If you’re like most people, you’ve set some goals for the new year.

Reports say 80% of people fail to achieve their new year’s resolutions… and 43% of people have given up on them by February. Hopefully you aren’t like most people in that way…

But why do so many people give up on their goals – especially so early? Are those quitters weak, lazy, and/or dumb?

I don’t think so.

I think they don’t know how to effectively set realistic, achievable, and motivating goals… or, as I like to call them, quests.

What is a Quest?

Many of my favorite games (role playing games like World of Warcraft) have quests. You’re asked to go collect 12 wolf pelts, rescue another character, or slay a dragon in exchange for gold, experience, and/or items.

As you complete quests, your character levels up, growing more powerful so you can take on bigger quests (with greater rewards).

This system is one of the reasons why gamification is so interesting to me (and why I’ve started using gaming references in most of my emails). Games draw us in, keep us hooked, and motivate us to work hard… so what if we thought of our “real” life that way?

Designing Your Own Quests

I don’t think the people who fail to achieve their goals are weak, lazy, or stupid. I think they’re simply setting goals the wrong way.

Many of us have heard of SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). This all sounds good in theory. But this method breaks down when you set goals about things you can’t entirely control.

For example: I’ve consulted over 200 business owners in the past 3 years. Many of them had goals about reaching a specific income or a specific number of followers by a certain time. Those are great starts to a goal… but they aren’t quite effective goals by themselves.

Why? Because those goals involve factors that aren’t in your control. You can’t force someone to buy from you or follow you – similarly to how you can’t force the cute high elf* you see at a brewery to go on a date with you.

*really taking a long shot with this D&D reference

So what should you do instead?

I like the PACT goal system I learned from Anne-Laure Le Cunff. PACT stands for purposeful, actionable, continuous, and trackable. This system puts your goal more in your control.

But my idea combines the two – combining your SMART goal with a PACT goal. Said another way – taking your outcome-based goal and creating an action-based goal along with it. But what’s the point of doing this?

Probabilities All the Way Down

Almost everything is a probability in life. If you want to:

• Build a business
• Meet a girl
• Gain a following
• Learn a skill
• Win in a sport

…there are factors involved that are outside of your control. You can never have 100% control over the outcome. It’s not as simple as want it, do it, get it.

But you can do things to increase the probability you will get the outcome-based goal you want – up to nearly 100% in some cases – by creating action-based goals.

Say your outcome-based goal is to reach $20,000/month in income. To achieve this, you need an audience to sell to and an offer to sell to them. You’ll probably either be creating a product page (if it’s low-ticket) or getting on sales calls (if it’s high-ticket).

How to Fail the Quest

But… you can’t force people to buy from you. You can work hard but still fail to achieve your goal.

Why? Because you may not be taking the right actions to increase the odds of making sales. Your audience could be wrong, your offer could be bad, your landing page could suck, your sales call skills could be terrible, and so on. Your probability of making sales (and reaching your goal) is too low.

Think about what specific actions you need to take to increase the probability of making sales.

Do you need to do direct outreach 20 times a week? Send 3 emails a week? Write 2 Twitter threads a week? Talk to someone about your landing page copy? Have a coach help improve your offer?

As you can see, some of these actions are continuous (repeated daily, weekly, or monthly) and some of these are one-offs. Each one of these action-based goals increases your probability of achieving your outcome-based goal.

Stacking the Deck in Your Favor

Same thing applies to any other goal you may have.

Want to meet a woman? Get in shape, dress better, go to places where the kind of girl you like hangs out, approach X women in a week/month.

Want to lose weight? Set your calorie target, track your intake daily, exercise X times a week.

You can use this approach for pretty much anything you want to achieve. It all boils down to two simple questions:

• What outcomes do I want to achieve?
• What actions can I take to maximize the probability I achieve those outcomes?

Then, each day, you focus on those actions… and eventually, your desired outcomes happen as a natural byproduct of your actions.

So, with this system, I hope you create your own quests for 2023 and beyond, complete them, and move on to bigger and better quests as you level up.

And, if you’re wondering what my own quests for 2023 are, here are a couple of them:

Desired outcome #1:
Grow to a combined reach of 230,000 followers

Actions to make that happen:
Post 2 Twitter threads weekly
Post on LinkedIn 5 times weekly
Post on IG 3-5 times weekly
Post 1-2 YouTube videos weekly

​Desired outcome #2:
Lose [redacted] pounds

Actions to make that happen:
Track my calories daily
Eat at/under my calorie goal daily
Lift weights 3-4 times weekly
Sleep 7-8 hours nightly

Try this yourself. Good luck on your quests…

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