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Naiman Labs Newsletter #46. Better questions for better life

Author

Vlad
January 21, 2024

Hello everyone! Welcome to the new Naiman Labs Newsletter post.

Starting today, we are moving to a new platform to make the newsletter better. However, as always with migration, there might be some changes in newsletter design. In case you face any difficulties reading, please shout: [email protected]

Last week, I came across an excellent short video about prompts for journaling. I do journalling occasionally and find it helpful to unblock your mind and let out all your thoughts warping around your hand.

So, in that video, the guy was sharing his view on using journalling to set personal development goals, and he suggested five prompts to kickstart the journalling practice. He suggested asking five questions to put your mind into goal-setting-writing mode.

  1. What do I want to achieve?

  2. Why are these goals important to me?

  3. What steps can I take to move closer to my goals?

  4. What potential obstacles or challenges might I encounter?

  5. How will I measure my progress?

All these questions are valid, and they are actually perfect to ask yourself from time to time. Overall, it is pretty close to self-coaching, where you can use some coaching techniques to solve your problems, set goals, and help yourself achieve them.

✍️ So, how can you use these questions?

That’s how the author of the post saw this:

🎯 What do I want to achieve in the short-term and long-term future? Use this question to identify both immediate and overarching goals. Be specific about the outcomes you desire.

💡 Why are these goals important to me? Explore the underlying motivations and values behind your goals. Understanding the significance can provide a strong sense of purpose and commitment.

🏹 What steps can I take to move closer to my goals? Break down your goals into smaller, actionable steps. This question helps you create a practical roadmap for achieving your objectives.

🧱 What potential obstacles or challenges might I encounter, and how can I overcome them? Anticipate potential barriers to your goals. Acknowledging challenges in advance, you can develop strategies to overcome them and stay focused on your objectives.

🧭 How will I measure my progress? Establish clear metrics or milestones to track your progress. This question helps you create a measurable framework, providing a sense of accomplishment as you progress toward your goals.

When I looked at those prompts, they reminded me of well-known goal-setting techniques. I guess you have heard of the famous SMART framework - any goal you set for your team or yourself at work should be:

  • Specific

  • Measurable

  • Achievable

  • Relative

  • Time-bound

To set the goals right, you should know what, when, and how you want to achieve, and you need to be sure that this is the goal you want to focus on.

However, I think we can do better using the questions mentioned above, and we can take a step further to help ourselves with goal setting.

🌟 Getting better at setting goals

What do I want to achieve - it is a good conversation starter. The question itself is very vague, and you might not know the answer. And that is ok. The goal here is to give our brain some food to start processing. I find drawing a picture of myself useful to set those goals. I imagine myself in, let’s say, five years. And I think in detail: How do I look? What do I do? Where do I live? Who do I have around me? Etc. I draft the vision that serves as a winning aspiration. And I try creating this vision for three areas of life: career / professional, social, personal.

Why is it important - it is an excellent question to check the relevance. What can help you here is to think about what would happen if you didn’t achieve your plans. What would be the downside? What wouldn’t you have? What would you miss?

What steps can I take - it helps you make the plan. However, my strong advice is not to leave it like this. If you just list down the steps, it might become overwhelming. I find it extremely helpful to myself when I write down the first smallest step that I can do today to move myself closer to the goal.

If my goal is to become an athlete and lose 10 kilos, I can list the nutrition plan, training plan, finding the trainer, and so on. But what is the smallest item that I can complete today without much friction so I can start immediately? It can be small, as I list all the gyms near my home or office. Or even simpler as taking a 15-minute evening walk 🚶.

How will I measure my progress. Every business book in the past 50 years says you can’t achieve what you can’t measure. I agree. If you don’t measure in any way, you don’t see the progress. The trick is we often lean towards setting the “output metrics” to measure:

  • My goal is to build a successful YouTube video channel, so my metric is the number of views

  • My goal is to become a famous Instagram model, so my metric is the number of followers

  • My goal is to become the most successful sales representative in the office, so my metric is revenue.

Even though all those metrics are correct and show progress, the trick is we don’t have complete control over them. I firmly believe we should focus more on the input metrics, especially when it comes to our personal goals.

Try these input metrics:

  • My goal is to build a successful YouTube video channel, so my metric is the number of videos posted in a month

  • My goal is to become a famous Instagram model, so my metric is the number of reels posted in a month

  • My goal is to become a successful writer, so my metric is writing 500 words a day, not having 500 readers a month.

Input metrics are in your control, so in your personal goals, it’s always better to focus on those income metrics.

That’s it for today. Have a great week ahead, everyone, and spread the word about the Naiman Labs newsletter if you find it interesting and helpful!

Vlad from Naiman Labs

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