Ask HN: How to figure out a good direction/goals for the year ahead?

One thing that worked for me was to break up the year into three 100 day chunks. In each of these chunks you focus on establishing a habit that you want to have and you do that action every day. At the end of the 100 days you’ll be doing that activity as second nature which helps to lay the groundwork for a better life.

My three habits from this year were:

* work out everyday

* do something “interesting” everyday

* read everyday

As I look back on the year I can definitely say I’m in better shape, more active in finding cool stuff to do, and reading more books than I have in my adult life.

YMMV, but I suggest focusing on the little things that point you towards where you want your life to go.

This seems like a great practical framework- I've noticed that establishing habits like the ones you mention are the only reliable first step to long projects in my life.

Very curious about what you would do on a daily bases that would qualify as "interesting"? Any particularly rewarding "interesting" activities? I'd love to inject some routine variety in my life.

I defined "interesting" as I should be able to list 7 things of note when I call my parents on the weekend. This generally ended up being one of a few different actives:

* Read in a cafe / the park

* Try a new restaurant with a friend

* Go see a movie in theaters

* Go to a concert

* Check out a local art show

* Try an art project at home

The gist of it was that I ended up putting more effort into planning my week by asking myself "what's the cool thing I'm doing today". From there you end up finding venues and actives that have an event that you want to attend (eg a concert) and on slower days you find an excuse to hang out with a friend / do a hobby you find relaxing.

I like all of these things. Kudos.

How do you force yourself to read? I have a mountain of books in my backlog but every time I pick one up, I lose focus and keep reverting to skim reading. The information density just feels so low compared to what I could find on Wikipedia.

It sounds like maybe your reading list doesn't match well with the type of material you find engaging? If you're finding your nonfiction to be a bit sparse perhaps you would prefer titles targeting a more academic audience? This year I discovered that the local universities will loan material out to anyone who lives in the region and found no shortage of challenging, rich material.

Books are a slower source of information —- and that’s a good thing. Like most of us you have trained yourself out of being able to sustain focus on long term but ultimately rewarding things, like reading a long or challenging book.

My advice is to set a timer and gradually increase it. Start with 10 minutes. Put your phone in the other room. Set you timer. And just read. Repeat. On the third day raise it by a minute. Repeat. Start looking for other ways to exercise your ability to sustain focus and reduce quick hit, dopamine juicing time sucks. You will get better over time.

I have had the same issue and for me it was to start with something more gripping.

I had a long list of really technical and hard to read books. So faced with reading them, I always defaulted to something easier.

Instead, if you start with something gripping and easier to read (even some trashy fiction) it builds up momentum and the habit. Once you get some momentum you can start tackling the harder books, alternating back to easier stuff when motivation wanes

This is a good framework. Why don’t you do 90 days though? You’ll much more cleanly fit 4x90 day blocks into the year that way.

Because the holidays tend to throw off any sort of planning. 3x100 gives you some wiggle room between blocks and the ability to not have to manage habit forming around the holidays.

Going (with my wife) through Donald Whitney's[^1] 31 questions that cover different aspects of life has been one of the most helpful things we did last year. Last year, it was surprising how often "improving sleep quality/duration" was the answer to one of the questions. Simple, but asking ourselves the questions, writing down the answers and seeing them together helped provide prospective on what to prioritize.

You can't change everything all at once and these questions helped us zero in on the one or two things that would make the most difference in our lives.

to cut through the noise, you might need to find a trusted friend/mentor who doesn't overthink things and could be non-judgmental, but still suggest how you might make specific changes in an area you've both agreed upon is important to you. It sounds like that could be a game-changer for you.

All the best to you!

[^1]: Donald Whitney is writing to Christians, so some people might find his more general (21-30) questions more relevant.

I don't know what the solution is but I doubt you will find the answer in articles and youtube videos. Everyone is different and it's very easy to fall into the "tutorial trap": thinking you're working towards a goal because you're consuming content about it. You won't learn to play the guitar by watching videos.

I'd say, focus on identifying your own problem and find specific solutions that work for you.

You've mentioned perfectionism which I also struggled with but I've learned to manage. What worked for me is:

1) Learning to deal with my inner critic. Google a technique called "morning pages". Basically you have to learn how to act while ignoring your inner critic and trusting your gut.

2) Learning to accept that perfection doesn't exist and try to learn a bit more in every experience. I simply do the best I can given the resources I have at the time and move on. Finishing something is better than not doing anything at all. A wrong decision is better than no decision.

Be aware of the Maximizer vs Stisficer tradeoff. You're like me - you want to explore every option to make sure you take the best path. Often it isn't worth it - just choose a popular route that does basically what you want.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210329-do-maximisers-...

The other thing is a bias for action. Start doing something rather than looking at courses and blogs that teach you how to do the thing. Its easy to take 100 different courses which in the end just make you confused about what to do.

I think appreciating what you already have achieved is important, perhaps do a retrospective and talk with friends family what are great things that you have done, achieved or just you are good at or people appreciate.

Why? because no matter where you are going, you go from where you are at the moment.

We tend to forget, downplay, overlook our past achievements and what we are good at we give it for granted, like if it was normal for everyone and compare with others that way better, (there is always someone way better! at least for 99% of us).

When I'm overwhelmed I just practice acceptance, and think "let's do it just a little bit better" that is helping me with perfectionism.

Acceptance, would you still love your best friend if they are not "having a great year, being ambitious, achieving a lot in that year etc, really moving my life forward rather than languishing" I bet you would, why often we treat ourself worse than to our best friends?

Remove all that pressure, and create your own compass that feels good just for you! making things better, that somehow feel rewarding, if you are not having those feelings maybe shake things up, and do some changes.

Hope it helps!

Right on. "The Gain and the Gap" (Hardy & Sullivan) speaks directly to this same essential point. There's always another peak, the horizon always recedes (ie, the "Gap" will always be there), but pause from time to time to look back at how far you are from where you started (the "Gain") and be encouraged.

> really moving my life forward rather than languishing

I think a good goal would be to understand what you actually mean by languishing. Which depends on what meaning you think life has now. Otherwise it seems like you want a goal just for a goals sake.

Your notes about "I don’t seem to be any further ahead than those people that..." is specially telling that you're not setting yourself goals that you want, you're setting up goals to feel like you "won" the year vs other people.

Maybe a good goal could be find what truly motivates you and gives you joy intrinsically. Try new activities that give you joy. Once you find them you'll have no problem setting up goals, because you won't be setting them up "to have a good year" but rather they are just a list of things you genuinely want to do regardless of how well you do them or if you even get good at it.

I'm risking just posting another process that you might have seen, but I thought it was helpful. Maybe you or someone else will too.

Farnam Street annual review https://fs.blog/annual-review/ (Direct link without giving your email: https://fsmisc.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/2022+AR.pdf)

Cal Newport, the author of 'Deep Work'[1] releases frequent content on Youtube [2] that attempts to address the kind of challenges expressed by the author.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25744928

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia

I've been having surprisingly deep conversations with a GPT life coach I created: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-DLLfw2X2w-lifeguidebot

I've spoken with it a few times at length over the last couple months and each time it has drilled down to the actual problems I am dealing with and gave me good, supportive advice on setting goals and actionable plans. But YMMV.

Dang, I really empathize with this. I’m sure you’ve exhausted through a bunch of journals, but one journal I’d check out to see if it works for you if you haven’t already is “BestSelf.” It helps outline your goals and break them down into smaller achievable chunks. I apologize in advance if this doesn’t help because I recognize you don’t seem to have much luck with journals, but if you haven’t heard of that one, I’d check it out. When it comes to coming up with goals, I found that difficult too. Even this journal challenges me at that, but it helped me brain storm. I think trying to start generic and vague, then dive deeper into my goals seems to help me. I also think the key to accomplishing our goals is small wins consistently every day. Also, something new I’ve been trying is to try and find activities that can double dip progress towards my goals. Two smaller goals I’ve had is to stay positive and improve my penmanship. I’ve decided to write one positive affirmation 15-25 times over and over again. For example, a sentence I might write is “I will get a job and become successful.” [kinda corny ~ I know] I’d write that sentence at least 15 times in my smaller hand journal. This helps me stay positive when I’m down, and hopefully improves my penmanship ever so slightly. If I wanted to improve my penmanship fast or positive mindset there are probably better ways to do that; however, I find that I end up falling off from the bigger activities that might be more effective. To be honest, I’m still trying to find what strategies work for me. I think we all kind of need to just experiment and find what works best for us. No clue if this is of any help to you, but I hope there’s something of use. Good luck. You got this and all your goals will be achieved and realized.

I can totally relate to points articulated in first and second paragraph.

It took me something harsh and physical event to realize how much I've not been myself. It prompted me to give up everything dear but unncessary and unproductive things for a short term as a punishment for myself.

It worked. It showed results (albeit in short-term) and then I started journalling reports about myself. Having a honest conversation of what works and what consequences I have of acting from impulsive thinking and drifting away from my real life goals.

This is 4th month since I made the pivot and so far things are definitely better. I think its mainly a battle between your brain's system 1 and system 2. You gotto do things that system 2 has thought and planned out. Because system 1 can be irrational and get us into doing things that only have short term benefit.

Brain systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...

In my opinion, believing that adherence to processes is beneficial is a flawed thing, applicable mainly to highly repetitive and mundane tasks. For example now I am 100% focused on expediting the progress of projects that I start, including AssistOS (blog.assistos.net) initiated this year. Anticipating a period of considerable chaos ahead, my sole process involves a firm belief in the utility of the project. Additionally, I somewhat subscribe to a Kabbalistic approach to life, where the intention of contributing positively to the world invariably brings reciprocal rewards. I am committed to adapting to every emerging opportunity to advance the execution of my projects as effectively as possible. Act quickly on what you believe will benefit both you and others. Don't overthink or aim for perfection. You'll make many mistakes, but that's okay; it's the best way to learn quickly.

At the end of 2015, I started writing down what I wanted to achieve in the upcoming year in a spreadsheet every December and began reviewing the previous year’s spreadsheets in 2016.

Over time, I’ve learned that my success rate at achieving big important items within one or two years is negligibly low, but over a 3-4 year span, it’s higher than what intuition would suggest.

The interesting consequence for me has been having to pick the big items carefully - if it’s going to happen over the next 4 years and by then it doesn’t matter as much, it’s not really worth it.

Thinking long term is really hard. I suck at predicting what I would want 5 years from now. I’ve resorted to using a heuristic of “Will this matter irrespective of when I can get there?” as a substitute.

For example, wanting to live closer to my parents and spending more time with them seems like a better pick than wanting to learn how to train an LLM from scratch.

What works for me:

- Write out bad ideas on spare paper to get them out of your head.

- Write out good/private ideas into a diary, like a conversation or journal you have with yourself.

Any non-practical information you want to keep in your head should be organized. Opinions, theories, and whatever should be threads that are tied down to some mental storage device, (a mental map) or a software solution (excel doc).

After a while you start to see patterns in the media you're receiving and it becomes less mentally taxing to watch.

The desire to self improve is not a goal. It is a desire. Overheating with desire, cannot help you to move forward.

I'd focus on conserving one meaning or something you can see, and dodge the idea that you're going to mentally generate a good direction out of the infinite slew of media inputs to your life.

I don't think you (or anyone) can outsmart the problem of self improvement.

One approach is to answer the question “Where do I want to be in five years? (and can realistically reach those goals without relying on luck)”, and then work backwards from there.

In general, fewer goals are better, or you’ll spread yourself too thin and achieve none.

If you can’t answer the above question, then the answer could be “I want to be able to answer this question in five years”, which would mean trying out a lot of different activities and endeavors in order to get a better grasp on what fits you and what you want to achieve.

> I have this desire to improve myself.

This raises the questions of “improve in what way, specifically?” and “to what purpose exactly?”. Wanting to be ambitious shouldn’t be an end in itself.

As a fellow overthinker who also struggles to articulate my goals, I find it easier to think about incremental improvements than overarching goals.

For example, I want to become a better systems programmer, but I'm not really sure what to do with that desire. Goals are hard. But when I see C++ code, I know that I tremble at the sight of syntax I'm not familiar with, and that uncertainty is much easier to act on. I still won't "know" C++ in its entirety after an afternoon Googling session, but I definitely made some progress

Everyone has good insight so far - I would add that this video[1] from CGP Grey comes to mind about picking a theme for the year ahead. It's easy to get bogged down in the details but I try to follow a heuristic of taking action is infinitely better than sitting down and endlessly ruminating about it (of course easier said than done).

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE

> but I always struggle to articulate what that would mean, how I should achieve that, what I need to change etc

I recommend bullet journaling, to get stuff on paper/written down first before you take action. Then you can revise past notes to see how much you've progressed. It's worth being very clear about what you want, and have a rough draft of the means to get it.

There's a phrase I always loved: 'What's meant for you won't pass you by'.

Use an LLM like Llama2 to manage your personal sprints. Have one for 2-week sprints, daily standups, and of course epics.

Prompt it to help you develop a plan. I use ollama.ai to help me.

Example:

https://github.com/stephenwithav/Modelfiles/blob/master/busi...

edit: It doesn't provide perfect results, but it gives you a good start.

I can relate. I don't claim to have completely solved this same issue in my own life, but I can speak from experience in recommending "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. If nothing else, it will provide a framework for understanding yourself, your values, and how you relate to your work and to other people. Which (he argues, convincingly) is a prerequisite foundation for the kind of growth you seek.

You've got to do less but do better. Thinking that you need to do more is the culprit.

Marie Kondo teaches how to declutter your home by using joy as measurement. You've got to do the same thing to declutter first. Make a list of everything you do. And then measure them on 3 points:

1. Does it give you joy?

2. Does it earn you compliments?

3. Does it captivate you and keep you interested?

If the answer is no for any of the 3 questions, cut it out. (Question 2 should only be used for money making activities.)

I did this exercise last year called “8760 Hours” which is a series of prompts to help refine your values and goals for the year. I then reviewed my answers at the beginning of each month to make sure I hadn’t strayed off target. It was very helpful for me and I’ll do it again for 2024.

https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours/

A friend who is a highly acclaimed therapist specializes in exactly this. She has a new course coming up that helps people find their direction and purpose towards what matters to them. I would higly recommend it. The course information is on the home page of her website https://www.clairespooner.com/

Sounds like you want a perfect, not good, set of goals. It's infeasible to choose a perfect setup up front -- try an agile/iterative approach. I think you're smart, so I believe in your ability to pivot later if you change your mind. And it won't be a disaster or embarrassment if you choose wrong.

You know how great writers say they clear their writer's block by just starting?

I recently heard someone say their favorite cure to writer's block is to read more and do research.

I found something profound about that. Writing is hard when you don't have anything to write about, and maybe there's something analogous to be said for goal setting.

Sounds like you are ambitious without an ambition. Why not spend your time interrogating what the drive behind that is?

It's so easy to overdo this. Pick one thing and give it 3 months, then re-evaluate.

Don't let the great be the enemy of the good. I don't have a formulaic process to put forward as I am not sure life works quite that way, but this is a good mantra to keep in mind whatever route you choose.

do less: talking, worrying.

do more: building, exercising.

next year I'm focusing on learning more about AI, I bought a $3.5k computer with an nvidia RTX 4090 24G of memory, it arrived today, I plan to extend my playground chat app to use local models for text generation and image generation inference (https://github.com/russellballestrini/flask-socketio-llm-com...)

I'm going to be looking into fine tuning process in some way.

Personally I find that the strategy of “I’ll buy this expensive cool gadget first and then I’ll surely be motivated to learn how to use it”… just never works.

It seems to turn into the opposite: as the expensive gadget sits unused, its physical presence creates a guilt association that makes it increasingly unlikely that I’d pick it up again because I don’t want to face the unappealing remorse.

Learning works out much better for me when it’s a thing I can do in a corner of a hard drive or notebook or whatever, almost pretending it’s not there.

Very true. Looks at the guitar that’s been hanging on the wall untouched for 6 months ;-)

What happens if you don’t think about it and just do what naturally pulls you towards it?

Do you end up doing nothing substantial? If so, what unsubstantial things do you end up doing?

> I always struggle to articulate what that would mean

I think that's the first step to take. Finding, and articulating, three/five things, you'd like to have done by the end of next year.

From there on you can step backwards, define goals inbetween and find the things you need to do.

One of my goals, two years ago, was "get rid of the debt and save some money". So I broke that down to "pay off a credit" and "save money". I then took my yearly bonus to pay off most of the credit, set up a monthly payment plan and waited for the credit to be zero. Great goal inbetween, great feeling, too. Then I took the money I saved each month and put it in another account, now I've saved up almost three months of expenses. In February I'll hit that goal and switch the savings plan to actually invest some money in ETFs/solid stocks and save more money up that way.

Feels good. Small steps. Lots of them. And no complicated "if this then that and also that"-stuff. Just doing.

Dont create goals, create a system for how you live.

Have you ever given serious thought to your spiritual health and your soul?

It's another axis to grow.

James Joyce said to a friend: "What makes most people’s lives unhappy is some disappointed romanticism, some unrealizable or misconceived ideal. In fact you may say that idealism is the ruin of man, and if we lived down to fact, as primitive man had to do, we would be better off."

Maybe study the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Understand that desire, craving, attachment cause suffering. Let go of the idea that you must achieve or become something and focus on living in the moment.

Perhaps also let go of the narcissism expressed in the humble-brag "[I] can always perceive all different angles and options when thinking about something" and "my perfectionist tendencies." Try humility, especially regarding the idea that you must accomplish something or perform to some arbitrary standard.

Simple:

Don't. Just be. Try it.