're making the list of goals. It's right employee handbook

And that's aversive right it feels like something you have to do which fits with that value of conformity

But maybe you added it maybe your biggest value is benevolence so

Helping other people maybe it's self-direction so going your own way. It's a better goal a better frame for the goal might be you know

mentor

new employees

And get creative with the handbook project

So you might actually perform the same set of actions under each goal

But one feels like something you have to do that isn't aligned with what you value

The other feels like something that is actually connected with with with what truly motivates you on that deep

Fundamental human level. So know your top values as well

So you know, we mentioned the 12 of them earlier in the podcast won't go through them again

We've already talked about them

But what top two are the strongest for you and how can you align more of your goals to them right the easiest way to tell if something

If a priority if a goal is aligned with your deepest values is you've done it already

Right because the best most aligned goals they feel effortless. They feel like just an extension of who we are

So okay that covers

Procrastination let's give it a little system for people that that covers procrastination on the ugly stuff

editing the stuff that

Can be framed differently

Increasing your desire right modifying your social environments, but a big one

where you see and you accommodate the different

Layers of intention in your life is setting intentions across multiple time frames at once

One of my favorite rules for this is the rule of three, but I'm trying to remember

I'm one of the past times we were check did I mention the rule of three

Maybe give us again

Okay, so

All this is is you know at the start of every day. I like to

Start with the goal on the on daily basis because then you see kind of where the rubber meets the road

And you can

Begin to form different intentions so at the start of the day

You fast forward to the end of the day in your head and you ask yourself

What are the three main things I will want to have accomplished by the day's end

That's it where the three main things I'll want to have accomplished by the day's end and because you can only pick three

It forces you to

To prioritize what's on your plate you have to choose three things that are important and everything else that isn't

But if you find the rule works every day you might think okay, what are three things that I want to accomplish this week

Right

Maybe in a work context and a personal context so that when you set the daily intentions

You can look to the weekly ones and think okay, how can these contribute to the broader

plans that I have so in this way your daily intentions begin a begin feeding into your plans

And so when you set your weekly intentions you can look to your goal list

Right, you can think how much of this stuff do I want to bite off today and so

You begin to develop the different layers of intention that you have in your life your daily intentions fit with your

weekly intentions which fit with your plans your goals which can fit with your values as you edit them more over time

So

This is kind of the skill that we can develop in setting better intentions over the longer arc of time and

upping our level of follow through

The goal kind as well as our level of accomplishment if that's something that you value

What do you think I know the books new

Yeah, what do you think is something that people are overlooking from this big thesis that you've put together you know you've got

The the obvious things that people go to zero in on probably the insights around procrastination and ways to reframe intentions and stuff like that

But is there something the so a less sexy but powerful

Element that you think most people are overlooking

Yeah, my I'll share my personal favorite

it is

That

our values

are constructed

out of our

default intentions

So our default intentions they form

Uh a shape and so you you can look at and the shape is the values that we have so you can look at all the things you do by default

and

There's always an underlying motivation behind the things that you do by default

right you

Have a default habit of meditating

because that allows you

To

Get closer to what you want with self-direction or you know, so you feel more secure in your mind you feel calmer

You have habits to you know call friends and that might connect with

Different values of benevolence and and serving others

But even even the simple things right over reading or something might fit with that

biological need for

Security and not starving you know so from the deeply deeply ingrained

To the default intentions that we form so

That these form

The framework of our values and this might be two in the weeds for an answer to this question that's interesting

But I think this is very underrated where our values are made out of the things that we do by default

And it's for this idea that I think our default intentions aren't you know

That they're not just something to get frustrated by you know, why do I

Overreached or why do I do this? Why do I do that? There's something on on many levels to admire

Right, we can observe ourselves acting

Through pure habit energy and you know playing with our kids on habit

Whatever it might look like and I think our default habits you know

Sometimes they're worth getting frustrated by and setting a different intention after something we've learned maybe or maybe after tapping into that self-reflective capacity

But I think other times they're worth marveling at right we have all of these

Frankly in my opinion beautiful

default intentions that

I think make us human right because we're not only ingrained in a certain way to

To act in a certain way, but we also you know

We can also admire that the person that not only

Nature has formed but but also that we have formed through the decisions that we've made in the past and that those deliberate intentions that

We can layer on top of the defaults of our life

That's only that that's that's this wonderful way that we can go in a different direction and really guide

ourselves and

Our lives to go in a different way and goals are a big part of that but values are a big part of that priorities

plans and daily intention so I just think

marveling

At our defaults is

An underrated idea from the book

I can Chris Bailey ladies and gentlemen. Why should people go to check out everything that you got going on? Oh, oh, yeah

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on on the pot again intentional how to finish what you start is the name of the book

If you feel inclined to check it out. There's an audio book too. That's your style

um

Chris Bailey calm. That's where my news

Letter is and then all the good stuff they can find in the

I don't know where you want to call it the Chris Bailey verse whatever

Yeah, thanks for having me on again. I got you man. I appreciate you. I like your work. Keep on doing it

Oh, thanks buddy great to chat with you always

if

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It is 100 books that you should read before you die the most interesting life-changing and impactful books

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