Why I do goals differently.

Back after a little break, and today, we're talking goals and motivation.

It’s Uncommon.

This issue is a breezy 2m 58s read.

🔸 Set your personal goals like this

There are less than 100 days until the end of the year. It's the final push.

What goals are you trying to hit?

Most goals I see people post on Twitter are problematic. The kind of goals that de-motivate, instead of motivate.

So let me share my personal strategy with you.

You and I, we're not companies. We're people. And I think people should set their personal goals differently than how top-of-the-line business goals are set.

With a business, often you have a budget. You have investors. There are specific numbers you have to hit in order to pay your employees. And if you don't track your progess on those numbers, you can get into trouble.

But for most people, things are different. You're setting goals to motivate yourself, not to make sure your paychecks don't bounce.

Action-based goals

My personal goal-setting method is to focus on behaviors (goals I have control over) rather than the outcomes they drive (goals that require others).

So I might start with my top-of-the-line aspiration to reach 100,000 followers by the end of the year.

This NOT a good goal.

I have no control over whether someone follows me or not. Unless I go around sneaking onto people's laptops and clicking follow, I can't actually make this happen. (Psst. Behind you!)

What I can do is take actions that have a significant influence on whether followers will grow.

So, the goals that are important to me are action-based:

1x daily no-stop brand dump

Do 1 uninterrupted 20-minute block of no-stop brainstorming each day for better tweet ideas. Followed by a block of mining that brainstorm for original tweet and thread ideas. Put all ideas into my content system.

1x weekly comment mining

Commit to looking through comments from my older posts and threads for new angles and directions to explore. There is so much untapped inspiration in the comments.

Again, put all ideas into my content system.

1x weekly mention-thread

Threads that mention others tend to go further and build up the community. I could do more of these. Involve others in at least one of my weekly threads.

2x monthly follower-building tweets

A follower-building tweet is one where you pitch your account in a single tweet.

Recently, one like this that took 3 minutes to write brought in ~200 new followers. I always forget to post them. My goal is to schedule them every two weeks until the end of the year.

By building up a list of action-based goals like this, I have a clear roadmap and a series of goals that will feel incredibly satisfying to check off. If I do the above (and more?), maybe I will hit that aspirational goal of 100k.

But if my estimates are wrong, or any of 100 other problems occur, I can remain motivated and feel successful knowing that I'm doing the work that I set out to do. (And if I need to reassess what actions I'm taking, so be it.)

Your action step is to take your top aspiration and break it down into 3-10 daily/weekly/monthly actions that are likely to drive success. And then commit to taking those actions.

Set those as your goals. And let me know how it goes.

🔸 Tweets of the week

My top 4 threads from the last 7 days that you may have missed.

That's all for now. Catch up with you again soon.

—Rob Lennon

How I can help you

CreatorBoost - Find my tweet inspiration database and Twitter guides on creatorboost.xyz. Just added 2 new guides and 4 prompts.

Zero to 10k Twitter Accelerator - Learn and implement the 4-part Twitter growth system I used to grow to 10,000 followers in 41 days. This is a 3-week live masterclass that meets 2x a week.