Yes, exactly. And if you do convert abstract goals into sub-goals you are abnormally brilliant. I don’t know if you were taught to do that, or you just deduced such a technique on your own, but the majority of people, the vast majority, is unable to do that. It is a huge problem, one many self-health programs address, and also one that the main paradigms of American education are working to counteract.
I think it comes from having done athletics as a kid… I was a competitive swimmer, and very quickly it became an obvious fact to me that in order to achieve the big abstract goal (being the fastest and winning the race) you had to train a whole lot. And since it’s not very easy for someone who’s 11 or 12 years old to wake up every morning at 5 and make it to practice, I turned those into little mini subgoals (examples subgoal: get out of bed and make it to all the practices, subgoal: try to keep up with the fast teenage boys in my lane, subgoal: do butterfly even though it hurts).
So it just feels incredibly obvious to me that the bigger a goal is, the harder you have to train, and so my first thought is ‘how do I train for this?’
Yes, exactly. And if you do convert abstract goals into sub-goals you are abnormally brilliant. I don’t know if you were taught to do that, or you just deduced such a technique on your own, but the majority of people, the vast majority, is unable to do that. It is a huge problem, one many self-health programs address, and also one that the main paradigms of American education are working to counteract.
It really is no small feat.
I think it comes from having done athletics as a kid… I was a competitive swimmer, and very quickly it became an obvious fact to me that in order to achieve the big abstract goal (being the fastest and winning the race) you had to train a whole lot. And since it’s not very easy for someone who’s 11 or 12 years old to wake up every morning at 5 and make it to practice, I turned those into little mini subgoals (examples subgoal: get out of bed and make it to all the practices, subgoal: try to keep up with the fast teenage boys in my lane, subgoal: do butterfly even though it hurts).
So it just feels incredibly obvious to me that the bigger a goal is, the harder you have to train, and so my first thought is ‘how do I train for this?’