» Goals «

» Hierarchy of Value

A goal in its most fundamental form is a value-hierarchy: ”I value this thing more than these other things”, and thus one gets a direction to move in: ”since this thing is more valuable and important, I can ignore these other things”. It keeps you from spreading too thin and cultivates singular focus, because if you’re focusing on everything you’re actually focusing on nothing, and then you’ll just be walking in circles not getting anywhere.

EX Winter comes and conditions are good to perform, but the whole season you head out with different friends, each time getting pulled into their separate projects—trying to send, getting happy when it happens on easier stuff, but always discontent when you’re denied on harder lines. And then when the warmer temps arrive you’re left with twenty sessions on twenty different climbs and three easy boulders in your pocket. Now, that can be fine, if you had a good time and that’s aligned with your goals—but if you wanted to complete something difficult—it wasn’t a successful season.

» A Good Goal

Since we want direction from our goals they need to be clear and devoid of subjectivity. There already exists a framework for this called SMART, which you might have heard of, I won’t go into any details here but in short it’s an acronym which states that effective goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Reasonable and Time-bound. Google it for more details.

EX I want to be able to do two one arm pull ups in a row (Specific, Measurable), by the end of the year (Time-bound), I’ll tell my friends about it and put down the finish date in my calendar (Accountable). Right now I can do weighted pull ups with 70% of my body weight (Reasonable).

» Killing the Fantasy

Setting goals can be painful—at least if they are to be realistic or reasonable, which of course they must be—then you’re trading a big fantasy for an often small reality, which pops the bubble and brings you down, likely painfully close to earth. You get something actual for everything potential—not an entirely obvious trade—since it can be quite pleasant living in the fantasies of who you are—at least for the time being… This is probably the reason a lot of people shy away from bigger goals or goal-setting altogether—if you never think it, you can’t fail and the illusion remains intact… until it can’t anymore, but then it’s of course already too late.

EX I really want to climb 8A and I love dreaming about doing it in my mind—as a matter of fact I send 8A’s all day long in my daydreams, but I don’t dare to set this as a clear cut goal—for if I fail the daydreams will loose all their lure of reality and be just plain far fetched dreams to me. So, I keep postponing this goal and all of a sudden a decade has past, and now it really is—definitely—just a plain far fetched dream. And I’m bitter about it.

» Goals are Scary

Another mistake is to not set big enough goals or rather valuable enough ones, this is just another trick to shy away and save your fantasy. For your goals have to be truly valuable to you, otherwise they’re completely useless—you won’t want to sacrifice for them, you probably won’t achieve them and if you do, it won’t be rewarding anyways. And then once the goal is set, you must give everything to achieve it—half-arsing your way through is yet another escape; to save face infront of yourself; to trade future contentment for momentary release—to hold your fluffy fleeting feeling inside hostage.

So, when you’re doing it right setting goals will be scary—and exhilarating, because you may be staking your dreams or at the very least a big part of yourself and your capability. Failing will then very clearly tell you: ”Your everything wasn’t enough – You weren’t enough for your dreams” and this is an incredibly tough verdict. It doesn’t mean though that failing necessarily is bad or irredeemable, it just simply tells you who you are and nothing more.

» Delayed Gratification

Goals are also intimately connected with delayed gratification—as you might have gleamed in the previous considerations—this is the ability to put off immediate reward for future benefits. It’s something we learn about early, yet it remains elusive; a constant dilemma to grapple with: ”I should go to bed now, so I can wake up early and feel well-rested tomorrow, buuut I’ll just sit a bit longer watching videos on my computer”.

Really what it’s about is dopamine: galloping after the good feelings and scampering away from the bad one’s; ”Candy good. Jogging bad” (or rather, their respective thoughts prior to the act, the thought of candy is good and of jogging bad, since once you start jogging it often feels good). It is such simple stuff, yet so incredibly powerful. In these situations when you feel the strong current of the pleasurable, a goal can act as an anchor; when you instinctively want to fall back into the effortless softness, it’s a reminder, a reason and a resounding answer to the ever questioned Why? It can become the small mechanism which pulls you out of the possessing mindset which for the moment completely encompasses you—and which you’ll otherwise, after the fact, come out of begrudging and discontent.

EX I’ve seen it many times since but at the time I was a bit younger and I was watching some grown-ups trying a boulderproblem. I was a kid and thought of adults as mature and reasonable, always doing the right thing—this sort of image one might have. But they couldn’t get up this climb and they were frustrated, they needed to be rewarded and fast—so with climbing shoes and all still on, they pulled the pad to the next climb where they all the more desperately tried to get up, caring less and less about starting right or how they climbed, but seemingly fixated on getting up—getting the kick. And when they yet again where denied, the pad-dragging continued, and with dirty shoes they tried the next one and so on… To me, at the time this painted quite a clear picture. How we as humans, myself very much included of course, easily can fall into this urge towards immediate reward. Where we’re not willing to sit in the uncomfortable, but need to flee it, for a quick reward—any reward.

So look for this the next time you’re out climbing or in other contexts, I’m sure you’ll rather quickly be able to spot it—and let it be a reminder to yourself.

— Recognize the easy dopamine kicks and sit in the uncomfortable.

TOOL : 80/20 principle — don’t get lost in the shallows

An enormously useful tool for goals, and basically every time you’re learning something new or pushing some boundary—is the 80/20 principle. This principle is connected to power law distributions, which are intimately intertwined with the nature of reality, and in a simplified way states that: a few factors are responsible for the majority of outcomes.

EX

• A few accords make up almost all of the songs.

• A small selection of words are used the most in a given language

• A few star clusters holds a disproportional amount of stars in a galaxy

• A limited number of individuals/animals get the most mating opportunities

Now, we can use this to our advantage when we’re trying to achieve our goals. At the beginning when you state your goal—try to pinpoint which factors constitute its make-up, and if any of them have a disproportional impact on the outcome. Sometimes this can be surprisingly easy and other times very difficult to distinguish—but the important thing is to be reflective and try to reap some easy benefits by focusing on the potent factors or what you believe to be those factors.

— Tripple down on a few clearly important things and ignore the rest.

— Time spent on a given thing should be proportional to the results it produces.

TOOL : Max Three 

This is a goal-setting framework I learned a long time ago, and which I’ve been using since. It’s super simple and very applicable to climbing, the rules are: you get to choose three projects, once they’re chosen you can’t change them (unless it’s absolutely necessary for some reason), you focus on these three and once you complete one of them, cross that one out and continue focusing on the other two. Thus more focus will be put onto fewer climbs as you progress. Only when all three objectives have been completed do you get to choose three new one’s and repeat the process. These three climbs should be really difficult or in some way challenging to you, so you properly have to push yourself to complete them—and perhaps you won’t even manage them all—that will sometimes be the case—and that’s good, then you set the bar high enough.

This doesn’t mean though, that you can’t try any other climbs—that would get too boring at least for me. However you shouldn’t start any other projects of the same difficulty, that will dilute your focus too much and negate the benefits of this approach.

TOOL : Out of sight, Out of mind

Here’s another tool, the usefulness of which cannot be overstated – its name is an old truth: ”out of sight, out of mind” or in the words of Daniel Kahneman: ”if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”. Things we see regularly stay at the top of our mind and receive a greater mindshare. We can use this knowledge to our advantage when it comes to a lot of things, not the least our goals!

Accordingly you should clearly write down your goals and place them somewhere visible, preferably where you can see them everyday. I like to edit the background of my computer or phone, so they’re inscribed there. You could also change your background-picture to a certain climb or just something that reminds you of your particular goal, whatever it is. Use your creativity to make the goal as visible and present as possible.

The power of having something close in your mind should not be underestimated – the effects might not be immediately obvious, but your entire approach towards ”this thing” will shift—be emphasized: remembering gives purpose which is strength: you’ll try harder and more intensely – simply because you in the moment know Why.

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