Recently, Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff was officially released.
I got a sneak peek when we interviewed her for the Focused podcast, and can honestly say I’ve never been so excited for a book to come out.
One of the reasons is that I finally found someone else who shares my distaste for traditional goal setting 🤪
In this post (and with help from Tiny Experiments), I will explain why traditional goal setting is broken and suggest what we should do instead.
S.M.A.R.T. Goals are D-U-M-B
The very first chapter in the book is titled “Why Goal Setting is Broken.”
Ah, music to my habit-loving ears 🎵😂
The fundamental problem is that these S.M.A.R.T. goals (which stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) are linear. They follow a very clear path from beginning to end that often does not resemble real life.
Which means they are wildly out of sync with how we actually live. There’s just too much that happens in between us setting the goal and the outcome we want to achieve.
The big problem I have with S.M.A.R.T. goals is that they are so focused on the outcome (which you really can’t control, anyway). They’re binary — we either achieve them, or we don’t. So technically, if you put in a bunch of work but it takes longer than you thought or you don’t quite get all the way to the finish line, you’ve failed.
Which is ridiculous, and also a great mindset to have if you want to guarantee you don’t make any progress.
For example, let’s say you want to learn to code. How long will that take you? How will you know the moment you pass from being a non-code to a coder? What if the code you want to learn isn’t relevant to your work right now, but a change you want to make in the future?
It doesn’t fit. But, if you show up and learn every day, I guarantee you’ll get better.
The combination of curiosity and deliberate practice has the potential to completely change your life.
How to Break Free From the Tyranny of S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Anne-Laure has an alternate framework that I think is pretty brilliant called P.A.C.T., which stands for:
- Purposeful — your goal should be meaningful and in alignment with your long-term vision and values.
- Actionable — it should be based on something in the tangible present that you can do and control.
- Continuous — the actions you take toward your goal should be simple and repeatable.
- Trackable — you should be able to answer quickly and easily whether you have done the thing (yes or no).
There are a couple of things I love about this.
First, it places the emphasis on taking small, deliberate, daily action. The key to progress is consistency. Sounds too simple, but it’s true.
Change your habits, and you will change your life.
Second, it highlights your progress. S.M.A.R.T. goals end up enabling my perfectionist tendencies, so it’s important that I disconnect the effort from the outcome.
One of the ways I’m implementing this lately is through a heatmap that I’ve added to my Daily Note using the Keep the Rhythm plugin that I wrote about a few weeks ago:
I have it set to exclude my Daily Notes folder, but this shows all the words I’ve written in Obsidian and makes it very easy to see progress.
Another way that I bring the focus back to the effort and not the outcome is through my Daily Questions journaling habit. I answer a couple of specific questions every day and rate my effort (“Did I do my best to…?”) on a scale from 1-10.
I can then visualize that data in charts on my Daily Questions Dashboard:
Both of these nudge me towards focusing on what I can control: showing up every day and putting forth the effort.
I believe that if I do that consistently, the score (outcome) will take care of itself.
Tiny PKM Experiments
The trick to making the switch from outcomes to output is to 1) stay curious and 2) start small.
Starting small makes it easy to get started. You can overcome a lot of the initial resistance to something by simply doing a little bit.
For example, when I’m procrastinating on a project, I tell myself, “I will just do this for 10 minutes.” Once I get started, it’s usually pretty easy to keep going. But if I’m not feeling it after 10 minutes, I give myself permission to stop.
Staying curious makes it easy to adjust. Every time you take the desired action, you create a feedback loop. You’re able to see what worked, and (perhaps more importantly) what didn’t.
But only if you’re paying attention.
This is what it means to have an experimental mindset. You constantly try things, observe what happens, and adjust as necessary.
This is incredibly important when applied to PKM.
PKM is a system, not an app. The apps you use should facilitate the flow of information into and out of your PKM system. And your workflows should be designed to help you glean maximum value from your notes & ideas.
So any time someone shares something, whether it’s a template, app, or new way of doing something, I always ask myself:
How do I think this will benefit my current PKM workflows?
In other words, I’m creating a hypothesis, and then I’m constantly experimenting to see if what I think will happen actually happens.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
But I’m continually running these tiny experiments to see how I can better live in alignment with my vision & values.
And if you're serious about using your PKM system to be more productive and creative, you will too 😉
