How to Change Your Life in 2026 with Reverse Goal Setting

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Transcript

00:00

When I was 18, my biggest goal was to become a doctor. And in 2017, I achieved that.

I graduated medical school and I worked as a doctor. And 18 months later, I resigned.

I resigned because I felt dissatisfied and unfulfilled with my work. I hated going to sleep on a Sunday

00:17

because I knew that I had to wake up for work on Monday. Now I run a business building learning products and teaching professionals and students around the world the skill and science of learning.

actually wake up looking forward to my day and overall feeling a lot more

00:32

fulfilled. So I feel like I changed my life for the better.

But I do not believe in goal setting. Instead I use reverse goal setting.

It's super simple. There's only five steps to this framework and I'm going to teach this to you in this video.

So the best way to

00:49

understand reverse goal setting is to be really clear on the limitations of normal goal setting. So with normal goal setting, you have a goal that you're trying to achieve.

So let's say that that's this trophy here and you're trying to achieve it. And so

01:04

you say, "Cool, achieving this trophy is my goal." And when we're young, sometimes we spend a lot of time on just trying to figure out what the goal actually needs to be, you know, because it could be this goal or this goal or this goal or this goal. And so deciding what our goal is going to be is kind of

01:21

the big challenge. But once we've got that goal, now we feel good.

But the issue is that most people kind of stop there. They just have this general intention of goal that they want to achieve.

But there isn't really a plan attached to it at all. And if there is a plan, it's usually very very general.

Uh

01:37

it could be if this goal is to do well in a particular exam, the plan is just study really hard. Or if it's to get a certain job, it might be try and get the job.

So it's very difficult to actually achieve any challenging or complex goal

01:54

when we don't have a clear plan that we know takes us closer and closer to that goal. And when you consider the fact that you know the way I've drawn it is there's this sort of single arrow going from where you are to getting to the goal.

In reality it's not like that. Right?

In reality there are many many

02:11

paths uh that lead towards the goal. Sometimes the paths don't even look like they go towards the goal.

And most of the time you don't even know where the paths are. And in reality, because you never already see the paths

02:27

and you don't know where the path leads to eventually, it can be very demotivating because it's easy to put in a lot of effort and spend a lot of time. But if you are not seeing any actual progress because you cannot see the path

02:43

and you don't know where it leads to then a lot of people will actually just give up before they reach the goal even if they were on the right path. And so for all of these reasons in my observation a lot of people set goals.

I don't think most people achieve them. And this is kind of the issue that I had with

02:59

conventional goal setting. And this is the feeling that I used to have when I was trying to set goals and reach them in this way.

It would just be a lot of effort, a lot of time, pretty uncertain in terms of what the outcome is going to be. And really, I'm just hoping for the best.

And if I'm lucky, I'll get there.

03:16

Or I guess if I work hard enough, I'll get there. But then sometimes I don't.

And sometimes my friends get there, and they didn't work as hard as me. Or sometimes they work harder than me and I achieve the goal and they didn't.

So if the purpose of setting a goal is to help us achieve it, but setting the goal doesn't really make it easier or more

03:33

predictable or more motivating to actually achieve it, then what's the point of setting the goal? That's kind of what I thought and this is the reason why I do not use conventional goal setting pretty much ever.

But on the other hand, with reverse goal setting, which I'll teach you soon, the

03:50

advantages of this is that it gives you clarity on the path. It tells you which actions you need to take to give you a much higher chance of achieving your goal eventually.

Not only does it help you to actually take action and take the right action, but it also helps you to

04:06

maintain that action and stay motivated and see your progress. And ultimately, by using reverse goal setting, I really believe it increases the success rate of you actually achieving your goal in the first place.

So, how does it work? Like I said, there's five steps to this.

Very

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simple. The first part is exactly the same.

All we do, step one, is we set the goal. Uh like I said before, people spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the right goal to set is.

But

04:38

actually, this is kind of the easier part. Yes, do your best to figure out what is meaningful for you and where you want to go in your life and how you want to live your life and all of that.

And then let that be your goal. But be open-minded to the fact that this not only could but probably is going to

04:53

change. And you don't know that at the time you set the goal right now.

You might look at it and say, "Well, I cannot see a reason why that would change." The fact is, you cannot see a lot of things. You can't see the future.

And so, you don't know. And so, you should always remain open-minded to the fact that whatever goal that you have

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set is not the true goal. What I mean by that is that when we set a goal, it's not actually about achieving this goal, right?

What it's about is the way that we think this goal is going to make us feel. This goal achieves a certain

05:25

outcome for us. The true outcome we're looking for is feeling a certain way.

Once we've achieved the goal, we think we're going to feel a certain way about that, about ourselves, about our life. We think it's going to put us in a certain type of position.

Maybe the

05:41

outcome we're trying to achieve is not only the feeling but also the position it puts us in to achieve the next outcome and the next outcome and the next goal and the next goal. And so as is with any complex goal, let's say that on the path of you trying to achieve it, we realize that actually it's not going

05:57

to put us in the type of position that we thought it was going to or it's not going to make us feel the way that we thought it was going to make us feel. Well, then this goal is meaningless.

The outcome is still meaningful. the outcome is still the thing that we wanted unless that changes as well.

But if we get more

06:13

information about the outcome and what truly creates this outcome and we realize it no longer aligns with the goal, then we owe it to ourselves to change and modify this goal so that we stay aligned with what we truly want. And this is not easy to do.

For me, when

06:29

I was first going into medical school at that time, like I said, my biggest goal was just to become a doctor. I I wanted every single molecule of my being to to move and vibrate for the purposes of getting into medical school.

I I had very extreme opinions and just my

06:47

personality was just very extreme. Uh anyway, going through medical school, I started maybe wondering whether being a doctor was right for me.

And then eventually when I became a doctor, I started realizing, hey, this is not really what

07:02

I thought it was going to be. There were parts of it that I loved and parts of it that I still love and kind of miss.

But then there were parts of it that really bothered me. There were so many things that I wanted to do and so many things that I wanted to change and so many types of impact that I wanted to create

07:19

that I felt were out of my control and it was burning me out. I mean the entire reason that I wanted to become a doctor was because I thought it was going to make me feel a certain way.

I thought it was going to make me feel like I'm doing really helpful, impactful, important work that is fulfilling that, you know,

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ticks all the boxes. And then I realized it's not ticking some of those boxes.

And there are other boxes that are really important and I didn't realize before that also need to be ticked. So I had to change my goal.

I never would have thought when I was 18, 17 years old that what I'm doing now is what I would

07:52

be doing. And not only that this is what I would be doing, but that this would provide me the fulfillment that it does that it would check those boxes.

But at the same time, I have friends who never challenged that that had the goal, never really thought about the goal changing.

08:08

And even though they realize that it's not helping them achieve their primary outcome anymore and they're not feeling fulfilled and they're feeling burnt out and they kind of do want to change, but they're not open to changing that goal because of that. They're now just feeling stuck.

They feel like life is

08:24

not turning out the way that they really wanted it to. Even though on the surface they have achieved every goal along the way.

They got into medical school just like I did. They became a doctor just like I did.

They got into their training programs. going through their training programs.

On the surface, it's a success

08:40

story, but they themselves feel like things are not playing out the way that they wanted. There is a lack of alignment.

And so, the point is having very specific goals is not the point. That's not where the value is.

Especially if it's a long-term goal and

08:56

a complex goal, the chance of the information you have about this being accurate is very, very low. So what's important is instead we try to have clarity on what we think this goal is going to do for us and we stay true to this.

The goal and the plan can change

09:14

and should change as long as we anchor on this. So that's the first part.

Now, as soon as you say this is the goal that I want to achieve for myself, and yes, we're staying open-minded and all of that stuff, but as soon as we have locked in and say, "Okay, for now, I believe this goal is the one that I

09:30

should go for." That brings with it a bundle of challenges and problems for us to overcome. So, with the goal comes entailed challenges, problems,

09:46

and obstacles. If these challenges, problems, and obstacles didn't exist, this goal would not be very challenging and probably also therefore wouldn't be very meaningful.

We feel fulfillment and satisfaction from overcoming challenges. And with this, number one, we have to

10:01

actually recognize what the challenges actually are. And once we understand what the challenges and problems are and we're able to write them down and we have a clearer idea about what must be overcome to reach this goal, then we start feeling a few things.

We may feel excitement.

10:18

We may feel anxiety or apprehension. We may feel self-doubt.

And all of these things are wrapped in

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the fact that this is meaningful to overcome. All we're saying is that we recognize that our current ability to overcome this.

If overcoming these sets of challenges requires an ability over at this level,

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we are saying that right now we are only at this level. And so we have to upskill ourselves.

Our level, our ability has to rise up to this. And the reason we feel this anxiety and the self-doubt and all of these feelings is because we know

11:07

that this is going to be challenging for us right now. And so there is a gap here.

And it is in this gap that your plan forms. And this is really where the beauty of reverse goal setting is.

And so here's what we do. This is step

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number two. Step one was to set the goal.

You can then break that break down that goal into it challenges and problems. Step number two is to assess the level you need to be at.

Assess the goal

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level. What do you need to be good at?

What do you need to have? What skills, attributes, and habits?

Skills, attributes, habits do you need

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to have to be able to overcome these challenges, problems, and obstacles? What type of person?

Imagine the person that would go through these challenges and they would just overcome them easily. The type of person that if they're trying to achieve this goal, you think, "Oh, yeah, that person would definitely succeed." You need to become

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that person. So, what is that person you're imagining?

Write down and be explicit about these attributes. Is it about their time management, their focus, their ability to learn?

Is it about their stress management or resilience, emotional regulation, their organization and planning ability? Take

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your time to think about all the things that are necessary to achieve this goal. And for each of those attributes, write down what you think is the level it needs to be.

And you can rate this out of 10. For example, most of the time, you don't need to be 10 out of 10 at every attribute.

You don't need to be a

12:45

superhuman to achieve this goal. You may need an organization ability of just four out of 10.

Whereas you may need a learning ability of 8 out of 10. And the reason this step is valuable is that it actually quantifies and makes it more explicit the thing that you're feeling

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anxious or self-doubt about. Now we're taking this general concept that there is a gap between what you feel capable of and what you need to do and we're saying okay well what is actually causing these feelings?

And this gives us our meta goal.

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These are our meta goals. In other words, these are the goals that need to be achieved in order to achieve the ultimate goal.

If you need a time management ability of 7 out of 10, for

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example, it's a subjective scale. Okay?

If you need a time management ability of seven out of 10, however, you only have three out of 10 and then you do not meet that goal and then you attempt to overcome this challenge, you may still succeed, but it's probably going to be

13:50

harder for you and your success rate, your probability is going to be lower. On the other hand, maybe you've got a 10 out of 10 time management.

Your chance of success, your probability is probably much higher, but you might still get unlucky and you might still fail. And

14:06

that happens. So that's out of your control.

What is in your control is this the meta goals. You can control your skills, the attributes, and the habits that you develop to give you the highest probability of success.

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And that's basically the game that we're playing, probability. You can never control the outcome.

You can only control you achieving that outcome. So, at the end of the step, we should have a list of a bunch of different attributes, skills, habits,

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and we've rated them out of 10. This step might take you a little while.

You might need to go research a few things. Ask a few people who may have attempted to overcome this or have already achieved this.

Ask them how difficult it was, where the difficulties were, how they tried to manage it, and you'll get

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a general sense of the goal state you need to reach. Once you've done that, you simply track it back.

This is step three which is assess your current level.

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So you take the exact same attributes and then for each of those things you just rate yourself currently out of 10. And so if you had time management as one aspect and you want it to be at a seven out of 10 then next to that you might say well right now I'm only at a four out of 10.

And you do this across all

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the different attributes and skills and habits and you realize which ones have the biggest gap. And by doing this, we have created a personalized progression plan.

We have identified which areas we need to grow in and really work on to be

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able to unlock these meta goals and therefore our ultimate goal. We've turned the vague idea of achieving a goal into a set of actionable targets that directly aim to fill the gap that is stopping you from being able to

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overcome this. And you can track your progress based on how this gap is closing over time with your efforts.

It also helps us be more targeted in the types of efforts we take. If we know that the thing that is holding us back the most is, you know, time management,

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then we spend a bit more time developing our time management skills. Or if you realize that the thing that's holding you back is the fact that you learn too slowly or you get overwhelmed when you're learning lots of information at the same time, then the targeted action you would take is to naturally join my

16:29

newsletter which is sent out every single week for free straight to your inbox where I type out all the things that I think would help you to be a better learner. I think that might have been one of my smoothest intros into a newsletter yet.

Quite proud of myself for that one. Uh but seriously, I do try

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to fill these newsletters with really valuable information. These are the types of things that looking back on the last 15 years of learning about learning and experimenting, these are the things that I wish I had known all the way back then.

They would have saved me years of

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trial and error and I hope it's going to save you years of trial and error as well. So, if you're interested in signing up to that, I'll leave a link to join the newsletter in the description below.

But, we'll get moving on to step number four. Now, before I actually move into step four, uh there's a few little pro tips that I want to give you about

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creating your personal progression path. Because if you do have this long list of attributes, like 20 different things that you're working on, and you realize that you're deficient in like all of them, which entirely could be the case for a lot of complex goals, uh it it's still very overwhelming to know where to start.

And so, here's what I'd

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recommend. First of all, understand that the outcomes that you're trying to reach are symptoms, right?

Like I said, you can't really control the outcome, but you can control the processes that you use, the way that you behave, the things that you do that increase your probability of achieving that outcome.

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And so the outcome here is a symptom of the processes you use along the way, which are determined by your skills, attributes, and habits. But not every skill, attribute, and habit is going to result in this outcome equally.

Most of the time if the required level is very

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high, it's also going to mean that the gap between where you are now and that required level is probably wider. For example, if you need a 5 out of 10 time management, most people are probably going to be two or three or four out of 10 at default.

And so the gap between

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where you need to get to and where you are now is likely going to be wider when you look at the ones where the goal is a higher number. And so those are the ones that you should prioritize first.

They're the things that are more important and probably are going to take you longer to develop. So use that as your anchor.

Find the two or three where

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the number you need to reach is the highest and the gap is the widest. Use that as an anchor for your learning path.

Getting better at those two or three skills, attributes, and habits becomes your first priority. And at this point, it's very common to try to then add on the lower priority ones on top of

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that. Don't do that.

developing new skills and attributes and unlearning habits and learning new habits involves a lot of very complex neurobiology. And your brain is not very good at doing all of that rewiring if it's actually having

19:10

to focus on lots of different things at the same time. So once you have your top two or three priorities, just focus on those until the level of those starts going up higher.

It's better to have two or three things to focus on and then shift your focus to another two or three

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things one or two months later rather than having five or six things and all trying to improve on them at the same time. Now already from here even without going into the next step already just from these first three steps there are some really important benefits.

First of

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all, obviously you have that clarity of what you need to do and it allows it to be actionable. But secondly, you win no matter what.

Even if you do not achieve this goal, what happens is that you are still developing these skills,

19:58

attributes, and habits, you're giving yourself the best chance possible. And maybe that chance is still not high enough.

Maybe you just get unlucky and you don't achieve the goal. That could happen.

But sometimes such is life. But you still did the best path possible to

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give yourself the best chance to achieve the goal. And even in that situation, you are left with skills, attributes, and habits that are higher than before, which means that you have a higher probability of succeeding on the next goal.

So even if you lose the game,

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you're setting yourself up to win the championship. The other advantage here is that if you realize on this journey that this goal is actually not the right goal for you.

Like I said, we realize that this is not going to help us achieve this outcome. So, we want to shift this goal.

Well, probably these

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attributes and skills are still very similar attributes and skills that you need for your new goal. And so, there's a higher level of transfer by going through this pathway.

It protects you against changing goals because what you're developing is not towards a goal. What you're developing is yourself

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moving towards a goal. And the final part which some people underestimate but I think this is the most powerful best benefit of all is that when you go through developing your current level towards your goal level, this is what gives you true confidence.

Because

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normally these challenges and problems and obstacles, people are stuck just feeling anxious about it, feeling self-doubt. And that only gets worse if these problems and challenges start going up or if they start changing.

If these

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problems change, anxiety gets even higher. But when you develop your skills and your attributes and your habits to overcome this, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if these change because you know that you can overcome it regardless of what the challenges are. And so for where most people find

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instability and anxiety, you find confidence and opportunity. But let's take this again to the next level with the fourth step.

The fourth step is to do something called a force field analysis.

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A force field analysis is a visual way of seeing what is going to stop you from achieving your goal and how you can overcome it. And it's very simple.

All we do is we draw a line. We draw this curve here in the middle.

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We can have a star here that represents the goal at the end. And then we have ourselves on the other side.

This line in the middle is the force field. On the right side of this, we're going

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to write down all of the barriers. These are the things that create this force field.

What are the barriers that make it hard for you to achieve the goal? Why can't you just walk over and achieve it?

What are the things that you need to overcome? Be specific.

Be

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detailed. On the left side of this, you want to write down your drivers.

These are the aspects of you and what you have access to that allow you to overcome these barriers despite them

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existing. And you also want to write down your resources.

Resources in terms of physical or people like your network. And the idea is you use your drivers and your resources to overcome the barriers.

You see a

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specific barrier and you look through your drivers and your resources to see how you could overcome that. And it increases your agency and your ability to problem solve.

Because when it comes to something really abstract like achieving a goal and overcoming obstacles, it can be hard to know what

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strengths and what resources we can pull from to overcome that. And by using a force road analysis, it actually puts it there on paper and you've got like a battle plan to work with.

And make sure to think about this holistically. Your barriers may not be things that directly related to the goal.

They could be things related to enabling you to do

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what needs to be done to fill this gap and achieve that goal. So for example, one of the barriers could be I have to spend too much time taking care of the kids, taking them back home from school, things like that.

If you don't have time to work on certain things that are important for you to work on, then that

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could be a barrier. And now sometimes those barriers you can't do anything about.

You just have to figure out a way to work through them. But sometimes you can do something about it.

You can make it a little bit easier. And so you might think about the different resources and the network, the drivers that you have available to try to mitigate that.

Perhaps one or two days a week, your

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partner could take over. Perhaps you could think about having a a babysitter over sometimes.

Maybe there are relatives that could come and help. And it makes a decision conscious.

It may not feel convenient. You may not want to.

But when you put it there on paper and you ask yourself, would I rather

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give myself the time and overcome the barrier to work on this or would I rather not and try to overcome it by myself? You can at least make that decision.

And once you've done this force field analysis, then number five, this is actually the

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simplest part of all is that we just make an action plan. When we do all of this, we've got a big list of all the things we need to achieve.

We've got a big list of where our deficiencies and gaps and also our strengths are. When we think about all

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the things that are stopping us from achieving it and all the resources and leverages that we can use to overcome them, there are lots and lots and lots of different things to work on. And as I said, there are many different paths that you can take and there's probably not one path that is definitely correct.

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But like I said before, it's very difficult to make progress when you're focusing on every single thing at the same time. And so we want to be able to distill this down into just those sort of two or three main priorities.

And this is where the action plan comes in. In this action plan, we're going to take all of this and we're going to distill

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it down into at most a maximum of two points to work on that. I don't know why my handwriting.

I'm just going to do that again. Two points to work on.

And these two points could be something in terms of working on your skill

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development or you may realize that you don't even have time to do this because of some other barrier. So the two points could be about just eliminating that barrier first.

But whatever it is, it's something that gets you further along in your journey to being able to achieve this and therefore this. And so we can

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iterate on this very quickly. We can iterate on the action plan every 1 to two days, checking to see how we're doing with these two points, revising those points based on an evaluation of what we've created back here.

And then we can revise our force field analysis

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every 1 to two weeks. How are we doing with those barriers?

Which ones are still there? Which ones are higher or lower priority?

Have we accumulated more resources or understood our drivers more clearly? And we can assess our current level every two to four weeks.

Skills

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take time. You're not going to see those changes in days normally.

So every two to four weeks, we assess our current level and see how this gap is closing. This allows us to rep prioritize which particular aspects to focus on which will come down to prioritizing for our

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action plan. And on this journey, as I said before, we can also iterate on this once every 1 to two months.

As we are inevitably gaining more information about what this goal is and pursuing overcoming these challenges, we may have

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new insights about the nature of this goal. It could just be that we realize there are more problems and challenges that we didn't realize before.

And that means we have to add more things to our skills, attributes, and habits. Maybe the gap starts changing.

Or it could be that we're realizing that it's no longer

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achieving the outcome that we want it to and therefore we have to shift the goal to whatever it is that will achieve that outcome. But by following this reverse goal setting flow and re-evaluating things frequently enough in the right way, we make sure that we give ourselves

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the best chance of success. And by success, I mean achieving the outcome that we really want.

That's reverse goal setting. And one of the major challenges that I know that a lot of people face regardless of the goal that they're trying to achieve is being

28:20

able to actually just sit down and focus and get their work done when they have 2 hours blocked out. And if that's something that you struggle with, then you may be interested in checking out this video where I break down deep work, what deep work is, and how you can activate deep work on command.

So check

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out this video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.