Welcome to Ally’s Newsletter, a weekly publication where I curate the top ideas and experiments to design a life that enables you/me to fulfill your/my potential.

This newsletter is a living, breathing experiment where I catalog things that I’m researching and applying in my own life.

Personally, my goal in publishing my writing weekly is to actively practice slow thinking and get to know the most authentic way for me to create and connect with people. It’s also to practice giving and writing in a way that’s as useful and helpful as possible to you.

As a result, you’ll probably see me tweaking the mission statement above as well as different things like formatting, sections in the newsletter, and writing style.

I’m super curious to hear your opinions as I change things, so as you see changes, if you feel so inclined, definitely shoot me an email with your thoughts.

The internet is more fun when we co-create it together ✨ 🤍 

Goal setting guide

I have this weird belief in my head that every year, I get a little bit better at living and creating a life that’s aligned to who I truly am.

But the rate at which I get better at living is determined by my rate of learning, which takes time. And, as you know, time is a limited resource.

This is why annual reflections and annual planning is important to me. I have goals I want to achieve, a person I want to become, a journey I want to be on.

And, admittedly, I’m impatient.

I value my time, and if I can get better faster and with less effort, that’s more time I can spend hanging out with friends, traveling, or taking forever getting ready (one of my favorite past times, I’m serious).

One of the fastest ways to increase your rate of learning is to create a purpose to strive towards and a system to execute on.

So, I’ve put together a goal setting guide looking at multiple other creators and high achievers who know their stuff (ty Sahil Bloom, Dickie Bush, Nicolas Cole, and Greg Isenberg).

Ultimately, I liked Sahil Bloom’s format the best and sprinkled some best practices from OKRs to his process.

By the end of this tactical exercise, you’ll start the process of compounding personal growth, have a clear idea of what your top priorities are for the year and create a clear set of steps to make those goals real.

Note: Before you set out to create goals for the future, make sure you’ve done a retrospective to understand what’s worked and hasn’t worked for you.

What types of obstacles did you face this year that you could have handled better? How can you create a plan to approach it differently? What are some of your strengths that shone through? How can you lean into those strengths?

We covered a straightforward system to address all those questions here so make sure to do that before you move onto future-leaning goal creation.

Write out your Big Goals

First, write out the Big Goals that you have for the upcoming year.

Think about different categories in your life: health, wealth, relationships and experiences.

Then, refine the goals. Make sure they’re outcome oriented rather than input oriented. For instance, “build a circle of inspiring and creative friends” is more outcome oriented than “go to IRL meetups to meet inspiring and creative people.”

The latter is just one potential input to a desired outcome.

Put thought into how you write your goal — it matters. Explore different variations of each of your Big Goals.

If you need some help, ask ChatGPT to help you brainstorm and refine your goals.

Once you’ve landed on your goals, stack rank them in order of importance.

And last of all, fewer goals is better. Focus on the most important things, and it’s okay if some of your desired goals/outcomes encompass many things that you want to achieve.

“Grow my newsletter to 1,000 active subscribers in 2024” is a goal that encompasses other sub-goals like writing regularly and doing collabs with other creators.

Create Milestone Goals

What are the Milestone Goals that I need to hit in order to achieve that larger audacious goal?

These should be binary criteria — it’s either a “yes I did this” or a “no I did not”.

Bonus points if it’s time-bound.

Here are some of my Big Goals and Milestone Goals :

• Big Goal: Grow my newsletter to 1,000 active subscribers in 2024

  • Write every day for at least 60 minutes and publish weekly

  • Do one collab a month with other creators

  • Create weekly genuinely helpful posts/responses on Reddit or Twitter that link back to an article I’ve written

• Big Goal: Nurture friendships (new and old) that inspire and energize me personally, creatively, and professionally.

  • Host a gathering once a month for IRL friends

  • FaceTime one long-distance friend every month

If you’re struggling to create Milestone Goals , invert the question.

What would you do to ensure failure?

Do the opposite of that.

Keep it simple.

Build daily systems to make it real

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." - James Clear, Atomic Habits

Now it’s time to create systems or habits to reach those checkpoint goals.

In the example above, I mention that I want to write every day for at least 60 minutes. How am I gonna do that? Am I going to wake up every day and hope that I have the time to do this?

No.

Pulling from James Clear’s world class research on creating new habits, I’m going to make this habit as easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying as possible.

Easy - Each writing session has a clear outcome and system. I systematize brainstorming, writing an outline, writing the actual article, and writing a social media post. Each activity has a baseline template.

Obvious - right after my 6am workout, I know I need to shower and get writing. The “cue” to start writing is coming back from a workout class.

Attractive - my desk is clean & inviting with a steaming cup of green tea.

Satisfying - I can cross writing off of my to-do list (I love lists) that day and know that I did the hardest thing first thing in the morning before work.

I highly recommend reading his book or looking up a summary of it if you’d like tactical points on how to build new habits.

Know your anti-goals

How you achieve a goal matters just as much as whether or not you achieve it.

Anti-goals help you make sure you don’t win the battle but lose the war.

Quoting Sahil Bloom, “to create an anti-goal, invert the problem. What are the worst outcomes that could occur from your pursuit of these Big Goals?”

Here are some of my Big Goals and anti-goals:

• Big Goal: Grow my newsletter to 1,000 active subscribers in 2024

  • Create content that’s fast to make but less valuable.

  • Use spammy marketing techniques to get new users that probably will churn.

  • Make the newsletter feel like a second job, or something I “have to do” rather than enjoying the opportunity to produce something truly great.

• Big Goal: Nurture friendships (new and old) that inspire and energize me personally, creatively, and professionally.

  • Treat reaching out to friends as something to check off a to-do list or something that I “have to do”.

  • Create friendships because I think they’ll be a good influence on me, even though we don’t truly vibe.

tl;dr

4 steps to creating goals that are important to creating a life that’s fulfilling to you:

1. Create Big Goals: Audacious or important goals across the categories of your life.

2. Set Milestone Goals: Binary goals you need to hit in order to achieve the Big Goals.

3. Build Systems: Don’t leave your goals up to chance. Create habits or systems to be as easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying as possible.

4. Know Your Anti-Goals: How you achieve a goal matters just as much as whether or not you achieve it.

If you know of someone who would find this guide useful, consider sharing it with them.

90% of the subscribers to this newsletter are referral-based, and it means a lot to me to be able to grow this hobby organically and through word-of-mouth.

Thanks for supporting this small newsletter & I’ll see you next week.

Ally