Your Best Year Ever: Michael Hyatt - Summary & Analysis (3/6)
Step 3. Design your Future.
"Great results don’t just happen. You don’t usually drift to a destination you would have chosen. Instead, you have to be intentional, force yourself to get clear on what you want and why it’s important, and then pursue a plan of action that accomplishes your objective" - Your Best Year Ever: Michael Hyatt
Great goals check 7 boxes.
The importance of written goals.
Committing your goals to writing is not the end game. But it is foundational for success for at least five reasons. First, it forces you to clarify what you want.
Second, writing down goals helps you overcome resistance. When we go to the trouble of formulating and recording our goals, we’re doing more than dreaming. We’re also engaging our intellect. We’re processing, self-checking, and analyzing. Every meaningful intention, dream, or goal encounters resistance.
Third, it motivates you to take action. Writing your goals down is only the beginning. Articulating your intention is important, but it is not enough. You must execute your goals. You have to take action. I have found that writing down my goals and reviewing them regularly provokes me to take the next most important action.
Fourth, it filters other opportunities. The more successful you become, the more you will be deluged with opportunities. In fact, these new opportunities can quickly become distractions that pull you off course. Establishing your priorities up front equips you to intentionally avoid what some call “shiny object syndrome.
Fifth, it enables you to see — and celebrate — your progress. It is particularly difficult when you aren’t seeing progress. You feel like you are working yourself to death, going nowhere. But written goals can serve like mile markers on a highway. They enable you to see how far you have come and how far you need to go. They also provide an opportunity for celebration when you attain them.
The 7 attributes of the SMARTER system.
1. Specific.
The first attribute of SMARTER goals is that they’re specific. To formulate a SMARTER goal, you’ve got to identify exactly what you want to accomplish. For example, I could say “Write a book,” but that’s too vague. What’s the specific book that I want to write?
2. Measurable.
The second attribute of SMARTER goals is that they are measurable. In other words, they have built-in criteria you can measure yourself against. When the goal is measurable, we know the criteria for success. An objective target allows you to set markers and milestones along the way. That means you can chart your progress, and half the fun of goals is in the progress we make.
3. Actionable.
The third attribute of SMARTER goals is that they’re actionable. Goals are fundamentally about what you’re going to do. As a result, it’s essential to get clear on the primary action when formulating your goals. How?
It may sound simplistic, but I find it’s best to use a strong verb to prompt the action you want to take. You don’t want something like am, or be, or have. You want a verb like run, finish, or eliminate.
4. Risky.
The fourth attribute of SMARTER goals is that they’re a bit risky. Hear me out. Normally we talk about setting goals that are realistic. That’s usually what the R in SMART refers to. But if we start by asking what’s realistic, we’re likely to set the bar too low.
“There is a linear relationship between the degree of goal difficulty and performance ”
Safe goals happen when the aversion to failure of not reaching the goal is much stronger than the desire to achieve it.
By focusing on what’s supposedly realistic, we can inadvertently trigger our natural impulse to avoid loss and end up accomplishing less than we otherwise might have.
5. Time-keyed.
The fifth attribute of SMARTER goals is that they’re time-keyed. This could be a deadline, frequency, or a time trigger. Deadlines demand attention and spur action.
Distant deadlines discourage action. Effort dissipates to fill time. But the reverse is also true. Short time horizons concentrate our effort. The tighter the deadline, the more productive you can be.
The main thing to watch is your bandwidth. I recommend setting seven to ten goals per year — but only two or three major deadlines per quarter. Any more than that and your focus will suffer along with your results.
6. Exciting.
The sixth attribute of SMARTER goals is that they’re exciting. They inspire you. External motivations might work for a while, but if we’re not getting something intrinsic from the goal, we’ll lose interest.
Go with what excites you. If you don’t find your goals personally compelling, you won’t have the motivation to push through when things get tough or tedious. This is where you’ve got to be honest with yourself. Ask, “Does this goal inspire me?” Or, “Does it engage my heart? Am I willing to work hard to make it happen?” You might even ask if you find it fun.
7. Relevant.
Effective goals are relevant to your life. This is about alignment, and it comes at the end of the list because it’s a good way to gut-check your goals before committing to them. If we’re going to succeed, we need goals that align with the legitimate demands and needs of our lives.
You also need goals that align with your values. You need to resist the temptation to gear your performance for others — especially if it somehow goes against your values.
Finally, you need goals that align amongst themselves. They must have harmony together as a whole. Setting multiple conflicting goals will only create friction and frustration. If we’re working against ourselves, we’ll experience more heartburn than progress. That goes for setting too many goals in general.
Limit yourself to seven to ten goals that align with your life, your values and your ambitions.
Achievements and habits work together.
Achievement goals are one-time accomplishments. They have a clear, definable scope and a timeline for completion. Habit goals don’t have a defined scope or limited timeframe. Instead, they represent ongoing activity.
Both achievement and habit goals can help us design the future we want, especially if we can get the right mix and leverage their differences.
Distinctions With a Difference.
The most effective habit goals have four time keys:
Start date. This is when you intend to begin installing this habit.
Habit frequency. This is how often you will observe this habit. It could be daily, specific days of the week, weekly, monthly, and so on.
Time trigger. This is when you want to do the habit. It could be a specific time each day, week, and so on. This makes it easier to become consistent if you can do the habit at the same time.
Streak target. This is how many times in a row you must do the habit before you can consider it installed — i.e, once the activity becomes second nature. With most habit goals, you can stop focusing on them once that happens.
The risk factor comes from maintaining your streak. Installing a habit takes a period of time, and it might be longer than you think.
Which Works Best?
If you’re looking to create seven to ten goals, you should probably have a mix of both achievement and habit goals. The trick is to know when and how to use them. An achievement goal works for any project with a definable scope or limited time frame. Let’s say you want to increase your income. You can put some definition on that and set yourself a deadline.
Meanwhile, a habit goal works for desires without a definable scope or limited time frame. Let’s say you want to grow closer to God or become more spiritual. That’s not a one-time accomplishment; that reflects an ongoing reality.
☝️Another way to use habit goals is as a means to completing an achievement goal.
Seriously, risk is your friend.
When it comes to meaningful achievement, comfort equals boredom and low engagement. You and I should embrace discomfort for at least three reasons, whether we deliberately choose to or it simply happens to us.
First, comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It often leads to self-absorption and discontent.
Second, discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt.
Third, discomfort signals progress. When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort, but there’s profit in the pain.
Personal engagement, satisfaction, and happiness all come when we’re gunning toward significant, risky goals.
How can you confirm you’re heading the right direction? I like to find out where someone’s goals relate to three specific zones. The three zones are the Comfort Zone, the Discomfort Zone, and the Delusional Zone.
The Comfort Zone.
We all have dreams for a better future. We set goals for improving our health, our family and friendships, our finances, our work lives, and more. When we start dreaming about the future, however, our aspirations can feel too fragile and too far away. We jump ahead of ourselves and start worrying about how we’re going to achieve those goals. Then, because we let the how overshadow the what, we downgrade our aspiration. We don’t see how we can accomplish more, so we throttle back our vision, convinced our goals must be “reasonable” or “realistic.” We aim low. We settle for less. And what we expect becomes our new reality.
If you have all the financial, emotional, and physical resources you need right now to accomplish your goal — in other words, if you can easily imagine completing the challenge — it’s probably not challenging enough to be compelling.
Imagine if you had a growth goal of 20%. Delivering that result will require more from you than you currently know how to manage. That’s when growth happens.
The idea with a risky goal is to leap out of your Comfort Zone and into your Discomfort Zone. Playing it safe won’t reap the same kind of rewards.
The Discomfort Zone.
You’ve probably already experienced Discomfort Zone benefits to some extent before. Maybe it was learning a new skill, meeting a new person, or taking on a challenge you’d never done. We don’t often enjoy these things when they are happening, but looking back, we have to admit: the really important stuff of life happens outside your Comfort Zone. This is where the growth happens, where the solutions are, where fulfillment resides. But instead of encountering this retrospectively, we can engineer these experiences by intentionally embracing goals with greater levels of risk baked in.
For a goal to be meaningful, its attainment should lie in the Discomfort Zone. You’ll know you’re there when you start feeling emotions we normally consider negative: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. When rightly understood, these supposedly negative emotions work like indicator lights telling us we’ve arrived. When we don’t see the path, or we’re unsure about having what it takes to reach the goal, then we’re closing in on a goal worth trying for.
You need to be smart about this. For instance, in the business environment, there’s a big difference between setting bold goals and managing up. It might be unwise to publicly stand for a certain goal that’s on your personal goal list. There’s nothing wrong with having a public number that’s in your Comfort Zone and your personal stretch goal that’s beyond it. But how do you know if your goal is challenging or just crazy? There is also a difference between discomfort and delusion.
The Delusional Zone.
Some goals are simply impossible and fail to align with the rest of our priorities. They don’t inspire; they ensure failure.
We can all step into the Delusional Zone if we’re not careful.
We’re rarely as good at identifying our blind spots as others. They can sometimes see how a goal is missing the relevancy we think it has.
And here’s a warning. You don’t need one crazy leap to land in the Delusional Zone. Sometimes we can drift there with the accumulated demands of multiple goals.
I see this when people plan major deadlines simultaneously or stack up projects one after another without enough margin. You know what happens next. It’s a train wreck just waiting to happen.
Preparing for the Journey.
Your best year ever lives somewhere beyond your Comfort Zone. If that’s true, and I believe it is, how can you prepare for the negative emotions that are sure to hit you during the journey? Let me suggest four ways:
First, acknowledge the value. We move toward what we esteem. The first step is simply to confess that getting out of your Comfort Zone is a good thing. This is about trading your limiting belief for a liberating truth. Unless you do so, you won’t experience the growth you want, the solution you need, or the fulfilment you desire. Playing it safe is not that safe.
Second, lean into the experience. So many people shrink back whenever they experience pain. The problem is that this can become a habit — or worse, a way of life. Instead, embrace the discomfort. Move toward it. This is an important step in accomplishing anything significant. You have to go through the realm of discomfort to get what you want in life.
Third, notice your fear. If you feel anxiety, trepidation, or uncertainty, that’s normal. But you don’t have to be controlled by it. Yes, fear can signal danger. But it can also indicate you’re on your way to a breakthrough. Often, the ability to push through fear is the only thing that separates those who succeed from those who fail.
Fourth, don’t overthink it. This is my biggest temptation. I want to know the entire path. I want a map to the destination. Alas, I rarely get one. But that’s okay. All you really need is clarity for the next step. When you get it, take the next step in faith, believing you will be given the light you need to take the next one.
Growth in the Journey.
You may think that comfort leads to happiness. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from growth and feeling like you are making progress.
As we try to set risky goals, it’s important to remember what goals are for in the first place. They are about getting things done, yes. But it’s more than that. A goal is not just about what you accomplish. It’s about what you become. Goals are about growing.
A good goal causes us to grow and mature. That’s because every goal is about the journey as much as — even more than — the destination. And that’s exactly why setting goals outside the Comfort Zone is so important.
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