Ideally you would have no goals.

You’d accomplish everything you wanted without having to go out of your way to get it.

Your natural curiosity would bring you to the paths that had everything you needed on it.

And that same curiosity that brought you there, would make sure you walked the whole path to the end.

But humans aren’t ideal creatures, we are creatures who bargain with nature and pursue the ideal.

And our curiosity doesn’t always lead us to the paths that have what we want on them.

We have to seek them out.

And even with this conscious effort we still tend to stray the path.

This is where the Art of Goal Setting comes into play.

There is an interplay between goals, a balance that must be achieved.

On one hand you want a goal big enough that it motivates you.

On the other hand you don’t want it so big that you feel like you aren’t making any progress.

There are ways around these problems:

The Problems

Setting goals have inherent problems:

• Too small a goal and it doesn’t motivate you.

• Too big and it’s too daunting to start.

• If you start but it’s still too big-you’ll feel like you’re making little progress and get discourage.

• If it’s too big and you start, then achieve it-you’ll feel depressed after accomplishing it.

These problems are avoidable by deconstructing the natural path of curiosity.

Deconstructing Curiosity

To set the ideal goal, we must go back to the ideal scenario.

The scenario where your natural curiosity guides you from start to finish.

In this scenario, your interests guide you to a topic to explore.

This topic can be seen as a road:

The sides of the road are lined with merchants, that give away riches as you pass them.

At the end of the road there is a golden chalice.

When curiosity brings you to such a road, you naturally take your time.

You explore the road, cross it, stop at the merchants, collect your riches, talk to a few, and even go back to the ones you really enjoy.

Now at some point along the road, a merchant will inform you of the chalice at the end of the road.

For a second you may consider how it would feel to have it now, you may even start walking directly towards it, ignoring the new merchants that you pass.

If you do this long enough you’ll eventually realize the path isn’t so fun anymore.

The journey lost it’s sense of adventure and fun.

Upon this realization you’ll once again slow down, stop at each merchant, collect the riches, and talk.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll have slowed down just in time, for one of the merchants to be kind enough to warn you of a ‘dangerous ravine’ you’ll have to cross and they may even give you the supplies to do so.

When you’re genuinely curious about a topic, you’re interested in understanding the topic not just attaining the treasure at the end of the road.

This has many benefits:

• You enjoy the whole journey.

• You are forewarned of dangers and setbacks.

• You can prepare for said dangers and setbacks.

B-lining it to the treasure lacks the depth of the journey causing your experience to be hollow and fragile.

If you go about achieving your goals this way, once you step off the metaphorical road you will have very little besides a (lack luster) chalice.

When you act out of curiosity you get both the treasures of walking the path and the chalice at the end.

With this in mind, the goals you set should upon acting them out, satisfy the above statement.

The Art of Goal Setting

To overcome the problems and act as if your curiosity has brought you to the chosen topic you must set 2 types of goals:

• One big goal

• Multiple sub-goals

Your big goal should be a birds-eye view of the whole road.

Your sub-goals should guide you from merchant to merchant.

The Big Goal

Your big goal should do 2 things:

It should, allow you to see what’s at the end of the path and it should be enticing enough to make you go after it.

Following these criteria you can go about setting your big goal one-of-two ways.

The first is, the traditional way:

In the traditional way you ignore the whole of the path and just focus on the pot of gold at the end of the road.

Make sure to glorify the goal so it motivates you.

The second is, what is taught in The Eternal Learner:

There is a way to fit the criteria without tunnel visioning on what’s at the end of the road.

The secret is to gain a birds-eye view of the road.

This way you can still see and be motivated by the treasure at the end of the road and have all the riches of the merchants, that will also motivate you.

To gain a birds-eye view make your big goal open-ended and focused on the process.

For example:

Don’t:

I want to rock-climb the half-dome big wall.

Do:

I want to get better at climbing big walls.

The second goal is open-ended and the essence of it is focused on the process of the craft.

Your big goal should, in short, be about making the journey.

Your sub-goals should guide you in the right direction, from merchant to merchant:

Sub-Goals

To set up your sub-goals, apply the traditional method of goal setting.

The difference here is you’re not glorifying the pot-of-gold at the end of the road.

Rather you are choosing specific milestones (merchants) along the path to aim at.

As these are your sub-goals, you don’t have to worry about the problems that setting goals the traditional way usually causes.

Specifically:

You’re not ignoring the journey, as the sub-goals are acting as guides for the journey in a conscious manner from point to point.

You won’t get post grand-achievement depression, as sub-goals don’t hold up as much mental real estate.

Keep in mind your sub-goals are what set your level.

You don’t want to aim too far ahead of your current level.

This is like skipping merchants, and remember each merchant has valuable riches, materials and information.

You also don’t want to aim to low, this is like walking in a circle and looping back to the same merchant endlessly.

It will be enjoyable because it’s easy, but you won’t gain anything new or move closer to the end goal.

As an example for a sub-goal:

Assuming your current rock-climbing level is elite.

You would now set the goal of rock-climbing the half-dome big wall.

It’s specific, clear, and has clearly defined perimeters for achievement and failure.

Alignment of Goals

This topic is slightly outside the bounds of this letter and should probably be in a letter on how to practice.

But, I think you should know this before you go about accomplishing your sub-goals.

Remember this:

Sometimes the fastest way to achieve your sub-goal, isn’t the fastest way to achieve your big goal, in some cases it may slow things down.

A sub-goal is only a sub-goal because it’s in the context of the big goal.

It technically could be an independent goal, and because of this there are multiple ways to go about accomplishing it.

What you have to do is find the different ways to go about achieving it, then think about which way is the best, in the context of your big goal.

Since most of you have come from X, I will use the example of building a Personal Brand:

Big goal:

Monetizable personal brand

Sub-goal:

Grow my audience to 5,000 people

I can go about growing my audience many ways:

• Paid Retweets & Ads

• DMs

• Content

• Replies

In the context of the big goal-of building a monetizable audience-I have to realize I need to build an audience that trusts me and is interested in the things I talk about.

That means, although the fastest way to a big audience is, DMing anybody and everybody and paying for Retweets from big accounts that talk about generic things and will tell their followers to follow me.

That’s not the fastest way to the ultimate goal of an audience that trusts me.

My audience would be filled with people who don’t care about what I talk about, or are just looking for a follow back.

Instead I want to grow my audience to 5,000 the fastest way I can that’s conducive to them trusting me.

This means taking the time to:

• Post content about my ideas

• Reply to posts that actually interest me & relate to the topics I speak about

• Find people I resonate with and DM them

• Pay people who talk about what I talk about, and are just Retweeting my content and not specifically asking for a follow

This method takes more time, you have to weed through the masses, take time to create meaningful posts, and develop relationships.

This is certainly not the fastest way to 5,000 people.

But, it is the fastest way to 5,000 people who resonate and trust me.

I hope this Letter brought you value!

If it did feel free to click the social buttons at the top to share the value with others.

The previous two Epistles pair well with this one, I recommend reading them when you have free time.

Lastly, The Eternal Learner is on limited time pre-order discount, get it before prices go up in a week!

That’s all for today, thank you for reading!