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Key Takeaways Don’t measure yourself by outcomes you can’t control (book sales, funding, press coverage); measure yourself by the actions you can control that make those outcomes more likely.
The most valuable goals are the ones that force you to develop capabilities—sales, writing, leadership, discipline—that continue paying dividends even if the original dream never materializes.
Rather than obsessing over revenue, customers, or other end results, hold yourself accountable to the specific daily and weekly behaviors that reliably drive those results.
It’s not every day a bestselling author asks me for advice. But there I was, listening to one of the most widely read voices in self-help work through his anxiety about an upcoming book launch.
“I just really want it to work,” he told me. “I want it to reach the New York Times bestseller list. I want it to touch millions of lives, but what if people don’t know it exists?”
I listened intently. Then I told him: “Those aren’t goals. Those are dreams.”
The best-selling author looked at me in confusion. “What’s the difference?”
It’s a good question. All too often, we set our sights on an outcome and call it a goal. It’s easy to mistake the two — and in fact, I’d have thought the author, who is also my dad, would know better. Nir Eyal has spent a career studying human motivation. But even he loses sight of the difference.
Earlier this year, we spent six hours on a road trip together, just before his latest book was coming out. We discussed why one of the most popular goal-setting frameworks was leaving him feeling stressed and doubtful, and then we came up with a new framework — one that connects decisions to outcomes and fosters a cycle that increases motivation.
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