How to Set Long-Term Goals

How much time do you spend thinking about your life 30 years from now?  Do you have retirement savings in mind?  How about your health?  Where you live?

If you are like most people, these thoughts likely don't concern you.  Humans simply aren't built to contemplate time in such a manner. 

One way to solve a future issue is to focus on solving it today.

A 2015 study, published by the Association for Psychological Science, found that participants who think of their future in different time-metrics (days rather than years) are more connected to their future selves.  As the researchers write, 

There is evidence that people are ready to act in the service of a future self if it is presented as connected to the current self.  For example, students work harder and get better grades when their present and future selves are connected with a picture of a physical path.

A simple vision exercise proved beneficial in goal-setting.  As the study concludes, such individuals are motivated to prepare for the future.

Thinking about your future self influences your actions in the present.

Rewire Your brain

Choose a long-term benefit that may not seem fun to plan (like retirement) and start overriding your current brain design system.

Duke University behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, suggests using Reward Substitution.

Reward Substitution is the process of creating benefits or rewards in the present moment that will motivate you to behave in ways that serve your long-term goals.  As Ariely puts it, 

Procrastination is about the problem that we’re just not designed to think about the long-term.  Why would nature even get us to think about what will happen 30 or 50 or 60 years from now?  So we think about now, and the now is much more powerful … That’s really the basic human problem; that there’s something that’s good for us in the future … but the steps we can take now are incredibly painful.  So we often don’t do that … We are not designed to care about the future.  We just can’t change that … So instead what we can do is we can create other benefits that will be more in the present; kind of import new benefits for the present.

Applying the Reward Substitution method

Try out this formula to help you integrate reward substitution into your life. 

• Context: Let's say you want to save $1M for retirement.  You’ve been putting it off and thinking that you have plenty of time to start saving.
• Action: Start by putting a little money aside each week.
• Reward: Each time you make a deposit, treat yourself to a small reward, like your favorite coffee.  Savor the taste.  Enjoy the smell.  Feel the warmth.  Associate that treat with the act of making the deposit. 

Your brain now associates the benefit of saving for retirement with savoring your favorite coffee.

This tasty treat gives you the motivation to keep saving. 

Go ahead and apply this method. All you need to start is yourself.