Most people get goals all wrong.

Humans perform best with three levels of goals:

• Mission-level goals
• High hard goals
• Clear goals

The first two are obvious, but the last is painfully overlooked (and it triggers flow): 🧵👇

Mission-level goals are lifetime goals.

High, hard goals are the multi-year achievements required to achieve those lifetime goals.

Clear goals are the daily actions needed to accomplish those high hard goals.

Here's the key:

If all three levels are pointed in the same direction, and progress towards those goals remains steady, then motivation and momentum—aka dopamine and flow—are the result.

With my Gnar Country experiment, my mission was clear:

My mission was to advance flow science and peak performance aging.

This meant every time I went to the mountain, I’d get a little dopamine for showing up and advancing the cause.

Could I learn to park ski at age 53?—that was my high hard goal.

Progress toward this goal was measured by my ability to learn the tricks on my trick list.

So, every time I tried a trick, I got a little dopamine for taking a risk and trying something new.

If I pulled one off successfully, I got a lot of dopamine.

Why this matters:

Since a lot of dopamine significantly increases focus—I dropped into flow as a result.

Yet, there were outside factors in play—injury, weather conditions, COVID flare ups—that I couldn’t control.

So I needed clear goals––the goals that would fill out my daily to-do list:

These clear goals would benchmark my progress, yet they needed enough flexibility to handle changing conditions.

Thus, for my clear goals, I needed a way to measure the quality of a ski day unrelated to my terrain park and big mountain progress.

This is why I counted my laps:

Twelve laps was a mellow workout.

If conditions were terrible, or I was exhausted, twelve laps was my minimal acceptable goal.

It meant I was maintaining fitness but not overtaxing the system.

Done correctly, I'd get a hit of dopamine.

Sixteen laps was a solid workout.

Barring bad weather or nagging injury, sixteen laps was my standard “good day on the hill” requirement.

But this is what I was aiming for:

Twenty-plus laps was a great day.

It meant I was skiing strong, advancing my fitness, and, should conditions allow, ready to attempt one of the harder lines or bigger tricks on my lists.

Twenty-plus laps guaranteed that I’d get into flow along the way.

Why?

Because it’s too tiring to ski that much without the pain relief that comes with the flow state.

If you want the performance-enhancing, pain-relieving, age-defying benefits of flow, ask yourself:

"Are my goals aligned on the mission, high hard, and clear level?"

Want to align your goals for more flow as you grow old?

Consider reading Gnar Country.

Gnar Country describes the terrain of our later years—high in perceived risk, high in actual risk—and the gritty mindset needed to thrive during those years.

amzn.to/3PPjkOV

We have an enormous untapped resource of people who are checking out prematurely.

It's time to change the way the world thinks about the second half of their lives.

Don't be dead before you're dead.

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