Cultivating an abstract mind-set while pursuing a goal can make any goal seem less like a chore. If you think about your day-to-day life in the abstract—that is, you focus on the purpose and meaning of your actions—your orientation toward specific goals will also be more abstract.

When creating your own targets, first think through what type of number would serve you best. Is it an amount or a time? And if it is an amount, what’s the easiest unit of measurement to monitor?

To set goals that aren’t chores, you can start by asking yourself the following questions: Have you set your goals and are these the right goals for you? Do your goals fit the person you are and are they the best for the person you hope to become? You want to get the content of your goals right. How do you define your goals to yourself? Can you

As a rule, goals, like recipes, work best if you list the exact quantities. “Walk 10,000 steps a day” is better than “walk a lot.” And

These challenging targets motivate you because when facing a difficult task, you recruit resources, or energize yourself, to meet the upcoming challenge. The expectation that the task you’re facing will be difficult—but not impossible—results in shifting more mental and physical energy to do

Adherence to standards—doing things the right way—is stronger at the beginning and end of pursuing a goal. To use this tendency to your advantage, you may want to keep middles short. A weekly healthy-eating goal is better than a monthly healthy-eating goal, as it offers fewer days to cheat on your diet. And when it comes to a large project with a

To increase your chances of following through on a goal, you can start by answering the following questions: How can you make pursuing a goal more immediately rewarding? You could, for example, introduce music, podcasts, or audiobooks to your exercise routine. What is the most fun path to pursuing your goals? You could, for example, choose to join

When there’s no clear path to get from point A to point B, people revert to fantasizing about their goals instead of taking action toward achieving them.

First, does the incentive motivate progress toward a goal, or is it a meaningless target that’s easier to measure? When you’re trying to move up at work, for example, consider rewarding yourself for the amount of work you’ve completed rather than the amount of time you’ve spent in front of your computer (which includes daydreaming and checking