On process thinking, rising above stress, experiencing life on your own terms and more
3 new ideas on better living
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I’m Thomas. My goal is to help you master the best of what great thinkers, top performers, psychologists, philosophers and behavioural scientists have already figured out. Paid subscribers get more: an in invite to Thinking Toolbox course (mental models for a great life) and Mental Wealth Toolbox (practical psychology, economics and philosophy concepts, laws and principles for smarter decisions every day). Plus best essays and tools. Holiday discount: 50%
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If your emotions get the best of you, you get upset over things you can’t control, want to live a life of resilience, strength, peace, and tranquility or want to overcome daily stressors, Stoicism can help!
In How to Live: Lessons in Stoicism, I will provide enlightened explanation of how Stoic philosophy can help you cope with the many life challenges. Learn exactly what the most influential stoic philosophies say about how to live a good life.
Now onto today’s main idea
Goals inspire us to work hard and make progress towards a significant result.
However, goals alone are often a distraction from the process.
You might be tempted to set many goals for yourself for the year or list several high-level things you want for a better life.
While this can be effective in some cases, it can also set you up for disappointment.
When you’re focusing on goals, it’s easy to forget that you need to work on the actions that deliver the outcome you want.
Many people are obsessed with setting goals but fall short of an important detail: systems or processes that drive daily action.
You can’t make progress if you are not consistently taking action daily. Want to write a book? Daily writing will get you closer to that goal?
Want to improve your health? Regular exercise and minding what you eat daily matters more.
If you want to start earning passive income, you have to commit to actionable steps like investing in income-generating ideas to achieve that goal.
Dr Art Markman explains in his book, Smart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others, “The most typical goal people pursue is an outcome goal. It refers to a specific state that you hope to reach in the future (like being a thin mother of the bride). The second type of goal is a process goal that focuses on a set of actions you can perform. As a side effect of those actions, you may achieve some desirable outcomes, but your focus is on the actions, not the outcome.”
Goals set the course or trajectory: daily processes, actions and systems will take you to that goal. Without them, goals become illusions and unrealistic dreams.
The goal-setting process is more successful when you focus on daily tasks rather than the outcome. It’s important to remember that you can’t control the results, but the daily actions are totally within your reach.
The first step in goal setting is to make sure that you’re progressing towards the goal. Plan your daily activities or actionable steps.
This may include going to the gym, reading a few pages of your favourite book every day, writing at a specific time daily, doing high-value tasks, or even going on a walk.
You should then make sure that you’re actually doing these activities.
Don’t set a goal you can’t accomplish — you will end up worse off psychologically in the end.
Clear, measurable and realistic goals are essential for your best life: process goals will accelerate your progress.
But once you define your target, start working on the process of making those goals happen immediately. It’s the only way to guarantee progress.
Don’t be overly focused on the end goal for anything you want to achieve. Instead, focus on the processthat leads to the outcome.
The purpose of processes is to continue to play the long game of life.
“Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life,” says Les Brown.
Commit to the process of achieving your goal, and the result will show up.
A single outcome won’t solve all your problems. What you want is a consistent process that can guarantee results repeatedly.
The best way to look at the process for any goal is as an opportunity to move the needle. It doesn’t matter how slow you move; as long as you are making progress, you are moving forward.
When your system for achieving any goal is stuck, ask yourself why you’re working on that goal in the first place.
Do you think that’s the only way to achieve your desired result? Could you do the same thing in a slightly different way?
A deep focus on the tiny details to achieve goals gives you space to breathe, explore and find new and improved ways to get what you want in life.
It also gives you space to ask yourself tough questions, like: Why do I want to achieve this goal? Is it realistic? What does the result look like? What are the details necessary to accomplish this goal?
Goals are necessary — but it’s impossible to achieve what we want without daily work or commitment to practical actions.
Goals determine expectations of the future but systems and processes influence and control the outcomes.
Free Medium read: Jean-Paul Sartre: Existence Precedes Essence — Experience Life on Your Own Terms
“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”
3 Ideas on Better Living
James Clear on how to be larger than the situation
“When you’re feeling stressed or rattled, the situation is consuming you. It feels bigger and more important than it needs to be. This is when your emotions are likely to get the best of you. But when you are larger than the situation, you can mentally “step outside and above it.” Yes, there are problems to be solved. Yes, you need to take action. But the chaos is happening externally and you are still in the driver’s seat internally. You’re in control of the moment, the moment is not in control of you.”
Author of Atomic Habits
Katherine May on happiness and sadness
“If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”
Source: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer on the importance of contemplation rather than mere reading
“You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.”
Source: Essays and Aphorisms
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Thanks for reading!
To our common journey,
Until next week,
Thomas