I was talking to a friend about my attitude regarding self-help books the other day, similar to how I recently mentioned that I recommend avoiding them. He asked how I manage to get things done despite my difficulties, and so here we are.

Prepare to be brutally honest

Here's the first important step. We can only start once we're honest with ourselves about what we truly desire. So it's time to drop all that baggage because if we aim for goals others want, we won't get far. That means:

• Don't chase a career because others will respect you for it.
• Don't work towards a degree to prove yourself to anyone, even yourself.
• Don't buy things for their status, especially items that often require a loan, like houses and cars.
• Similarly, don't buy something for its potential resale value.
• Don't take on significant commitments because everyone else is doing it.

It's incredibly challenging to stay motivated in working towards something when the reasoning comes from external social pressures. Whenever the going gets tough, we will wonder why we're doing this in the first place over and over again. We are more likely to give up because we're not fuelled by passion but by fear, anxiety, or insecurity. We might even start feeling resentful towards the activity or the world.

None of the consequences of setting goals based on external social pressures are pleasant. So we must ensure our plans are based on our true desires and passions. If we don't know what those are, there's no need to fret — we can make finding those our goals!

Getting specific

Details and definitions are essential when planning our goals because they help us realise what's required to achieve them. So often, our ability to plan is hindered by a need to know the exact details of what we're planning, so regardless of how tedious this step may be, it's essential.

I will only go into a bit of detail about the specifics of getting specific and breaking projects down, as how that goes essentially depends on the goal. However, some examples can be helpful so let's look at some short-term goals in relation to getting specific.

For example, say we wanted to write a book about taking care of pet rocks or explaining introductory economic concepts. That's a start, but we still need to find out what the contents might be. Knowing what we want to write about within the book by roughly outlining what the table of contents might look like is the difference between finishing a book within a year and a decade.

Another example is that "get a better job" doesn't mean much if we don't define what a better job looks like. Does a "better job" mean better pay, more work-from-home flexibility, a solid career advancement plan, more health benefits, or all of the above? Again, we can be more specific with our goals in many ways, and the more we know upfront, the easier the rest of the process.

I had further examples in Reflecting on My Life: The 2022 Edition, where I talked about how I wasn't good at saving money until I decided on measurable personal goals.

Breaking them down

Next, we break our goals into smaller actions because it helps us stay focused on achieving each step one by one, making the entire process less daunting and more manageable. It also helps us prioritise tasks to accomplish the goal efficiently because we can more easily visualise each task.

That's great, but how do we actually accomplish this? Fortunately, measurable goals help immensely. Because we already have specifics, it's easier to break them down into what's required to achieve them. We can ask ourselves: If the end goal is x, how must I achieve it? Then, what do I need to accomplish those things? And so on until you can't break it down any further.

When writing an individual post, I can break that down into goals. For example, if I were to aim to write a piece on "the history of vampires in mythology", I would start with steps such as "research topic" and "write an introductory paragraph." This might lead to thinking of some questions I hope to answer during this process, such as: How are they different in various cultures? What roles did they play in each culture? How did these portrayals affect those to come later in history? And so on.

However, when it comes to something larger such as having a site where I post my thoughts, I need to lay out my information first. I have sorted my ramblings into various folders and then made a table in Notion that lists all of them. The table includes the name, the type of writing (e.g. creative, critical analysis, self-reflective, etc.), and some tags to help make the topic more specific (e.g. economics, politics, philosophy). Then, what its publish date was/will be and a checkbox displaying whether it's already published.

This information gives me an overview of what I have now. I need to know this to help me determine what might be missing, what new steps to add, and how to prioritise.

Stop not getting them done

So we've determined that what we're working towards is personally important to us. The next lot of baggage to drop is the stuff that gets in the way of achieving our goals and steals our attention. These are the things that don't help us but instead help themselves. They are complacency in disguise of helpfulness, and we often know this because they make us feel guilty after participating in them.

First, this means avoiding being tempted by entertainment or background noise while working towards goals. Having something like Netflix running in the background is a distraction waiting for us to get sucked into it. We will be less productive if we can keep up with what's being said in the show. As I've said before,

As a result, I do two things without dedication rather than focusing and doing one thing well. If I keep doing this, I will eventually find that I can't work on my stuff without the background noise... These constant behaviour-changing micro-distractions hurt our ability to achieve what we desire. But to make matters worse, what we desire becomes moulded by that in which we engage. So the more we entertain the notion that we can participate in something without it affecting us, the more vulnerable we become to manipulation.

Meanwhile, social media is even worse: it's not just a huge distraction but can be detrimental to mental health because of the constant need to be validated. It's a feedback loop that can be hard to break and cause feelings of inadequacy and sadness. In addition, it can get in the way of our goals by constantly giving other people's successes to compare to, making it easy to feel like we're not doing enough or going too slowly. We must stay focused on our goals and not be sucked into the vortex of comparison and validation from others. 

Lastly, as much as I love games, this doesn't mean they're all created equally. Drop the toxic games. That includes any titles with online matchmaking, dailies, and microtransactions. Those games are highly addictive, and although we might believe we're playing in a balanced way, some indicators could indicate a cause for concern. For example, having played for more than a year and defending the activity by saying we could stop if we wanted or by comparing our behaviour to others who are more addicted. Also, if we're playing because of friends, it can be challenging to step away; however, we should take responsibility for our actions and not inadvertently blame others.

The moral of the story is humility. The moment we become arrogant and start thinking we are better than these multi-million dollar company-backed systems tailor-made to keep our attention, the more dangerous they become.

The long road ahead

Time frames are challenging. Determining a reasonable deadline for each goal can be difficult and disheartening when we don't complete our tasks within the given time. However, we need to consider these as learning experiences — we will learn to figure out how much we are capable of over a certain period as we go along. Furthermore, the more we practice organisation, the better we'll get at setting and meeting deadlines.

Unexpected things will happen. While we may be unable to plan for these occurrences, it is always wise to be prepared should an unforeseen event arise. Taking the time to anticipate potential challenges and their consequences can help us remain calm and composed in times of uncertainty.

It won't always be a positive experience. This is why our goals being our own desires is important: eventually, long-term projects hit periods of being tiresome, exhausting, and challenging to continue with. These periods of weariness are entirely normal, especially the more creative the endeavour, and absolutely nothing to feel ashamed about.

Occasionally our brains need a break. This is typically problematic if we haven't been pacing ourselves — it's extremely easy to go overboard when excited about working on something and burn out. Often a break to try other things out is more beneficial than we realise, as inspiration can sometimes be found in the most unlikely places. But don't forget to get back into the rhythm at some point.

Circumstances can change, and we can change. Our values, desires, or situation may change in a way that makes us realise we no longer wish to pursue a particular goal. That, again, is entirely normal and nothing to feel guilty about. There's nothing wrong with dropping an incomplete project when we have good reasons.

Reflect, revise, adjust. We can make time in our schedules to revisit our short-term goals once a week and our long-term goals every month, or whatever works for us. We should track what we're doing and how we feel about it.

In conclusion: plan, plan, plan

This is a lot of upfront planning, yes. But it's necessary to prevent us from becoming lost along the way. To make things easier, we can limit the amount we have to do in one sitting by introducing new long-term goals over time instead of all at once. A good time to introduce new ones would be whenever we revisit our existing ones — getting reacquainted with where we're at with current ones can give us insight into how much more we can take on.

To summarise, we first must decide what we want to achieve in the long and short term. But to succeed, we must be specific, use measurable terms, and break everything down into smaller, more achievable goals. Then accept the journey, knowing it will be challenging, we will need breaks, and we're constantly at odds with everything that wants our attention.

Ultimately, how you use this and what you use it for is up to you. But I hope my personal guidelines have clarified the entire process for those of you who, like me, used to struggle to get things done.