Ask HN: How to achieve goals in 2019? What advice do you give to stay on track?

* Write them down (use SMART as a framework for this)

* Ask someone to help you stay accountable

* Use both external (e.g. payment for failure to reach goal) and internal (e.g. passion) motivators

* Break down each task into the smallest possible sub-tasks

I imagine what you're really wondering is why are your goals so difficult to achieve? It sounds like you have some combination of lofty, unrealistic, or "non" goals.

Lofty in that they are very difficult to start/work on/finish (see the advice on breaking tasks down).

Unrealistic in that you're trying to do too much (see the advice on SMART goals).

Or "non" goals...I can't really come up with a better term than this, but what I mean is that your goals aren't something YOU really want to achieve. They aren't a goal you've set out for yourself, but what you think you SHOULD do because someone else told you it's a good idea. For example: starting a blog, learning AI/ML, learning Mandarin. Those are all very useful things for a good portion of the HN crowd. They may improve your life or career.

But if YOU don't actually want to do it and instead you were motivated to do it in 2019 because you read some blog somewhere that all of our jobs are going away and you better learn ML or else you're worthless...well, now you think "well my goal is to learn AI/ML in 2019" but really...you never would have made that a goal unless someone instilled some unnecessary fear in you. I mean if you're a graphic designer or a civil engineer and you love that stuff there is just no reason to force yourself to learn AI/ML because it will make you more defensible. It won't. It really has nothing to do with what you're already passionate about.

I think at this point I'm rambling but hopefully you can read through this and use this as an exercise to both prune out the goals you aren't truly motivated to accomplish and re-frame the ones you do so that they are achievable.

Good luck in 2019!