Perhaps the only way to train yourself to achieve long-term goals is to use short-term motivation to improve your automatic behaviours, instead of trying to train ourselves to have motivational systems that work on long-term multi-step plans.
What if we broke down the action steps of your algorithm into:
ask yourself what kind of person achieves goals like this by habit
ask yourself how you could change yourself into that kind of person, perhaps by establishing new habits
evaluate whether your new habits are effectively causing you to do things that work towards your goal.
So, forget about long-term plans. Instead select and implement short-term plans that:
incrementally improve your position, so more opportunities that you can act on occur.
change bad habits into more goal-directed habits
put you into situations where you are likely to take actions that further your goals, automatically
increase your intrinsic enjoyment of things that are directed towards your goals
So, for example, starting a startup is less Step 1 of a Grand Plan to become a millionaire, and more a way to put yourself in a situation where you will have to do things that you think help towards becoming a millionaire, and will change you into more the kind of person who does things that make you a millionaire.
Of course, this whole thing is just one big long-term plan after all :) But it’s a more specific one.
Perhaps the only way to train yourself to achieve long-term goals is to use short-term motivation to improve your automatic behaviours, instead of trying to train ourselves to have motivational systems that work on long-term multi-step plans.
What if we broke down the action steps of your algorithm into:
ask yourself what kind of person achieves goals like this by habit
ask yourself how you could change yourself into that kind of person, perhaps by establishing new habits
evaluate whether your new habits are effectively causing you to do things that work towards your goal.
So, forget about long-term plans. Instead select and implement short-term plans that:
incrementally improve your position, so more opportunities that you can act on occur.
change bad habits into more goal-directed habits
put you into situations where you are likely to take actions that further your goals, automatically
increase your intrinsic enjoyment of things that are directed towards your goals
So, for example, starting a startup is less Step 1 of a Grand Plan to become a millionaire, and more a way to put yourself in a situation where you will have to do things that you think help towards becoming a millionaire, and will change you into more the kind of person who does things that make you a millionaire.
Of course, this whole thing is just one big long-term plan after all :) But it’s a more specific one.