Writing Goals Is a Dopamine Trap — Here’s How to Plan Instead

SPC FRAMEWORK · PLANNING

Has anybody told you that writing down your goals is the best strategy to move things forward?

I’m here to tell you different. That is going to be the very first thing that makes you not do anything at all.

I have done it. I’m pretty sure you have too — and not often did that cause me to actually accomplish the things I wrote down on that piece of paper. There are two causes for that, and there is a better strategy. Both are below, exactly as I walk through them in this week’s video.

Reason 1 — what you’re calling a goal is not a goal yet

In the system I created, a goal is called a measurable target — and it’s the fourth phase of the system. What you usually call a goal is just a creative idea: the very first idea you have about a project, about something you want to do, or about the result you want from it.

For a creative idea to become a goal, it has to go through the first steps you would naturally follow anyway — you’re just doing them out of order, and that’s what makes the results harder to reach. You’re writing creative ideas down thinking they’re goals, and they’re not goals yet.

Reason 2 — the dopamine trap itself

Your brain does not differentiate between thinking about something, speaking about something, and actually doing something.

That’s why you shouldn’t write it all down, and shouldn’t talk about it too much — your brain processes it as if you had already done it. Have you ever felt that? You plan your day, you make a huge list of everything you want to do, and by the time you’re done you feel so productive already that you don’t have the energy left to do any of it. It’s the instant dopamine hit we get from planning things out.

The strategy, part 1: plan on the days you rest

The planning phase should always happen on a day when you’re not going to act on any of it. I do my planning on a Saturday — or a Sunday by the end of the day — because it’s a day I’m not supposed to be doing anything. Planning is not doing.

I open the weekly review: a quick summary of what the week was, the challenges, the things accomplished — that part is actually fun. Then I set actions for the next week. Some things go under wait and monitor. Some go under correct and remove. And the ones that need doing get turned into tasks, each with the day it’s due. That’s it: I’m planning ahead, setting when it will be done and what stage it’s at.

Planning feels like doing. If you plan during a day you’re supposed to be doing things, there’s a great chance you won’t be doing anything that day.

The strategy, part 2: connect the day to what’s already moving

Daily planning happens in the morning routine. I choose the focus area for the day, and then — this is the key understanding — I align my actions for the day with the goals and projects that are already working. I pick something I’m working on, open its note, see what stage it’s in, and choose a task that will move it forward.

So instead of sitting down and writing a bunch of creative ideas, I’m connecting my intention to a task — to something that advances that idea through its stages, so I know it’s moving forward.

Everything you are striving to do is probably something you don’t know how to do yet — otherwise you wouldn’t be striving. You’d just be doing it.

Even when you already know how

Take going back to the gym — I use that example in the book too, because it’s such a common goal. It just happened to me: I moved to another country and hadn’t worked out for about a year. I’m not starting from zero — I know how this goes — but I had to bring all my weights down and readapt to going every day. It’s not part of my routine anymore.

Me writing “I want to go to the gym” on a piece of paper isn’t going to get me to the gym. But if I set it inside a process, I can see where it actually is: right now the work is simply rebuilding the rhythm of showing up. Even if I go, walk for fifteen minutes, and leave — that advances it. That’s preparing the fertile soil.

Writing a goal down gives you no structure on how to show up. And if our intentions are random, the results are also going to be generic and random.

The two rules

First: plan your week on the days you rest — because planning feels like doing, and if you plan on a doing-day, you probably won’t do anything that day. Second: place that creative idea in a system that helps you move it forward. That is key to actually achieving something.

If you want to go deeper, the book explains all the phases of the framework — and you can start applying it even without the system: Do You Really Know How to Set Goals?

Related reading. On naming the target only after the noise is out: the predictive alignment framework.

Lucidity. Coherence. Commitment.
Paula