Your goals are optimized for the wrong thing | Chris Bailey

0:00 My name is Chris Bailey and I'm the author of Intentional: How to Finish What You Start and Hyperfocus. Intentionality and how it shapes our goals. When it comes to the goals that we attain, intention matters more than any other factor in determining whether we'll attain our goals. You know, there's that quote from Wayne Gretzky where "We miss 100% of the shots we don't take," even though there's a 1 to 5% probability of us scoring. And intention is the same way, right? There's the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But yet, but yet whenever we do find ourselves having achieved something

0:49 that we set out to do, there was always an intention behind it. This is pictured beautifully. I think in the intention stack the different layers of intention that are in our life are almost stacked on top of one another at the top here you'll see our values right which are these broader deeper motivations that we have in our life. Values sit at the top of the intention stack for a big big reason. They're the ultimate intentions that we're after in our life. Underneath that are the priorities that we have, right? Becoming healthier, um make more money, whatever the priorities might look like. Then we have our goals, our traditional goals,

1:34 which are these broader stories, narratives of change that we're driving forward in our life. Beneath our goals, you'll see our plans, right? The the the plans that make our goals a reality. And then finally at the bottom we have our present intentions. So for example maybe you have a goal of running a marathon but that might lead to certain plans that you have further down the intention stack which might be run this number of miles or kilometers this week and then that might flow into the present intentions the daily intentions that you have to go for a run after lunch today. But when you look up the intention stack, you'll see that the goal that

2:22 you have to run a marathon, it can fit with your priorities and your values as well. So it might fit with the priority of becoming healthier, for example. It might fit with your broader value of accomplishment. And so this completes the full stack of what this goal means to you. It's not just about the goal. It's about what the plans are that the goal leads to and the daily actions that it will lead to as well. It's about the priorities that it fits with, the broader values that are in your life that it fits with too. And so we need all of these different layers of intentionality. A goal is not enough. We need our values. We need our daily actions as well. And in this way, a

3:07 goal becomes the the route that our daily actions can take to connect with who we are. So we don't always achieve our intentions. But when we do achieve something, there was intention behind it. And that's why intentionality is so critical to shape, right? It's a skill that we can get better at. We can incrementally improve our ability to shape our intentions, to deepen our intentions, to align them with the values that we have, to overcome the aversion that we have to doing them, to beat the procrastination that leads us to put them off. And best yet, over time, we can make them more aligned with our values and who we are. One of the things that surprised me

3:56 about the nature of intentionality going deep into the research on it is that there's two types of intentions. So an intention at a fundamental level is just a plan that we will do something. When you think about it, we set plans both deliberately, thoughtfully, but we also set them just out of default on autopilot mode as well. So the default intentions that we have are embedded within us. They're our habits in other words. So you know we're laying down in bed and our phone wakes us up and so we bounce around between a stable of apps. There is a certain part of us that sets a plan to do the next thing even though it's just a a response to what happened before to a certain

4:43 set of conditions that came before. So the two types of intentions default and deliberate. The more deliberate intentions that we set, the more we choose where to go. And we often also have these these moments of awakening that uh happen in our day. So take the scenario where you're laying down in bed, you're swiping around between apps on your phone on default uh intention driven forward by that habit energy. Eventually, there will come a point where it's like, "Okay, time to put the phone down. What do I want to do now? What do I actually want to get out of this day? Do I want to make myself an omelette and then read a book? Do I want to, you know, get a coffee and then go to

5:31 work? Do I want to, you know, say hi to the kids? Do whatever it might be." We set an intention when we snap out of that default mode and enter into that deliberate mode and we choose where to go forward. This is why one of the most meaningful questions you can ask yourself is what is the most meaningful thing I could be doing right now in this moment? You know, we have all these different currencies that we try to optimize for in our lives without even realizing it. So we're at work and we're optimizing for accomplishment and productivity. We get home and we optimize for meaning. You know, extracting more meaning out of the experiences that we have. And so intention is such that we often need to take one step back before we decide where we wish to move forward.

6:22 And I think that's the key to keep in mind. If you're wanting to make more meaningful memories at home, take that step back and really consider what is the most meaningful thing that I could be doing next after I'm done with this current thing? Should I pick up the phone and call a friend that I haven't connected with in a while? Should I just give my wife or husband a hug? You know, whatever it might look like. There are a thousand potential futures that we could have at work, at home. Sometimes we have to just work within the autonomy that we do have which is constrained often. But when we do have that ability to actually take charge and choose where we go, that is the time to root ourselves down and really decide thoughtfully what do I want that will make me more productive or allow me to extract more meaning out of my next experience.

7:14 So every intention has a different source, duration, strength and depth. So first of all we have the source. The beautiful thing about intentionality is our intentions come from a whole host of places. Some of them this deep rooted conditioning that we have and others more deliberate. We have these default intentions that are embedded within us because of our biology, for example. So, if you're on a road trip and you need to stop at a rest room, you you set an intention to make a pit stop the next chance you get. Um the the social environments we're a part of. We catch

8:00 the the the social conditioning that other people have. If we join a new company and people there, you know, don't love going to the the the bar after work like they did at the previous company, that will inform the intentions that we have. We'll set fewer intentions in that direction, maybe become a bit healthier as a result. Um, so we get intentions from our biology, the social environments we occupy. We also get intentions from all the lessons we've learned. And so maybe we interact with the world in a certain way and that teaches us a lesson for how we should behave. And then we learn to do things differently the next time to not, you know, pick up and eat apples off of the grocery store shelf as a child. I now know that as an adult. Um,

8:46 but we get this conditioning from our biology, from lessons we've learned, from the conditioning in our past. But there's also the deeper sources of intentionality that we can have as well like our self-reflective capacity. So every intention has a different duration. So we can have a tiny intention to tie our shoelaces before we go for a run which could be a part of an even greater intention that takes place over a longer period of time to uh to run a marathon in a certain amount of time which could be a a part of a broader priority in our life to become healthier which could be a a part of a value that could be even broader

9:32 than that like feeling secure. here in our body. Personal security is a fundamental human value. So we have the source, we have the duration, but we also need the strength of an intention as well, which is a function of how much we desire doing the intention minus the aversion that we have to doing the intention. So sometimes our desire will far uh uh outnumber our aversion and so we'll be motivated, we'll be fired up to do it, but of course that changes over the timeline of goal attainment. And so we need to account for aversion in overcoming procrastination. And the final attribute of our intentions is their depth. Every intention that we have is connected to a

10:24 different extent to the values that we hold most dear. So my two biggest values happen to be self-direction and pleasure. I love going my own way. I love sense pleasure, delicious meals, baths, you name it. And so anything that is aligned with that feels deep and motivating to me. You know, making the gym like a spa is very motivating to me. As is finding an enjoyable, sustainable way of eating, very enjoyable to me. But other intentions like, you know, increase cardiovascular fitness after a surgery I had a few years ago. I'm okay. Don't worry. Um, that's that requires more motivational energy. there's more aversion embedded within that because

11:10 it's tougher for me to align that with the deeper goals that I have though it is possible to edit them closer in that direction. So every single intention that you have will have a different depth as well. If somebody took just one idea from intentional it it's to really become more deliberate about the intentions you set across multiple layers of that intention stack. And so one of my favorite ways of doing this is called the rule of three. Where essentially we think at the start of the day, what three things will I want to have accomplished by the time the day is done. That's it. You only have to choose three. And if you love the rule every day, you might want to do it every week, too. So every week, every Sunday, perhaps you think, what are the

11:58 three main things I'll want to have accomplished by the time the week is done? So then you can look to your daily intentions when you set them and you can look to your weekly ones and think, how are these going to flow into one another? How can what I bite off every day contribute to this broader change that I'm trying to make to my life? And when you set those weekly intentions, you can look to your goal inventory, all the goals that you want to achieve over a medium, a long time span, and you can see how they align with the goals. Every time you set the weekly ones, you can bite off a bit of that goal that you can bring down to earth on that daily level. And then when you have the review of the inventory, you can look to your values so you can shape them

12:47 around the kind of person that you are and take advantage of that natural motivating force inside of you called your values. And so it's in this way that on a practical tactical basis each and every day our different levels of intentionality in our life can flow into one another. Want to support the channel? Join the Big Think Members community where you get access to videos early and free.