What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting

When your projects are clearly tied to your strategy and your strategy is clearly tied to your vision and your vision is clearly tied to your values, you know that what you're working on really, really matters.

In contrast, we're often fed the opposite line: You can do anything, don't quit, no limits, and so on. These phrases sound good, but when you are faced with real limitations—and the vast majority of us are—they can be supremely disempowering. Again, we start to internalize that it's our self-discipline that's lacking. This is where Bandura's

Growth, change, creating cool stuff—it

Activities with ameliorative value are those that prevent something bad from happening or occur in response to something bad happening.

describes what happens as a result: “our lives become about the struggle to keep up.” She continues, “To truly feel our experience with depth and presence, we would have to slow down a lot (which would make us less efficient consumers, students, workers, prisoners, soldiers…).”

difficulty with executive functioning. But no amount of deadlines, flashing red notifications, or threats of being held “accountable” are going to matter if you haven't bought into the purpose of the work they remind you to do.

What helps you most when you feel your emotional resources are exhausted? What recharges your creativity?

Games—whether they're sports, board games, video games, or party games—necessarily simplify values and goals, providing the structure for play. In playing a game, we temporarily take on those values and goals for the pleasure of the experience.66

professionals who read about time management or achieving goals 20 years ago predominantly fell into that category. But today, the reality is very, very different.