How to be Happy

Difficult, Not Easy

The harder the goal, the smaller the motivation. Right? Unless the reward also got better, the effort wouldn’t be worth it anymore. That’s why I use to choose easy over difficult. When trying to accomplish difficult long-term goals, I would break them up into easy sub-goals. Easy means reason for optimism and less effort. That […]

Now, Not Later

Everyone I’ve met has at least one realistic dream they’d like to see come true. They’d like to have a good body. Or be nicer. Or learn a hobby. But when I ask them what they’re doing to make it come true, almost always, stripping away the wishy-washy, what I hear is “nothing”. Not surprising. […]

The World’s Best (Free) Guide to Goal Setting

Dream big dreams; only big dreams have the power to move men’s souls. -Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome It’s a paradox. It’s the big goals that excite us and get us to stop hitting the snooze button. They make us feel alive. They make the boring interesting, and the frustrating exciting. But it’s the big […]

Goal Setting Theory

Goal setting is a proven tool for generating motivation. Having been studied extensively for the past 50 years, much is known on how to maximize the tool’s usefulness. Properly set goals have been shown to increase performance on well over 100 different tasks involving more than 40,000 participants in at least eight countries working in […]

Goal Setting Research

The below is a small sampling of the research on goal setting, in chronological order. 1974 Improving Job Performance Through Training in Goal Setting 20 tree logging operators were randomly assigned to either a 1-day training program in goal setting or a control group. The additional wood cut over the following 3 months by those […]

A 2 x 2 Achievement Goal Framework

Until 2001, when this study was published, goals were divided into three types: mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance: Mastery Performance-Approach Performance-Avoidance I will score higher than last time. I will score the highest in my class. I will avoid scoring worse than my classmates. I will exercise three times a week. I will look sexy by […]

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