How Does One Get a Sense of Satisfaction From Goals That Continue Ad Infinitum?
Chapters
0:0 Cal's intro0:37 Cal reads a question about goals and satisfaction
1:34 Cal's initial thoughts
1:46 Cal explains the Birthday Challenge
2:55 Kids are hard
4:14 More ambition goals
00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]
00:00:04.700 | So today when tackling our deep life queries,
00:00:08.800 | we actually have a theme.
00:00:10.500 | Just coincidentally, we had a big cluster of questions
00:00:13.600 | that all had to do with parenthood and the impact
00:00:16.700 | of parenthood on all other aspects of the deep life.
00:00:20.300 | And I figured why not just put these together,
00:00:23.900 | get into a parenthood deep life mode,
00:00:26.500 | and answer a bunch of questions that are all
00:00:28.300 | in the same general area.
00:00:31.500 | So our first such question comes from Nikki.
00:00:34.400 | Nikki asks, "How does one get a sense of satisfaction
00:00:37.800 | from goals that continue ad infinitum?"
00:00:41.600 | And she elaborates that she is a self-employed mom of three,
00:00:46.000 | ages 3.5, two, and three months.
00:00:51.500 | So she notes that since her first child,
00:00:54.000 | she's been slowly transitioning what used to be yearly goals
00:00:58.100 | to more progress or habit-based goals due
00:01:00.800 | to the unpredictability of her time with young children.
00:01:05.300 | And she is having some issue with that.
00:01:08.000 | She finds that, "I will blow away past a book count goal,
00:01:13.500 | shrug, wake up the next day and keep reading.
00:01:15.200 | There's always the next project for work or home,
00:01:17.300 | and I plan on reading and writing the rest of my life.
00:01:19.300 | It feels like now that all my goals have been distilled
00:01:21.300 | in the habits, they have lost their ability
00:01:24.600 | to ever really be complete.
00:01:27.500 | How can I inject some good old-fashioned crossed-off
00:01:29.600 | checkmark, treat-yourself goal satisfaction back
00:01:31.900 | into my life?"
00:01:34.500 | Well, Nikki, I think it is good to have both types of goals.
00:01:38.400 | What I'm going to recommend is doing a birthday challenge.
00:01:43.200 | This is something I do myself, where for each year,
00:01:47.500 | as I arrive at my birthday, I have a collection of goals
00:01:52.200 | I want to accomplish by that birthday.
00:01:54.800 | I usually call them in my notes "project" and then the age.
00:01:59.200 | So I'm 39 right now, so I have a project 40
00:02:03.000 | that I'm working on.
00:02:04.300 | And typically, I'll have a halfway point intermediate goal.
00:02:07.400 | So about halfway through the year or two is my birthday.
00:02:10.200 | There's intermediate versions of the big goals
00:02:12.400 | that you want to accomplish.
00:02:14.100 | And the birthday-tied goals will typically be themed.
00:02:18.100 | So it depends on what's happening in your life.
00:02:20.900 | Like right now, you have very young kids.
00:02:22.600 | I remember that age well.
00:02:24.700 | There was a time when I had a four-year-old, a two-year-old,
00:02:28.100 | and a newborn.
00:02:28.900 | So pretty similar to your current distribution.
00:02:30.900 | I remember that time well.
00:02:32.100 | We had just moved to Tacoma Park.
00:02:34.100 | I had recently gotten tenure and was writing for the first time
00:02:39.600 | in a long time.
00:02:40.400 | So this is when I first started.
00:02:41.700 | I was working on digital minimalism.
00:02:43.800 | And I hadn't written since Deep Work,
00:02:45.800 | because I had-- as I've talked about before on the podcast,
00:02:48.400 | I had to batten down the hatches,
00:02:50.800 | because it's just kids are hard.
00:02:52.300 | And we're going to see this theme
00:02:54.000 | through the various questions we're going to answer today.
00:02:56.500 | But kids are hard.
00:02:57.500 | And so I wasn't writing books when I was a new father.
00:03:00.100 | And I was just trying to get tenure.
00:03:01.600 | But anyways, I remember that period well.
00:03:05.300 | So the goals I would have had, my birthday goals
00:03:07.400 | of that period are probably different than my birthday
00:03:08.900 | goals for Project 40, which were very
00:03:10.500 | different than my goals for Project 30
00:03:12.900 | before I had any kids, for example.
00:03:15.000 | But the point is, it gives you a way to say,
00:03:17.000 | what am I focusing on this year?
00:03:19.800 | And these are aspirational, very focused on your life
00:03:23.500 | in the big picture.
00:03:25.800 | And it's something to go after.
00:03:28.000 | And it can be very relevant to what's going on.
00:03:30.100 | I mean, I would really think right now
00:03:31.100 | with a bunch of young kids, these
00:03:32.400 | might be very lifestyle-focused goals.
00:03:34.400 | Like, I want to get to a point in our life
00:03:37.300 | where we have this set up.
00:03:39.200 | Or we have figured out how to make the evenings work,
00:03:43.100 | or whatever it is, right?
00:03:44.300 | Or that we do a weekly dinner with the grandparents.
00:03:47.200 | And so it could be really lifestyle-centric goals.
00:03:49.300 | But it's something that you have figured out and accomplished
00:03:53.700 | with a halfway point along the way.
00:03:56.000 | And if you're very overwhelmed, like you probably are now,
00:03:57.900 | again, they can be lifestyle-focused.
00:03:59.400 | They can be pretty modest.
00:04:00.800 | And as you emerge from the young kid period,
00:04:03.100 | as your kids go to elementary school,
00:04:04.900 | they're out of the house, the schedules are more routine,
00:04:07.700 | then these can get back.
00:04:08.700 | Maybe they're more professionally ambitious.
00:04:11.100 | I mean, I certainly have in Project 40
00:04:14.900 | some way more professionally ambitious goals
00:04:17.500 | than I would have had for Project whatever
00:04:19.800 | that would have been when I was in your stage.
00:04:21.700 | That would have been Project 38.
00:04:24.600 | I was not thinking about then, let me get an HQ going.
00:04:28.100 | Let me build out a media company.
00:04:29.900 | I mean, it was survival.
00:04:31.900 | It was survival mode back then.
00:04:33.400 | And now I'm in a different place.
00:04:34.700 | So good question, Nikki.
00:04:36.500 | Introduce some annual goals back.
00:04:38.700 | Do it carefully.
00:04:39.500 | Have them be themed.
00:04:40.900 | Have them be lifestyle-focused so
00:04:42.400 | that you feel really connected.
00:04:43.700 | Like, accomplishing these is going to make my life better,
00:04:46.900 | our family's life better.
00:04:49.300 | Have a halfway point for a more modest version of the goals.
00:04:52.500 | And I think you'll get back some of that energy.
00:04:55.700 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04:58.840 | (upbeat music)
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