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- Issue No. 80: How SMART Goals Sabotage Success (and the Brain Science of What Works)
Issue No. 80: How SMART Goals Sabotage Success (and the Brain Science of What Works)
Can AI generate its own prompts? Yep -- here's how to do it.
Jenae Spry
May 17, 2024
In partnership with
Productivity Express
Issue No. 80
The Best in Evidenced-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
Quick Tip: Do you check in with yourself/business? Or just do the next thing without thinking?
Proven practices to rewire your brain to help you live your best life
How SMART Goals Sabotage Success (and the Brain Science of What Works)
My Productivity System (YouTube - Christopher Lawley)
Google is not about blue links, says ex-CEO Eric Schmidt
Anthropic AI Launches a Prompt Engineering Tool that Generates Production-Ready Prompts in the Anthropic Console
Add this book to your reading list
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🔥Quote/Prompt
You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.
Use the quote as a writing or thinking prompt to finish your week strong.
A bit from mine:
(posted in our Doer Entrepreneurs Free Community — off social media)
Not gonna lie, getting back to posting more on social media has me uncomfortable. I'm sensitive. I shouldn't be. I am.
But you know what else I am? Fired up. Frustrated. Frustrated that I haven't helped more people, and it's certainly the easiest, most direct way to move that needle forward.
You know the whole "when you're a hammer all you see is nails" quote -- well, fine. I'm an evidence-based productivity & systems strategist and this seems to be the solution to working smarter and living more. I'm good with that.
I think in a lot of ways as business owners, we should feel that way. We should feel in our core that what we do matters a LOT and that
Did someone forward this to you?
🎥 Productivity Quick Tip
 | Question for you: Do you check in with yourself every day and ask yourself if you're being intentional with what you're doing (that day, week, month, in life)? Or...do you just let the momentum of all the decisions you made before today push you to the next thing and the next without actually stopping and making an intentional decision? Let’s talk about it. See More & Join the Conversation: |
📈 Performance
The author of this article starts out by explaining that basically, humans today are simultaneously more prosperous than ever before and also more unhappy than ever before. He breaks down the stats on this, which I encourage you to check out, but let’s get to the action items.
He lists 5 action items and they are all very important and well explained. If you’re looking to get out of a rut or even just level up, this is a great article to improve your life and business performance. In particular, I’ve chosen the following excerpt because of its importance. Many times we get on a track towards a goal, but then forget the goal, why we wanted the goal, stopped questioning if we still want it, and still stay on track anyway. He suggests we really remember what our North Star is and select one if we don’t have one. Check that part out below and the full article for all of his suggestions.
If you’re a Doers Inner Circle member, check out our Mission & Strategy section here for a guided way to develop your own North Star for your business and life.
Article excerpt below!
5. FIND A NORTH STAR TO GUIDE YOUR JOURNEY.
In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, we lose track of what truly matters. We make an unconscious over-investment in our careers and the pursuit of more and rely on regular withdrawals from tangible returns in the short term. Keeping what truly matters front and center and allocating time and energy accordingly is critical to living in coherence and harmony with your dreams.
The only constant in life is change. The best-laid plans and intentions get hampered by the deluge of constantly changing demands and life circumstances. Adopting a daily intention practice can provide the needed focus, discipline, and self-control for picking yourself up from every fall to persevere toward your goals. Setting daily intentions guides the battle between choices that provide instant gratification versus those that nurture the long-term benefits of achieving your goals.
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⚙️ Optimization
Let me just start off by saying…I don’t necessarily hate SMART goals, but they’re also not the only way to set goals (the way some SMART goal enthusiasts seem to present the idea).
But what about when we set a SMART goal, and we fail? Since it’s measurable by definition (that’s the M), there’s also an inherent “pass/fail” right? Since we’re human, we don’t always take this in stride, especially if the goal is very important to us. If you’re a perfectionist like me, all the more so. According to the article:
Our brains are wired to be twice as sensitive to loss than they are to gain. This makes any hint of failure a potent force in our lives—a phenomenon known as loss aversion. As a result, I posit that mitigating notions of personal failure proves to be a more potent force for success than chasing perfect performance.
SMART goals narrowly define success such that, let’s say, only one percent of the time, they work out exactly as predicted. To the brain, this means that the other 99 percent of the time, we are falling short, i.e. failing. It’s a vicious cycle that leaves us increasingly feeling disheartened and disillusioned.
The good news is that our brain is neuroplastic but the bad news is we also can’t keep our brains from “learning” based on its perception of reality (that we only succeed 1% of the time in the above example.
Instead of setting rigid SMART goals, the article suggests the Iterative Mindset. In other words, progress not perfection. So if you struggle with setting SMART goals and failure, this might be a far better goal-settling mentality.
Choose Iteration Instead
Iteration is the antidote to the performance mindset’s toxic grip. Instead of fixating on rigid goals, I have discovered the Iterative Mindset, a research-backed antidote to performative goals that encourages us to embrace failure as a natural part of the learning process. It’s about reframing setbacks as opportunities for growth rather than reasons to throw in the towel.
Our research on thousands of people has shown that adopting an Iterative Mindset is the key driver of sustained habit change. By treating setbacks as valuable data for each iteration, we shift our focus from perfection to progress.
To fully embrace the transformative potential of iteration, we must remember that change doesn’t happen in straight lines; it unfolds in squiggly lines and cycles of experimentation and adaptation. It is critical to praise effort, creativity, and problem-solving over narrow results, modeling healthy responses to setbacks.
In a world of constant change, rigid SMART goals are nothing short of motivation killers. Through iteration, we align with the brain instead of against it by triggering the habenula. By iterating our way to success, we never fail.
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⏲️ Time Management
What I love about this video is that he goes through his full Productivity Stack from note taking to organizing those notes, task management, calendar management and more. Sometimes we come across a great tool but can’t quite work it into our workflow.
I’ve decided to share his own chapter cuts to make it easy to navigate to what interests you most, but I’d recommend checking out the full video if you feel like your system could use some work. You might find your next best tip here! Each timestamp is clickable:
💻 Tools & Technology
Apologies, sort of, for including another SEO related article, but it’s definitely huge to keep on top of right now with the changes Google is making, AI, and so on. As business owners, we need to be very aware of how all of this is shaking out to protect and improve our own web presence.
One thing I really like about this article is its reminder that in trying to predict what Google will do and how, people are frequently forgetting it’s Mission. Side note, if you’re in Doers, check out the ”Core Purpose” section here for creating your own.
Google’s is not “connect links” or even “help businesses get found” — it’s organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
As the article explains:
“Of course, Google is not about blue links. It’s like saying that Disney is about black-and-white hand-drawn cartoons. Disney’s purpose is to entertain, while Google’s is to make information accessible. Blue links were just the best way to do it before generative AI,” according to former Googler Frederick Vallaeys, CEO at Optmyzr.
Check out the full article for a breakdown of how Google is changing and a video of the interview the article is based on.
🤖 AI (New Section!)
I’m sure you have heard people say “the AI chat tools are so great!… With the right prompt!” But if you’re not a natural prompt engineer, how do you get the right prompt — well it turns out the tool itself can help you figure that out. Excerpt below but the article contains step-by-step instructions with screenshots on how to do this with Claude.ai.
Prompt engineering has been gaining increasing attraction recently because people want to navigate AI more efficiently and get optimal outputs. But not everyone can be a prompt engineer or doesn’t have the time to learn it all; luckily for them, Anthropic, the creator company behind Claude large language model (LLM) and one of the biggest competitors of ChatGPT, has just announced a new prompt engineering tool that can turn your ideas into effective, precise and reliable prompts using Claude’s prompt engineering techniques.
This is great news for anyone looking to maximize their outputs using generative AI and achieve optimal results.
👀 Read, Watch, Listen
This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!
Renowned sports psychologist W. Timothy Gallwey, alongside two physicians, provides a practical guide for managing everyday stress in "The Inner Game of Stress." Gallwey addresses how negative self-talk can undermine us, suggesting that by taking childlike pleasure in learning new skills, we can build resilience against stress. Using case histories and interactive worksheets, he introduces tools like the STOP technique, the Attitude tool, the Magic Pen, the Transpose exercise, and the PLE triangle. These tools help us tap into our inner strengths, fostering relaxation, better decision-making, and improved relationships. This guide empowers anyone to manage stress and enhance life performance.
🎉 Celebration Corner
Every week Doers Inner Circle members do a weekly review & get help when they need it — check out the progress they made this week!
Worked on Client satisfaction (work on business).
My personal life had some higlights and I enjoyed the BP Conference, after all.
Progress on new brand with domain, profiles, some WP reading/activity;
Posted on LI 2x so far, probably a 3rd post on the weekend to achieve goal.
Attended planning session on Friday. Book Club on Wednesday which was very inspiring.
Some progress on short vacation planning and family matters; overall inspired
I stuck with my morning routine
I gained a new client and thanks to her, found out that the contact page for my websites wasn't working and got it fixed.
I got my certification completed on Saturday and now I'm a coach with not one, but TWO certifications.
I successfully finished my second week of posting 5x per week on Instagram!
What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!
🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements
Vote: We are doing a challenge — choose your preference — last chance! Read here
Vote: Doers Merch is coming! Vote/Give Your thoughts here
Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 1️⃣ Strategy & Mission RSVP here
Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: : 1️⃣ Strategy & Mission RSVP here
Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party
Accelerators: May 24 is your Monthly Goal Setting Workshop RSVP here
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I hope you found this valuable!
Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
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