Anthony Raymond - How to Set Goals with Kaizen & Ikigai: Focus, Cure Procrastination, & Increase Personal Productivity.

From time to time, you may find yourself struggling to complete a life goal. It might be a college entrance exam, a new business startup, a fitness regimen, or perhaps even a mission to find someone to marry. While personal objectives vary widely, every one of us (each nobleman, king, pauper, and pleb) has been assigned a nonnegotiable imperative:

You must set and accomplish new goals (of one form or another) each and every day, until the day you die.

To be human means to be a contestant in an interminable hurdle race. When you awake each morning, the race begins. After you stumble out of bed and rub your sleepy eyes, the first objective of the day will be quick to reveal itself to you.

Whats on your to-do list this morning?

• Is this your first day of school?
• The day of your childs birth?
• The start of a new career?
• Will you be landing a spacecraft on Mars?
• Is this your wedding day?
• Or, perhaps today you intend to do nothing more than drink beer and watch cat videos on YouTube.

Though the size and complexity of your goals will vary throughout your life, the necessity to set new goals will persist. There will never be a day when you find yourself without a goal (of some size) to complete. Lifes marathon calls upon us to jog up a perpetual incline. The race features many hurdles, grueling sprints, and occasional checkpoints at which youll be allowed a temporary respitea moment to catch your breath and exchange a few high-fives before proceeding down the road. As the American author David Deida wrote:

Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.

Hence, becoming proficient at the art of goal-setting is in the interest of us all.

But, if this is true, then why are we all so bad at it?

• Why do we fail to accomplish our goals so often?
• Why is it so difficult to stick to a course of action, even when we know it would be in our best interest to do so?

Curiously, most of us already possess the physical and mental abilities required to accomplish impressive life goals. Think of it this way, if a mad scientist held a gun to your head and forced you to jog five miles on a treadmill each evening after work, you could probably do it. Alternatively, if you were locked in a cell with your biology textbook and told that you would be released and given one million dollars if you aced your next exam, then you could probably do that too.

So, why dont you?

If youre convinced that its in your interest to implement a nightly workout regimen or study for tomorrows test, then why cant you just do the work without a gun-toting psychopath looming behind you?

Usually, such failures are not the result of a lack of intelligence or stamina. Instead, we lack the conviction and willpower necessary to see a long-term goal to its completion. Unfortunately, we humans often find it difficult to engage in the self-directed pursuit of a lengthy project when there are no external drivers prodding us to action. Life goals often call upon us to pledge a daily commitment to mentally or physically strenuous activities. But, inactivity is the default state of man.

When our bodies are comfortable, well-fed, and safe, then our lower mind (aka our lizard brain, reptilian complex, or limbic system) would prefer to remain inactive. While our conscious mind is aware of next weeks looming deadline, our lower mind thinks that next week is a million years away; it lives in the here and now , the future is an abstract concept that doesnt require any immediate attention.

When you call upon your lower mind to spend three hours attending to something called a biology textbook it will invoke various emotional states (like fatigue, boredom, procrastination, or despair) in an effort to prevent you from executing such a bothersome and energy-consuming task. Your lower mind would prefer to not exchange its precious energy for a few tidbits of information about frog intestinesespecially when the only reward for this exertion is a piece of paper with a red A written on it. As the adage goes:

Your brain exists to help you survive, not to thrive.

Our mind often seems to be pursuing two contrary sets of goals. The activities that we should be doing are often not the activities that the lower mind necessarily enjoys doing.

While your conscious mind may genuinely want to engage in industrious pursuits and climb the mountain of self-actualization, your lower mind often doesnt want to come along for the ride.

• Is there any way to harmonize such divergent imperatives?
• What can we do to convince our brain to stay the course; to focus its energies on the pursuit of constructive life goals rather than carnal desires?

The answer to these questions lies in first recognizing the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. If someone requires you to do something (like run at gunpoint) then you are subject to an extrinsic motivatorcompelled to action due to external forces of reward or punishment. On the other hand, when it comes to intrinsic motivation , ones actions are driven by internal desireperhaps spurred on by the pursuit of mastery, the thrill of physical exertion, or the satisfaction of completing a beneficial objective.

• Wouldnt life be easier if there was some way to trick your mind into becoming intrinsically motivated, instead of having to rely on external driverslike a boss, a parent, or a teacher?
• What if you could learn to spot the triggers and mental traps that cause you to procrastinate, put things off, or halt your forward progress?
• What if you could change the way you perceive your life goals? And learn to break objectives down into their smaller constituentssuch that each incremental step toward the goalpost seemed more manageable?