I’m a fan of Derek Sivers. I loved his first interview with Tim Ferris. I knew him before that from ‘The first follower‘, and I think this little video about ‘Obvious to you. Amazing to others.‘ is brilliant.

I recently purchased and listened to his book, ‘Hell Yeah or No’ and this chapter really resonated with me: ‘Goals Shape the Present, not the Future‘.

From the chapter:

If it was a great goal, you would have jumped into action already. You wouldn’t wait. Nothing would stop you.
The purpose of goals is not to improve the future.The future doesn’t exist. It’s only in our imagination. All that exists is the present moment and what you do in it.
Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment.

I think this is what I’ve always struggled with when teaching or talking about goals with students… they all focus on the plan ahead, the future, and not on the habits and attitudes needed right now. We don’t teach the ‘Hell Yeah’ part of creating goals that kids really want to do.

We don’t teach them about goals, we teach them about wishful thinking.

Present habits and actions lead us to future outcomes, and these need to be emphasized when we teach goal setting.