Goals

Here’s something to jostle your idea about goals:

Don’t set goals just because you think achieving them will make you happy.

Oh, it can feel really great sometimes, but research shows us that we are terrible at predicting how we will feel in the future. It turns out that goals serve a much more important role in our lives. Goals help us focus, and focusing, even on something that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot to us, almost always feels great.

Learning how to set inspiring goals is fundamental to making a life you believe in, and these articles are dedicated to helping you craft goals so you:

Stay motivated.
Learn how to find Flow in every task you do.
Embrace failure as you learn new things.
Achieve your dreams.

See how goals fit into the Pilot Fire Simple System for Everything.

Get a Little Hard Core on Your Relationships

(Yes, the title soft pedals a gnarly approach to a big subject.) Your environments are major contributors to your energy, your happiness, and your ability to focus, and the people in them are probably the most important variables. Let’s take a particularly stark look at your relationships. What follows is a simple (maybe simplistic) exercise with big ramifications.

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Seven Pilots Don the Magic Goggles

“What are those for?” Lisa asks, pointing at the pilot goggles around my neck. We’re both waiting for Vietnamese tacos at a crowded a food truck in Portland, Oregon. I’m experimenting with answers to that question, and what comes out is pretty simple. “These are magic goggles that show you the path to your future.”

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When to Act Like Deadlines Are Really Dead

On July 19, 2012 I declared I’m going to Stop Sucking and Start Kicking Ass— for a good year. (I’ll publish a thorough report in a month or so about how everything is going.) Today, I’m almost two months in, and I’m facing my first deadline: September 15, my birthday. It’s completely self imposed, and if I

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Stop or Stop Sucking

If you want to stop sucking at something, please take this medium-sized survey. To stop sucking first means to understand “sucking.” Start with this question: Is there something you do terribly, fairly regularly? Ah, yes, “terribly” is the defining adjective. Here are some ideas about terrible: You feel really bad during and after doing it.

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pad pad pad pad pad pad pad pad

Exercise every day. It’s 10:30; maybe a quick run before I finish this article. It’ll get my mind off of cascading style sheets. What’s the difference between an id and a class anyway? I know, I know, but really I don’t know. It’s supposed to thunder storm tonight. It’s a little nippy. Ugh, why am

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How Do You Know When You Stop Sucking at Something?

Let’s face it. We suck. We suck at almost everything we do. We just barely get by. Consider, how many of us are great breathers? Out of the thousand or so people I’ve ever known pretty well, I’d say eleven are great breathers. The rest of us pretty much suck at it— and we do

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Four More Pilots Steer Toward a Greater Life

Ravindra Kharmai, Sijartha Shaff, Audrey Reynolds, Ryan Nicodemus

It’s a simple question, “What do you know you want to do before you die?” Most people have something that comes to mind, but how many of us are working on it right now? Giant goals like Scott Harrison’s hope to solve the world’s water problem nestle neatly between personal needs like Sijartha Shaff’s, an

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Quit Trying New Restaurants!

I didn’t read Dick Meyer’s Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, but a friend told me about it, which is the same thing, right? As one example of our self loathing, Meyer shines the light on an experience many of us have had: We go to a restaurant, ignore the servers

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Scott Harrison: Solving the Water Problem

Is there something BIG that REALLY matters you know you want to do before you die? Scott Harrison has a plan to solve the water problem. That’s really big and it matters a lot. Amazingly, he’s well on his way, and I want to help him, and I want you to help him, too. I

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Does It Smell Good?

It’s so simple, smelling things. I forget all the time, so on this Week’s Plan, the Stoker’s goal is go out of my way to smell something every day. Wait… there, I just did today’s sniff. I dug a little finger hole in the dirt in the garden outside my office door and stuck my nose in

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