5 Evidence-Based Strategies to Achieve Your Goals

in this video we're going to talk about five pretty easy evidence-based things you can do to massively increase the

chances that you're actually going to achieve your goals now obviously when it comes to actually setting and achieving

goals generally the thing that separates people who do achieve their goals from the people who don't achieve their goals

is the action that they're actually putting into them but if you look at the signs there are actually these five

relatively straightforward things you can do to stack the deck in your favor call them hacks call them habits they

don't take very long but they will massively boost your odds of actually achieving the goals and so if you are

already doing all five of these things fantastic you winning and if you're not doing some or any of these five things

then you've got some very easy wins that you can apply pretty much as soon as you finish watching this video and by the

way if you're new here hello my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and author and since 2017 I've been making

videos on this channel which are all about the books the ideas the strategies and tools that can help us live more

intentionally be more productive and generally build a life that we truly love I also spent ages researching and

writing this book Feelgood productivity which is a New York Times and Sunday Times best cell and this Dives deep into

how we can get stuff done without burning out or sacrificing the things that matter most and it's available in

paperback hardback Kindle audible basically everywhere books are sold and has also been translated into 35

languages and it's got a couple thousand five star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads so if that sounds interesting

it'll be linked down below if you want to check it out all right so let's start with Point number one now here I want to

play you this clip from a guy called Jim ran now Jim ran was a multi-millionaire success Coach Guy based in the US but at

age 25 he was completely broke but he managed to get mentored by this business tycoon guy called Mr cha and here he is

talking about an interesting encounter with Mr CH that completely changed his life not long after I met Mr scha we're

having breakfast one morning Mr cha said Mr own now that we've gotten acquainted we know each other fairly well he said

maybe one of the best ways I can help you he said let me see your current list of goals let's go over them and talk

about them and I said what I don't have a list he said well Mr ran if you don't have a

list of your goals he said I can guess your bank balance within a few hundred which he did and that got my

attention I said you mean my bank balance would change if I had a list of goals he said

drastically so that day I became a student of setting goals and I've used it to dynamically affect my life I've

taught it to some of my business colleagues we use it to do business around the

world setting goals H so this is interesting write down your list of goals I'm curious do you have a list of

goals written down somewhere could you bring them up if someone asked you to see them but you might be thinking this

seems a bit too good to be true this is just some like personal development Guru it's like it surely can't be that basic

as just writing down your list of goals do we have any actual science or research to back this up and to that I

would like to draw your attention to this study from the Dominican University and these guys were basically testing

does writing down your goals compared to not writing them down change your chances of achieving set goals so on the

y- axis we've got average goal achievement and then we've got two groups one group did not write down

their goals and the other group wrote down their goals this was the average goal achievement for the group that set

goals but did not write them down and this was the average goal achievement for the group that set goals and did

write them down the researchers found that if you write down your goals you're around 42% more likely to actually

achieve them now I don't know about you but if I could improve by 42% the probability of me actually achieving the

goals I've set for myself simply by writing them down I would probably do that because it doesn't take that long

to write down your goals and that is why our evidence-based strategy number one for achieving your goals is to Simply

write them down now it doesn't really matter what format you write them down in I personally have a Google doc that I

I've named goalkeeper and I've been doing this for the last couple of years and I personally like setting quarterly

goals rather than annual goals I refer to my quarterly goals as my quarterly quests and each quarter so every 3

months I like to set around three or four of them I found that if I set any more than four I don't end up making

progress on any of them and so three or four seems to be like a reasonable number oh by the way quick thing if you

are watching this before the 4th of January 2025 then you might like to check out the completely free 2-day

productivity Workshop that I'm hosting on the 4th and 5th of January 2025 it is called productivity Spark and it's

essentially a two-day series of workshops that are hosted by me and also my wife and also a couple of guests that

I aim to help you reflect on 2024 figure out where your work and life are heading and set active goals and quarterly

Quests for 2025 it is completely free you can check it out with a link down below and I hope to see you there

potentially all righty so now we come to insanely simple strategy for actually achieving your goals number two now here

it is worth us understanding a little bit of the brain called the reticular activating system now the RAS is

basically a bundle of nerves at the base of your brain stem that acts as a filter and it determines what information your

brain pays attention to obviously in day-to-day life there are millions upon millions of various sensory inputs that

your brain could pay attention to so how does it know which ones to focus on well that's where the particular activating

system comes in generally based on your goals and priorities the brain filters out stuff that is irrelevant to those

goals and priorities and helps Focus your attention on the stuff that actually matters to you the classic

example of this is let's say you buying a car and you're like man I really want to get a Fiat 500 all of a sudden by the

fact that you've set the intention to buy potentially a Fiat 500 you will suddenly start seeing Fiat 500s

literally everywhere you look and that is not because all of a sudden when you decided to set the goal of buying a Fiat

500 suddenly everyone else also bought Fiat 500s it's because of your reticular activating system because you have said

this as a goal for yourself your brain is more likely to notice all of the Fiat 500s that are floating around the place

and so strategy number two for drastically improving our chances of actually achieving our goals is to

actually look at those goals that you've written down every single week if not every single day mistake number one that

people make is that they don't set goals in the first place but you're not going to make that mistake because you're

watching this video mistake number two is that if they do set goals they don't write them down and mistake number three

is that for so many of us we set goals at the start of the year and then we never look at them ever again and so the

idea behind strategy number two is that we can harness the reticular activating system by actually looking at our goals

every single day or every single week I personally review mine once a week as part of my weekly reset I've got a

little journaling prompt that says what were my quarterly quests and how are they going and that means every single

week when I do my weekly resets it just reminds me to check up on my quarterly goals each week I also set three main

priorities for the week and then as part of my daily morning Manifesto is what I call it morning Manifesto journaling

practice I ask myself a simple question which is what were our weekly priorities and how are they going I like to refer

to it as our rather than my because it sort of feels like I'm harnessing all parts of my brain what were our weekly

priorities and how are they going so every single week I'm reviewing my quarterly goals and every single day I'm

reviewing my weekly priorities this does not take very much time at all this is like a 10-second job at most but it's

just that little jog that the brain needs to be like oh yeah I did intend to sign up for that squash club or oh yeah

I did intend to make progress on that particular work task and sometime it's just so easy to forget those things

otherwise because we're so caught up in the day-to-day of what's happening in the calendar what's happening in work

and in life but by literally spending 10 seconds every week looking back at your list of written goals or priorities that

alone is such a needle moving Insight that I'm amazed that more people don't do it and you know to be honest this

video is advice myself because I also sometimes fall off I know all the studies I've read did a a ton of

research from my book talking about all this stuff and still I forget sometimes to do my weekly reset where I look at my

goals and sometimes a couple of weeks pass where I haven't looked at my list of goals I'm like damn I've actually

been less consistent with the goals that I set because I simply forgot to look at them oh by the way if one of your dreams

or goals is to potentially grow an audience or to generate consistent revenue or turn whatever expertise you

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this video possible and do check out the free report in the video description all right let's move on to strategy number

three and here we can cite this meta analysis of I think 138 studies that covered nearly 20,000 participants and

the authors of the meta analysis found that one simple strategy that you can use to improve your odds of goal

attainment is simply to monitor your progress regularly in my case for example in my weekly reset thing I asked

myself what were my quarterly quests and how are they going the and how are they going bit encourages me to actually

monitor progress generally I give it red yellow or green or I just say kind of on track or off track just even that is

enough for me to monitor the progress that I'm making towards my goals every single day when I make the time to do my

morning Manifesto and I ask myself what were our priorities for the week and how are they going again I'm monitoring

progress I defined the most important priority ities at the start of the week and now I'm just checking in with myself

to see how am I actually doing and achieving them the other way that I personally like to do this monitoring

progress thing it's also fairly simple I use an app things three for my to-do list and within things three I have the

various projects that I'm working on so I've got you can ignore Iram and Angus this is sort of two of my team members

that I delegate stuff to so that is a project because delegation and stuff but I basically split up my project into

work and life and you can see I've got these four different projects under work company relocation life OS Mastermind

and learn AI agents and I've got get food on autopilot cuz I'm sorting out like some sort of food situation for my

life these are a couple of the projects that I'm actively working on and about once a week when I update my projects

list I will just put a little Emoji of like yellow or green green is it is on track yellow is that it's sort of a bit

off track but there's a plan to get it back on track and if it's red it's like off track without a plan you can also

monitor your progress in any Wich way you like back when I was writing my book feel good productivity I monitored

progress in terms of word counts for specific chapters because that's like an easy way to make progress more visible

it also just makes it feel better as you're achieving a goal if you're able to monitor the progress sort of like the

leveling up bar in a video game as you're killing the monsters and doing the quests you're leveling up your

experience meter is filling and there's something very satisfying about that but what the evidence suggests is that

people who just take a small amount of time to regularly monitor the progress of their goals are significantly more

likely to actually achieve them and that is why that is point number three monitor your progress again super easy

super simple doesn't take very long if you are not monitoring the progress of your goals you are leaving a lot of free

kind of goal attainment points on the the table and you just might as well start doing it because why not all right

let's move on to fairly simple strategy number four and this comes from a psychologist called Gabrielle tingan and

it's a strategy called mental contrasting now mental contrasting is the idea where you basically visualize

something that you want in the future but it's not just about visualizing the outcome we find that people who spend

too long visualizing having already achieved their goals actually in some in some studies are less likely to achieve

those goals but if you visualize achieving your goals and you also contrast it with the obstacles that you

might encounter along the way that is mental contrasting and that really seems to boost people's goal attainment and so

this psychologist Gabrielle tingan came up with a fairly simple technique called the whoop method which stands for wish

outcome obstacle and plan now the wish and the outcome is where you are basically setting the goal there are all

sorts of different ways for goal setting you can use the GPS system which is my personal favorite you can think in terms

of facts feelings and functionality you can think in terms of wish and outcome like what is the thing that you wish for

and what is the outcome that would that would happen as a result of you achieving that goal but then the key bit

of the method is this obstacle and plan you are visualizing the obstacles that might stand in your path let's say you

know I've set the goal of I don't know writing my next book uh by halfway through next year all right cool what

are the obstacles that could get in my path well one obstacle is I might not make time for it another obstacle is I

might run out ideas and other obstacle as I might feel demotivated when I sit down to try and right and then the final

component of the who method is plan what is my plan for addressing those obstacles so I might say okay cool I'm

going to put in 3 hours of my calendar block every single morning to focus on writing I might do a few brainstorming

sessions with my team to avoid the problem of running out of ideas and I might use an app that me and my team

have built called voice pal to make writing more fun because then I can write the book while talking rather than

while simply typing on a computer and so strategy number four that we have here is visualize obstacles and to make a

plan again doesn't take very long to do each time you set a goal you can just spend literally 3 minutes thinking to

yourself okay cool wish outcome wo obstacle plan what are the obstacles that could get in my way and what's my

plan for overcoming those obstacles and again according to the research this will drastically improve your odds of

actually achieving the goal and then finally we come to fairly easy strategy number five and that is to tie them to

an identity now the classic example of this is that there was this study where they looked at um voting so for some of

the people in the study they asked will you vote in this election and for the other half they asked will you be a

voter in this election and they found that the people who were asked the question of will you be a voter were way

more likely to vote than the people who were simply asked will you vote will you vote is an action will you be a voter is

an identity so the key thing here is wherever possible when you've got your goals you want to just sort of spend an

extra 20 seconds to tie them to an identity for example one of my goals is to reduce my visceral abdominal tissue

because you know genetics and stuff and I want to live longer and healthier and I've been reading outlive by patri here

now setting the goal of improving my bench press or reducing my viseral adapost tissue or all that all that kind

of stuff is all well and good but if I were to take the 20 seconds to tie them to an identity of I am a healthy person

that will make it more likely that I'll actually achieve the goals and I'll actually stick with it when the going

gets tough because I've resonated with that identity similarly I found when I was working on my YouTube channel when I

gave myself permission to lean into the identity of I am a YouTuber that was what allowed me to stay consistent with

making YouTube videos in the tough times for ages I did not identify with the identity of being an author or being a

writer because I had all sorts of imposter syndrome around it who am I to write a BG any of this sort of stuff but

when I lent into that identity of being an author and I start of this video I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and author

leaning into the identity of being an author you know what does an author do an author writes what does a writer do a

writer writes that makes it a lot easier in the mornings when I'm figuring out what do I want to do with my day what do

I want to do with my week oh yeah I'm a writer I guess I should do some writing and these and this is often in line with

the goals that I have for myself so the question would be for whatever goals that you're setting for yourself how can

you tie them to an identity because you know there's a quote that I really like from Tony Robbins which is that the

strongest force in human personality is the need to stay consistent in how we Define ourselves if you label if you

define yourself as a procrastinator you actually will stay consistent with that if you define yourself as a YouTuber

you're more likely to stay consistent with that if you can get over the Imposter syndrome and Define yourself as

a high performer or as an entrepreneur you are more likely to do the sorts of things that high performers or

entrepreneurs or healthy people or whatever the thing might be you're more likely to actually do those things

therefore you are more likely to achieve your goals in that domain now if you incorporate all these five things which

I hope you do because they're super easy to do and you might as well and they're evidence-based and they work if you

incorporate these five things there is still one mistake that you might run into which is the idea of setting too

many goals and here I want to link you to that video which is my summary of Cal newport's new book slow productivity

that makes a really strong case for doing less but better and doing it in a way that doesn't Foster burnout so if

you haven't yet read slow productivity by Cal Newport you can check out that video over there where I summarize kind

of the key learnings from the book and I hope you find that useful thank you so much for watching and I'll see you later

bye-bye