Winners and losers have the same goals, as James Clear puts it really clearly. The way we think about success is fundamentally flawed. We put too much emphasis on the goal itself and not enough on the system that leads to the goal. We are obsessed with the outcome rather than the process, and the most successful people in the world are those who focus on the system and not the goal. They operate with a long-term perspective; they don't get caught up in the short-term wins and losses. They realize that the goal is just a byproduct of the system they have in place. I implemented this process in 2022, tweaking it along the way to make it work for me. This time, I'll share with you how I actually did it. It's a three-step, anti-goal setting process: the first one is to dream big, the second one is to start small, and the third one is to reassess regularly. So let me show you what I do: 1. Dream BIG. It frustrates me to my core when people say, "Oh, set realistic goals so you can better achieve them." But, to be honest, where is the excitement in that? Stephen Schwarzman, the founder of the Blackstone Group, said it takes the same amount of effort to do something big as it does something small. So, Step One is before everyone else jumps in and says, "Oh, you know, Airbnb is unrealistic. Why would people stay at strangers' homes, or why would people get into strangers' cars, as it is with Uber and Lyft?" Give yourself the space to at least write down things that you dream about. I've created a template if you want to fill it out with me. Let me show you an example with the right approach. So, step number one, what do I want to achieve in my life? One of the things is one million YouTube subscribers. Let's say in two years, okay, now you've got the dream. We've got to think about the person that will make that dream happen. I'll refer back to James Clear again. The type of person you want to become is often more important than any goal you want to reach. When you focus on who you want to be, you begin to understand your values and beliefs, and your habits will follow suit. Truly successful people have internalized the habits necessary to reach their goals. So, if you focus on who you want to be, the goals will naturally follow. How many people have felt empty when they achieve a really big goal? I definitely have, and it's the arrival fallacy of us moving closer towards our goals, and even before reaching it, just during the process, we're already feeling the dopamine, all the excitement of moving closer and closer to my goals. So, once we actually get there, well, it's already not news. So, the big dream we put down, you know, once we reach it, sure, I will be happy, but then as a person, there always needs more. So instead of focusing on that big dream, it's focusing on who is that person that will make that dream happen and make all the dreams to come happen. And so, there are five categories we can look at to think about who is the ideal person that we want to become. So, who do I want to be in order to do those big things? The first one is health, right? I think that's fundamental, especially after all this COVID stuff. So for me, it's to be someone fit and energized to do what I want and travel. Then it's time, right? What do I want the time for my ideal self to mean to me? It's 50% of time spent creating. Oh, thank you because I realize after a year of doing, I need this time to create and to think, which fuels each other. Then number three is money. For me, the ideal person would have enough to sustainably experiment and make an impact on education, and education here I put in quotation because I don't want to talk about you know, really traditional education, but something like, you know, sharing on YouTube. Then relationships, um for me, is to just enjoy the company. Then growth, um I feel like this would be figuring out and creating content that's true to me. Currently, I still feel like some of the content I'm creating, I'm still trying to win the game, but I want to be able to just express my true feelings about things, so that would definitely be a goal. Grade yourself. Then we gotta do a quick assessment, right? Where are we in comparison to our ideal self? Let's rate ourselves out of five on every one of these items. Health, okay, I think I'm actually a four out of five for this so far, so good. Time is probably a two, 2.5 let's say, let's okay, let's say 2.5, uh money , um to, um let's say three, relationships, I think three and growth three. The lowest score is time; that would definitely be a priority for next year, and the highest score is health, so it just gotta keep doing what I'm doing. Alright, we got the Big Dreams, we got the person we want to be, we know where we are in terms of how far we've come, and how far we still need to go. Then let's move on to number two, which is start small, and here I use a simple three plus one system. Three plus one means to stop, start, continue, and then plus one is a big change you want to make in your life. Now start small means taking those big, vague, inspiring, aspiring ideas and trying to bring them down to earth, right? Make them into small steps that we can actually do something with. And so here, I want to use SMART tasks (not goals), tasks, not smart goals. I think that's where it's fundamentally flawed. SMART means specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Usually, it's smart goals, but as you can see, it makes the goals really boring, but when you make it into a task that's smart, then it's very actionable, easy, and things that we can always check to see if we're doing them. And so, we'll apply smart tasks to the three part of the system, which is a stop, start, and continue. Let me show you on the worksheet. So here we are, we've got a three-stop, STOP, START, CONTINUE, continue, and start. First, we want to say what we want to do less of, right? This is the salt part, and we want to do that for each of the five categories. Yeah, so for health, I want to stop eating too much, uh that's one problem with me. Two with time, I want to stop ignoring self-imposed deadlines. For money, money I skip, I think I'm okay with my habits, those who know me let me know that there are things I'm missing. I was relationships I really don't want to get grumpy, stop getting grumpy when angry. I mean, I can control this when I'm with people that are not close to me, so surely I can do that for the people I love. And for growth, um it's to put off making YouTube videos when busy, so that is no good, all right, so let's stop. Then, uh for continue, my things I want to continue doing, houses work out, let's say three to five times a week, uh things I want to continue doing with time, definitely scheduling, um to create YouTube videos, doesn't always work, but I still want to continue scheduling time for money, continue to invest, for relationships, um I want to continue to call that are far away, and for growth, I want to continue reading every day. Now I just want to stop here and say that even with just these two things, right? Stopping the things they're not helping you becoming the person you want to be and continue doing the things that are working already, you will level up; it's that simple, right? That's the small changes we need to make and small things every single day. Well, that's compounding time, right? Okay, let's do a quick spot check of whether the tasks we've written down are actually smart, right? Stop eating too much, maybe this is every meal, right? So we know that we can measure this every time, um, or let's see, continue to invest and make this more specific, continue to invest monthly, recalculating, um amount, and free quarter, okay. So things like this, making sure that all the things you're writing down are smart. Then let's go to the third part of the three plus one system, which is what do I want to do more of, and a good way to look at this is the things that you're stopping to do, what are you going to replace this with? And this can help you stack your habits, Habit Stacking, right? If every time you do something, you stack another habit on top of it, you are more likely to get them done. It's like every time you want to eat ice cream, and instead of going for that, you have some yogurt, uh, so I want to do more of use a smaller plate for every meal, for example, meal now, um, for time ignoring self-imposed deadlines, how about, um $100 in Penalty Box, and donate the end of each month, for money I didn't really have one, but let's say I want to do more of creating a course, of course, figure out. Thank you to everyone who has left comments and DMs and said that you're interested in the course. Let me give it a try. I will definitely be recruiting beta users for it at a discount, so stay tuned for that. No relationships, alright, stop getting grumpy when hangry, uh, so what do I want to do more of, let's say annoyance trigger every time I get annoyed, okay, and five for growth, right, putting off making YouTube videos when I'm busy, uh, I think what I need to do here is make shorts, no I don't have time to make a full video. 1 CHANGE, so that's the three plus ones, three-part. Now for the plus one of the system, and this is to stir things up, shake things, and make it more exciting, the one it's a one change that I've always wanted to make but for some reason haven't gotten around to it now. So many people miss the point, which is that there are things that you dream of doing, but when you actually do them, you might hate it. So instead of fantasizing the ideas that you come up with are the things that you think you want to do, why not just break it down and start somewhere and test it out, you know if you love it, correct, you can continue doing it. Why what and if you don't like it, well lucky you tried it, so you can try something else, right? And if for some reason you don't have anything you like to do or any change, then you know, start with what Eleanor Roosevelt suggested, do one thing that scares you every day. 3. Assess Regularly. Now let's go on to number three, assess regularly. Specifically, we're talking about daily, monthly, and annually because it's all well and good when we plan it, right? The world is going to be amazing, but life gets in the way, and we never check back and see if we're on the right path if we're making any progress if things actually make sense. First, daily, we got daily checkboxes to keep the momentum going. I have a template I use every single day to track where I'm at. You can feel free to download it, but even if you don't use the download, it's very simple. Just at the end of the day, ask yourself, did I do less of what I said I would do less of, and did I do more of what I said I would do more of? Knowing this assessment is coming at the end of every day, you make sure you squeeze in some time to do these. Then there are three questions to ask at the end of every month. They are, what's energizing me, what's draining me, and what's important to me right now? Is it aligned with my big dreams and my three plus one set system? The end of the month is a perfect time to recalibrate, right? When we set out the plans, we actually didn't try any of these things, so now that we've given ourselves a month to try, let's see, you know, it doesn't work, do we need to make tweaks, do things still make sense? Like, I don't know if you suddenly had a baby or something big happen in your life, maybe your whole world has changed, and now you have new priorities and new dreams. So, your dreams could change, your systems could change, so give yourself space to recalibrate. Then, at the end of every year, I want to do a quick personal annual review. There are six questions I ask myself to understand the direction of next year. The first two questions I ask are, what are the highlights and lowlights, and if I could wave a wand and change something in this year, what would it be? What would I change? With that, I can think about how to replicate the highlights and remove the lowlights for next year, and the things I wanted to change about this year, I can do it for the next one. Then there's a Moment of Truth. There are two questions I ask here, which are, what did I do out of fear, and what was the consequence of that? And the other question is, what did I not do because of fear, and what was the consequence of that? Because I think we just need a moment to be real with ourselves, you know, we do things out of fear all the time. You do something out of FOMO, for example, and you know, we need a moment to assess that decision. Was that a good one or a bad one? You know, next time when we face fear, what should I do next? And on the flip side, what were the things I was too afraid to do for whatever reason, and how does that impact my life? You know, am I still thinking about it? Maybe next year, that's the change I take on in the three plus one system. Then, for the learnings of the year, right, we've got to take away something, and the first one is the top three to five learnings or quotes if you can't find learnings that inspired me this year. And the last question is, what did I change my mind about? It's a good reminder to say it's okay to change our minds. It's okay for us to grow, like, every single year, there should be at least one thing that we've changed our minds about. And throughout the year, I also use decision journals, so check that out, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.