Anticodeguy

Most people set goals and forget them in 2 weeks. Sounds familiar? Why is that the case? They build shitty motivation. Here's how to make your goals actually stick: --- Start with "why" and don't stop asking. Ask why you want the goal. Then ask why about that answer. Keep going until you hit bedrock - the basic needs like autonomy, freedom, security. That's where real motivation lives. --- Example: "I want to build a personal brand." Why? Professional opportunities. Why? Income and growth. Why? Financial freedom. Why? Autonomy. Now you've hit something real. Something that won't fade in a week. --- Here's the trap most fall into. You see someone's success and think "I want that too." But you subconcious knows the truth: "That's their goal, not yours." Borrowed goals get rejected. You need to make them your own. --- How to transform borrowed goals into authentic ones: Don't just copy the goal. Build your own logical chain from that goal back to your core values. It's the same destination, but a different path. Now it's most likely yours. --- Logic alone won't save you tho. You need the emotional core too. Keep asking "why does this matter?" until you feel it physically. Not intellectual understanding - actual sensation in your body. --- Once you find that emotion, create touchpoints. Journal about why it matters. Record a video of yourself explaining it. Find objects or photos that reconnect you to the feeling (vision board). Future you will need these on hard days. --- The goal state: when emotion and logic interlock completely. You can feel it and explain it. Question the goal from either direction - you land on the same foundation. This is when goals become unstoppable. --- Vision boards work for some people. Others find them silly. Detailed plans motivate some. Others feel paralyzed. There's no universal system. Only what fits your brain. --- Forcing techniques that don't match your cognitive style backfires. Analytical need robust logical chains. Emotional need strong anchors and reminders. Social need external accountability. Be honest about what actually works for you and stick to it. --- Your 5-step architecture: 1. Find emotional core (dig deep) 2. Build logical chain 3. Integrate both together 4. Choose techniques that fit your lifestyle 5. Maintain it This isn't a one-time setup, but rather an ongoing practice. --- The full piece is here: https://anticodeguy.substack.com/p/the-goal-setting-framework-that-combines-f42?r=1m5hbt

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This is the goal state: when emotional truth and logical structure interlock so completely that they become indistinguishable. When you can feel the emotion and explain the logic simultaneously. When the rational chain activates the emotion, and the emotion reinforces the logic. When questioning the goal from either direction – emotional or logical – leads you back to the same solid foundation. This is rare. Most goals lean more heavily on one side or the other. But when you achieve this alignment, the goal becomes practically unstoppable. I’ve experienced this with my autonomy goal. The emotional core – that deep-seated need for freedom from constraint – is always accessible to me. I can feel it physically when I think about it. And I have a complete rational framework explaining why autonomy matters, how it connects to well-being, and what specific actions lead toward it. When I’m tired and don’t feel like working on my personal brand (a sub-goal serving autonomy), I can access either the emotion or the logic: Emotional path: “Remember how trapped you felt working for that boss who controlled every minute of your day? You never want to feel that way again. This action moves you away from that.” Logical path: “Building personal brand → professional independence → financial stability not tied to single employer → autonomy in life decisions. This action is a clear link in that chain.” Both paths lead to the same conclusion: do the work. And because I have both paths available, it’s much harder for my brain to find excuses. This is what you’re building toward.

When Emotion and Logic Support Each Other So if emotion alone fades and logic alone is cold, what works? The answer is both, working together in two-way reinforcement. The emotion provides the spark that initiates action. The logic provides the fuel that sustains it after the initial excitement wears off. They reinforce each other, creating something more stable than either alone. Let’s say someone has a health scare – maybe chest pains or a concerning diagnosis. That’s pure emotion: fear, urgency, the visceral realization of mortality. This emotional shock can create immediate behavior change. They start exercising, change their diet, take health seriously. But if they rely only on that fear, it will fade. The human brain is terrible at maintaining fear of abstract future consequences. After a few months, the emotional intensity decreases, and old patterns creep back. Now add the rational component: a detailed understanding of how cardiovascular health works, the statistical risk reduction from specific behaviors, the logical plan for sustainable diet and exercise. This rational structure provides something to fall back on when the emotional fear fades. The rational understanding can reactivate the emotional concern when needed. Looking at the data reminds you why this matters. And the emotional concern makes the rational plan feel important rather than arbitrary. They reinforce each other. Two-way flow. This is what neuroscience research on decision-making suggests: effective long-term decisions engage both cognitive control and affective reward systems. You need both the prefrontal cortex (analytical planning) and the limbic system (emotional drive) working together.

The Analytical Paralysis Problem Let’s look at the purely logical goal-setting approach. This is the spreadsheet approach to life. It’s when you analyze what you should do based on optimal outcomes. You create rational arguments for why the goal makes sense, build systems and frameworks. Everything is structured, planned, reasonable. Sounds about right to me! And it feels completely cold. I’m naturally analytical. My brain constantly wants logical explanations for everything. So you’d think pure logic would work perfectly for me. But here’s what I discovered: logical goal-setting without emotional grounding lacks visceral pull. You can rationally know that you should exercise and list all the benefits: better health, more energy, longer lifespan, improved mood. Calculations show that investing 30 minutes daily yields enormous returns. The logic is airtight. But when the moment comes to actually go to the gym, all that logic doesn’t generate the physical impulse to move. You stay on the couch. Not because you’ve rejected the logical reasoning, but because logic alone doesn’t activate approach motivation. Research consistently shows that emotion is more powerful than logic in triggering action,

Emotion > Logic

People often decide based on feelings and then justify with logic afterwards. Logic supports our emotions and is used to justify our decisions, but we usually apply logic only after we’ve made our emotional decisions. This is why purely analytical goal-setting often leads to perfect plans that never get executed. Does this sound familiar, my fellow wannapreneurs?

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Most people's goals collapse within 3 weeks. Do you think they're lazy or what? I think they're missing a foundation. Here's the two-way system that actually works: --- You know that feeling when you set a goal and you're fired up? You're ready to change everything starting tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes... and the fire's gone. The goal feels... optional. This happened to me countless times, this happens to everyone. --- Emotion-based goals evaporate. When you feel that motivational spike that's your brain releasing dopamine based on anticipation. But the emotional system evolved for short-term survival decisions. Not for goals that take months to achieve. --- New Year's resolutions prove this: 80% fail by February. The emotional energy of a fresh start creates a powerful spike. But then reality hits and the emotion fades. The goal dies with it. --- So you try the opposite approach: pure logic (sounds about right to me). You build spreadsheets, analyze optimal outcomes, create systems. Everything is structured and reasonable. And it feels completely cold. --- Here's the problem with logic-only goals: Your rational brain can rationalize anything. It builds an airtight case for your goal. Then when things get hard it builds an equally logical case for quitting. Both feel justified. --- I've done this countless times. Built perfect logical arguments for goals. Then dismantled them when life threw curveballs. "Given these new circumstances, it no longer makes sense to pursue this." Sounds reasonable, right? --- So if emotion alone fades and logic alone is cold - what actually works? Both. Working together in two-way reinforcement. Emotion provides the spark that initiates action. Logic provides the fuel that sustains it. --- Imagine someone gets a health scare. Pure emotion kicks in - fear, urgency, mortality becomes real. They start exercising the same day. But fear fades after a few months. Then what? --- Add the rational layer: Understanding how cardiovascular health works. Statistical risk reduction from specific behaviors. A logical plan for sustainable change. When fear fades, rational understanding reactivates it. They reinforce each other. --- Research backs this up: goals need both identified regulation (conscious valuing - rational) and intrinsic motivation (inherent interest - emotional). When you have both you get integrated regulation. The goal becomes part of who you are. --- This is the architecture your goals are missing. Not emotion OR logic. Emotion AND logic, interlocked so completely they become one structure. --- If you want to discuss this further, feel free to read the full piece here: https://anticodeguy.substack.com/p/the-goal-setting-framework-that-combines?r=1m5hbt

Dopamine – the neurotransmitter everyone associates with pleasure and reward – is firing based on prediction errors. This is the groundbreaking research by Wolfram Schultz that won him a Nobel Prize. Dopamine neurons fire when outcomes exceed expectations and depress their activity when results disappoint. Dopamine responses transfer from rewards themselves to reward-predicting cues during learning. The anticipation becomes rewarding, not just the achievement. This is why goals themselves can become motivating before you achieve them. Your brain learns to associate the goal with potential reward, and that association triggers dopamine. You feel excited thinking about the goal. But this system is designed for immediate feedback loops. - Touch hot stove → pain → learn not to touch. - See food → eat → satisfaction → remember that food source. The emotional system evolved for short-term survival decisions, not for goals that take months or years to achieve. As Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman (you know him, right?) explains:

“Dopamine is a currency involved in movement initiation en route to goals… it’s really not about the sense of pleasure or reward, but converting desire into physical and cognitive effort”.

When the emotional spike fades – and it always does – you lose that dopamine-driven push toward action. The goal doesn’t disappear, but your brain stops treating it as urgent. Other dopamine sources (checking your phone, eating something tasty, watching another video) provide more immediate hits. This is why pure emotional motivation, no matter how powerful initially, tends to collapse.

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Let me bring this back to where we started (with the previous article). Goals feel artificial and synthetic when they lack foundation. And that foundation consists of three elements: 1. Psychological readiness. The genuine desire to change combined with the willingness to question your current state. Without both, goal-setting is intellectual masturbation – interesting to think about but pointless. 2. Authentic motivation. The goal must be genuinely yours, connected to your actual internal drivers (health, wealth, relationships, happiness, spirituality), not borrowed from someone else’s highlight reel. As the West Point study showed, external motivations not only fail to help – they can actively undermine your internal drive. 3. Internalization through your cognitive style. Whether through emotional anchoring, rational chains, visual reminders, or some combination – you must process the goal in a way that makes it feel inevitable and obvious to your particular brain. When all three elements align, goal-setting stops being a forced exercise and becomes almost automatic. The goal flows naturally from your justified need. Writing it down becomes optional because you already have deep understanding of why you’re pursuing it. And this is when goals actually start working. Not because you’re using the right productivity app or the perfect vision board template. But because the goal is authentically yours, backed by both readiness and rationalization, processed in a way your specific brain accepts. Most goal-setting advice skips straight to tactics – SMART goals, tracking systems, accountability partners. All of that can be useful. But without the foundation, it’s just sophisticated procrastination. You’re building a house on sand. As Edward Deci put it:

“A deep personal desire to change must come first. Then perhaps, a technique can give a little help”.

Most people write down goals and forget them within 48 hours. The problem is that you skipped the 3 foundational steps that make goals actually work: --- The main purpose of a goal is to filter your everyday decisions. When you choose what to eat for breakfast, your brain either follows the path of least resistance (eat whatever) or checks against your goal first (cook some healthy meal). --- Without real goal reinforcement, your brain defaults to comfort. It's an evolutionary instinct - staying safe means staying in the zone you know. Every action that violates comfort gets rejected unless you have something pulling you forward. --- Edwin Locke and Gary Latham studied 40,000+ people across 35 years. They found that specific, difficult goals outperform vague "do your best" instructions. Effect sizes ranged from 0.42 to 0.80. --- But here's where most advice fails: Writing down your goal doesn't work for everyone. For some people, deep emotional and rational understanding matters more than the written word. The goal needs to live in your brain's subcortex, not on paper. --- You need to know how your brain works. Some people need vision boards. Some need logical chains. Some need emotional anchoring. There's no universal method - only what keeps your goal active when you're making decisions. --- Foundation step 1: Psychological readiness. You need genuine desire to change + willingness to question your current state. Without both, goal-setting is just intellectual masturbation - interesting to think about but completely pointless. --- Foundation step 2: Authentic motivation. The goal must be genuinely yours. Connected to your actual internal drivers - health, wealth, relationships, happiness, or spirituality. Not borrowed from someone else's highlight reel on social media. --- Foundation step 3: Internalization through your cognitive style. Whether through emotional anchoring, rational chains, or visual reminders - you must process the goal in a way that makes it feel inevitable to your specific brain. --- Most goal-setting advice skips straight to tactics. SMART goals, tracking systems, accountability partners. All of that can be useful - but without the foundation, it's sophisticated procrastination. You're building a house on sand. --- Edward Deci said:

"A deep personal desire to change must come first. Then perhaps, a technique can give a little help."

Most people reverse this. They grab the technique and wonder why nothing sticks. --- The full article is here, check it out: https://anticodeguy.substack.com/p/why-most-goal-setting-advice-fails-b80?r=1m5hbt

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Know How You Think Goal setting strongly depends on how your thinking is structured, because for someone it depends on what state your brain is in, your thinking is in. Because if, say, it’s very heavily packed with many layers of other things that don’t allow you to remember in time, for example in the moment, that you have some big guiding star, or something blocks your vision, obscures it with such fog or makes it blurry – then naturally this will lead to this layering outweighing your goal, it won’t be visible to you. You need to wipe this windshield that’s now covered with snow or flooded with water that just blocks all visibility. And for many people, very useful tools are precisely such things as writing down the goal and, for example, visualizing it. That is, building a picture, for example a mood board or vision board – a board of your vision that shows various aspects of, for example, your goal that was set, and basically reflects that very target vision. But the writing works because it forces articulation. It makes you clarify your “why” and your “what.” For people whose brains are cluttered with competing priorities, external reminders serve a critical function. For people like me whose rational chains stay firmly embedded, writing becomes optional – though still potentially useful. The point is this: find the method that keeps your authentic goal active in your decision-making process. - For some that’s daily journal review. - For others it’s visual reminders. - For still others it’s a robust logical framework that needs no external prompting. There’s no universal approach. The only requirement is that your method keeps the goal from being buried under the mental noise of daily life.

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The second prerequisite you need is precisely the desire and readiness for change. Okay, I see my body and my weight on the scale, and I understand that I’m ready to change, I want to do this. What is this desire? It’s some internal reason – usually different for each person – but directed at one of the key needs. Everyone justifies the need for these changes differently. This is an individual case, but the point is that a person finds an explanation for themselves in one of these eternal aspects of human needs. Either health, or wealth, or relationships, or happiness, or spirituality. For instance, someone can’t start a relationship because the opposite sex considers them unattractive. But honestly, that’s rarely the actual reason. Usually it’s an internal feeling of insecurity that arises because you know you have, say, an unattractive body, and therefore you’re not charismatic enough to approach a girl or guy, start a conversation with them, or attract their attention. For some people this becomes important. For some it plays the role of actual trauma. Maybe it comes from childhood, maybe it’s something more current, but that’s not the point. Maybe someone was teased in school, and this grew into trauma that then pursues a person through life until they either change or work with their psyche somehow (which is also change, just from a mental rather than physical perspective).

To even begin changing anything in your life, you need to be motivated somehow. You need, first of all, to ask yourself a question: why is this happening this way and not differently? And the follow-up question: how can I do something differently, how can I fix this? And if that question isn’t backed by a desire to change, it’s completely pointless. Without that desire, you can ask the question as much as you want, but it’ll be rhetorical. Let me give you an example. Someone wants to lose weight. How does this happen? They see a picture in the mirror or a number on the scale they don’t like, they see they have excess weight, they realize it and ask themselves: why do I look like this and not like an athletic person, not like a Greek Apollo? Many people stop right there. They do nothing about it and continue their life in the same way, changing nothing. You know these people. The constant complainers. They’re always complaining about what’s happening to them but doing nothing about it. Their entire life happens in a mode of constant complaints about life, about this or that aspect of life that seems simple and obvious to someone with a different perspective. If you don’t want this in your life, okay, change it. Change something you have the leverage to control, and you can change that aspect that doesn’t suit you. But the ability to ask those questions alone isn’t enough here.

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Most goal-setting advice feels like a lie because it is one. You're chasing goals that aren't yours. There's the neuroscience behind why 91% of goals fail. Let's talk about it and how to address the problem with goal setting: --- Everyone tells you: write down your goals, make them SMART, visualize success. When I followed this advice, it always felt artificial and synthetic. I set the goal. Wrote it down. Now what? --- To change anything in your life, you need two prerequisites. First: acknowledge the fact. See the problem. Second: actually want to change it. Without desire, asking "why is this happening?" is just rhetorical complaining. --- You know these people, the constant complainers. Always talking about what's wrong but doing nothing about it. They see their reflection, hate what they see, then continue the same life unchanged. The question alone isn't enough. --- Here's why 91% of New Year's resolutions fail. 41% of Americans make them. Only 9% feel successful by year's end. 80% fail by February. They skipped the prerequisites. Set goals without genuine desire to change. No technique fixes that. --- Everyone has different reasons for wanting to change. Some can't start relationships because of body insecurity. Others feel uncomfortable in successful circles because they don't look the part. Your "why" lives in health, wealth, relationships, or happiness. --- Psychologist Edward Deci said:

"There are no techniques that will motivate people. Motivation must come from within. It comes from people deciding they are ready to take responsibility for themselves."

Without personal reasons, no technique sticks. --- Here's what I noticed: goals only work when they're authentic, internal. Goals that come from inside you. But if you pick up someone else's goal and adopt it, motivation eventually dies. --- The West Point study proved this. Cadets joined for different reasons - some felt called to serve (intrinsic), others wanted free education or prestige (extrinsic). Cadets with strong internal motives were 20% more likely to succeed in their careers. --- But cadets who had BOTH internal AND external motivations actually did WORSE than those with pure internal motivation. External rewards undermined the effect of internal drive. --- So you need to make the goal yours. For me, this means rationalizing it. Building a logical chain that leads to "I need this goal." My brain is wired for rationalization. I need explanations. Emotional switches don't work for me unless they're also logical. --- Different brains work differently. For analytical people like me, a multi-layered logical chain is essential. For others, a vision board works. For some, an emotional anchor from a powerful experience provides the foundation. Find your own method. --- This takes time. Weeks or months of reflection, writing, questioning, refining. There's no shortcut here. The goal must survive your brain's attempts to reject it as foreign. Until it passes that test, it's not really yours. --- When you have internal justification - the strict "why" and clear explanation of why you can't stay where you were - everything becomes simpler. Setting the goal becomes a formality. Your actions flow toward it. --- Before any goal-setting technique works, you need self-awareness. You need to ask: "Why do I need to change? Is this goal really mine?" Without honest answers, you're just playing the New Year resolutions game. --- The topic is huge and there will be several articles covering everything I think about it. To read the first one, go here: https://anticodeguy.substack.com/p/why-most-goal-setting-advice-fails?r=1m5hbt

Goals. Every productivity guru, every self-development course, every piece of advice about improving your life – they all start with one thing. The end goal. What you’re working toward. What all your actions should be directed at. Why you’re doing what you’re about to do to improve yourself. And everywhere you look, the internet is packed with this stuff. Anyone even remotely interested in self-development knows the drill. Write down your goals. Make them SMART. Visualize your success. Track your progress. But here’s my problem with all of it. Whenever I set a goal following this standard advice, it always felt artificial. Unnatural. Like some synthetic concept I invented that never really worked because I didn’t feel any internal response to it. I was just checking a box. Okay, fine, I set a goal. I wrote it down like you taught me. Now what? I’ve never liked standard approaches to anything, mostly because I’ve noticed they don’t work. My brain thinks rationally, constantly inventing excuses for why any particular method won’t work for me. So for every aspect of life, I need to create my own system – one backed by my own explanation, my own rationalization of why I’m doing things this way and not another. Goal-setting is no exception. And only now, as I started creating content and sharing it, did I begin to properly formulate these principles for myself. I’m sharing them with you because if they help me, maybe they’ll help you rationalize these concepts for yourself too.

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