HOW TO FIND, SET, AND ACHIEVE GOALS [AGILE METHOD — 2021]

Summary

In this video, Katarina Lenguld introduces an agile approach to goal setting, inspired by tech companies' sprints. She emphasizes the importance of setting three-week goals in three key areas: personal growth, professional development, and social connections. The method encourages reflection to learn from mistakes and adapt, fostering continuous improvement. Lenguld's strategy aims to keep motivation high and align personal goals with evolving needs, promoting a balanced and successful life.

Takeaways

• 🎯 Katarina Lenguld introduces her channel and her focus on goal setting using an agile method she developed for personal and professional development.
• 🚀 She emphasizes the success she achieved by selling her startup and becoming a vice president at 23, attributing it to the agile method with three-week sprints.
• 📉 Katarina critiques traditional long-term goal setting, citing research that shows most people abandon their goals early, leading to a loss of belief in their ability to achieve.
• 🔄 The agile method is likened to software development sprints, breaking down large projects into manageable, iterative steps that are treated as experiments for learning and adaptation.
• 🧠 The human brain's evolutionary design is highlighted as being ill-suited for long-term planning, making the agile method's short sprints more aligned with our cognitive abilities.
• 🌟 Success is attributed to adaptability rather than innate talent or intelligence, with the agile method helping individuals stay agile and responsive to environmental changes.
• 📝 The importance of reflection is underscored as a core component of the method, allowing for continuous learning and self-improvement.
• 📈 The structure of an agile sprint is outlined as three weeks with three goals in three areas: personal growth, professional development, and social connections.
• 📊 Katarina provides a practical approach to setting goals, recommending limiting to three goals across different areas of life to maintain balance.
• 🔄 Weekly reflection involves tracking progress, learning from mistakes, and planning for improvement, which is essential for incremental growth.
• 🔗 The video concludes with an invitation to subscribe for more content and a link to download a planner to facilitate the implementation of the discussed goal-setting method.

Q & A

What is the main topic of Katarina Lenguld's video?

The main topic of the video is setting goals using an agile method, which includes finding, setting, and achieving goals in a more effective and adaptable way.

Why did Katarina develop the agile goal-setting method?

Katarina developed the agile goal-setting method as it played a super important part in her career and personal development, and she found it to be a simple yet powerful approach that contrasts with traditional long-term goal-setting methods.

What is the significance of using agile methods in goal setting according to Katarina?

The agile method is significant in goal setting because it provides flexibility, continuous motivation, and helps individuals stay aligned with their vision and the needs of the world, allowing for adaptation and evolution.

How does Katarina's background influence her approach to goal setting?

Katarina's background growing up in rural Russia and then moving to Silicon Valley influenced her approach as she had to adapt quickly to new environments and challenges, which is a key principle of the agile method.

What is the typical duration of a goal setting sprint in the agile method discussed by Katarina?

The typical duration of a goal setting sprint in the agile method is three weeks, followed by a week of integration, resulting in a cycle that can be repeated throughout the year.

Why does Katarina recommend limiting the number of goals to three per sprint?

Katarina recommends limiting the number of goals to three per sprint to maintain focus and prevent spreading oneself too thin, as well as to ensure a balanced approach across different areas of life.

What are the three areas Katarina suggests breaking down goals into?

The three areas Katarina suggests are personal growth, professional goals, and social goals, each with its own focus on self-improvement, career advancement, and building a support network, respectively.

What role does reflection play in the agile goal-setting method?

Reflection plays a critical role in the agile goal-setting method as it allows individuals to learn from their experiences, derive lessons from mistakes, and plan for improvements, ensuring continuous personal development.

How does Katarina suggest using the weekly reflection to enhance goal achievement?

Katarina suggests using weekly reflection to track progress, identify lessons learned, and consider ways to improve for the next week, which helps in making incremental progress and staying on track.

What is the purpose of the integration week in the agile goal-setting method?

The purpose of the integration week is to take a break from setting new goals, allowing time to observe how the goals from the previous sprint are settling in and to integrate the experiences and lessons learned.

How can viewers benefit from Katarina's video and what additional resource is provided?

Viewers can benefit from learning the agile goal-setting method, which can help them achieve their goals more effectively. Additionally, Katarina provides a PDF version of her planner as a resource to help viewers get started with the method.

Outlines

00:00

🎯 Introduction to Goal Setting and Agile Method

Katarina Lenguld introduces herself and the topic of setting goals using an agile method. She discusses her background, including her journey from rural Russia to Silicon Valley and her success at a young age. Katarina highlights the shortcomings of traditional long-term goal-setting methods and proposes a new approach involving three-week sprints. She emphasizes the importance of this method in achieving personal and professional success.

05:03

🌱 The Importance of Adaptability and Reflection

Katarina explains the significance of staying agile and adaptable to changes. She highlights that success is not about being the smartest or most talented, but about learning from mistakes and continuously adapting. The agile method's short sprints facilitate frequent reflection and adjustment, promoting personal growth and balance across different areas of life. She stresses the value of setting goals in three key areas: personal growth, professional development, and social relationships.

10:03

🔄 Weekly Reflection and Continuous Improvement

Katarina delves into the process of weekly reflection, a crucial component of the agile method. She describes her routine of sitting down every Sunday to review progress, derive lessons from mistakes, and plan improvements. This practice helps maintain motivation and ensures incremental progress. She also explains the importance of a one-week integration period after each three-week sprint, allowing for consolidation of experiences before setting new goals.

Keywords

💡Goal Setting

Goal setting is the process of identifying something that one wants to achieve and establishing measurable objectives and timeframes for their accomplishment. In the video's context, goal setting is the core theme, with the speaker discussing the importance of finding, setting, and achieving goals using an agile method. The script mentions how traditional long-term goals often fail and suggests a more dynamic approach.

💡Agile Method

The agile method is a flexible approach to project management and product development that emphasizes rapid iterations, continuous improvement, and adaptation to change. In the video, the speaker adapts this method to personal goal setting, advocating for three-week 'sprints' with reflection and adjustment periods to maintain motivation and adapt to evolving circumstances.

💡Sprints

In the context of the video, sprints refer to the three-week periods during which specific goals are pursued. The speaker uses the term 'sprints' to describe the time-bound phases of the agile goal-setting process, which include setting goals, working towards them, reflecting on progress, and then integrating lessons learned before starting a new sprint.

💡Personal Development

Personal development involves activities and experiences that improve one's skills, knowledge, and abilities to enhance personal growth. The video speaker highlights personal development as one of the three key areas for setting goals, alongside professional and social goals, emphasizing the importance of self-improvement in achieving a balanced life.

💡Professional Goals

Professional goals are objectives related to one's career, business, or job performance. The script discusses setting professional goals as a critical area for personal advancement, including aspirations related to career progression, business success, and financial growth.

💡Social Goals

Social goals pertain to building and maintaining relationships, expanding one's social network, and creating a support system. The video emphasizes the importance of social goals as a means to develop a 'social cocoon' of reliable connections and opportunities for personal and professional networking.

💡Reflection

Reflection is the process of thinking deeply about one's experiences, actions, and decisions to gain insight and understanding. In the video, the speaker stresses the importance of weekly reflection as a means to learn from mistakes, derive lessons, and identify ways to improve for the next sprint, which is central to the agile goal-setting method.

💡Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to adjust to new conditions or changes in the environment. The video uses the concept of adaptability to illustrate the importance of being flexible in goal setting, drawing parallels to evolutionary principles where the most adaptable, not necessarily the strongest, survive and thrive.

💡Motivation

Motivation is the drive or desire to achieve a goal or complete a task. The script discusses how the agile method helps maintain motivation by setting short-term goals and reflecting on progress, which is essential for overcoming the common challenge of losing interest or commitment to long-term goals.

💡New Year Resolutions

New Year Resolutions are common goal-setting practices where individuals declare their intentions to improve an aspect of their lives at the start of a new year. The video references the high failure rate of these resolutions by mid-February, using this as an argument for the ineffectiveness of setting long-term goals without a structured approach like the agile method.

💡Integration

Integration in the video refers to the week-long period following a three-week sprint where no new goals are set, allowing for the consolidation of experiences and lessons learned. This period is crucial for assimilating the insights gained during the sprint and preparing for the next cycle of goal setting.

Highlights

Katarina Lenguld introduces the agile method for goal setting, which played a significant role in her career and personal development.

Lenguld shares her background: growing up in rural Russia, moving to Silicon Valley, and selling her startup at 23.

Agile method involves setting goals in three-week sprints, which is more effective than long-term goals.

80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by mid-February, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of long-term goals.

The agile method keeps individuals motivated and aligned with their evolving desires and external changes.

In agile sprints, each step is treated as an experiment, helping individuals stay adaptable and learn continuously.

Reflection is a core element of the agile method, where individuals review their progress and lessons learned weekly.

The structure of an agile sprint: three weeks for goal setting, followed by one week for integration.

Goals are set in three areas: personal growth, professional development, and social connections.

Personal goals include health, fitness, mindfulness, and learning.

Professional goals focus on career, business, and impact on the external world.

Social goals emphasize building a support network and expanding social circles.

Weekly reflection involves assessing progress, learning from mistakes, and identifying ways to improve.

Lenguld provides a PDF planner to help viewers implement the agile method.

The agile method helps individuals adapt quickly to changes and continuously evolve into better versions of themselves.

Transcripts

Hey, guys welcome to my channel, my name  is Katarina Lenguld. Today I want to talk  

about my favorite topic. It's the topic of setting  goals how to find goals, how to set those goals,  

and most importantly how to achieve those goals.  And we're going to look at goal setting process a  

little bit different, we are going to use agile  method. It's an approach that I've developed,  

it played super important part in my career, in  my personal development. I grew up in rural Russia  

and now I live in Silicon Valley. At  the age of 23, I sold my startup, became  

a vice president of an aerospace company. And this  was something that I was able to achieve using  

this specific method in three-week sprints that  I'm going to discuss with you today. It's really  

mind-blowing how simple it is, yet how powerful it  is and why so many people are using the old-school  

productivity systems and using those like  year-long five-year-long goals which do not work.  

And the thing is we know that it doesn't work,  we know there is a lot of research out there,  

you from personal experience know that it's just  pretty worthless. So we're going to deconstruct  

it. And the way we're going to do it, we will  start with the agile method. What is good about  

it, why it works so well? Next, we're going  to talk about the specifics of setting goals,  

so three weeks, three goals and three areas, I'm  going to tell you how to do it, how I do it and  

finally we're going to talk about very important  part. How to achieve goals and stay on track  

when things don't go as planned because you  know when everything goes as planned it's easy,  

but what if something goes out of the way what  are there any problems any obstacles. First off,  

everybody probably is familiar with this wonderful  feeling when you set those great ambitious goals,  

you're super excited about yourself, you believe  oh my god this is going to be the new life, the  

new way. And then a few days later you completely  forget about your commitment to change something.  

According to lots of research, lots of statistics  that is out there 80% of new year resolutions  

fail by mid-February. So we set  something for ourselves for a whole year,  

a month and a half later 80% of people abandoned  those goals. And it's really exhausting to do it,  

and what's even more important is that we lose  belief in our capacity to achieve things, because  

when you failed once, and then you fail  twice and you keep on setting those goals and  

keep on not delivering on your expectations  for yourself you just lose faith that you can,  

you can get things done, and it's really  frustrating. So the method that I want you  

to show to you is something that not just gets  you excited in the beginning when you set those  

goals but also keeps you motivated. And it's  based on agile, you probably heard agile in the  

context of software development. There are many  tech companies out there that use agile sprints  

for developing software. It's one of the  secrets of this success, this fast movement that  

technology companies demonstrate it's because they  are building those massive products that they have  

but they build it in small increments. Instead of  setting this big goal and a vision for a massive  

project they break it down into small steps. And  what is really important, they take each step as  

an experiment, and each experiment you know you  try to derive as much information from it, and  

then you make the next experiment, and the next  experiment, and you make very short iterations,  

and by doing that you always stay motivated. But  what's even more important, you stay aligned,  

you stay aligned with yourself and what the world  needs right, like as a company you don't want to  

build something that other people, your customers  don't want. Similarly, when you take this approach  

for software development and use it for  personal planning, you want to set goals  

that align with your vision of who you want to  be, what your life you want to have. And so,  

what it does, it gives you the flexibility -  agility of the approach, plus it gives you this  

continuous motivation because our brain was  not designed for any long-term planning. It  

was designed millions of years ago, and throughout  our evolution, through the evolution of our brain,  

we were not supposed to solve any long-term  problems. So we're really bad at maintaining  

motivation over long periods of time. And then  what it also does it really, like, speaking of  

evolution, it really helps you stay adapted to the  environment, right? Just think of Darwin. So it's  

not the strongest who survives but the one who  is able to adapt as quickly as possible, right?  

So dinosaurs were the strongest but they didn't  survive because they couldn't adapt quickly.  

So I believe that people who achieve success in  their life, who implement their goals, who like  

achieve what they want, who have this wonderful  fulfilled life, they do it not because they're the  

smartest, they don't do it because they have some  super special talents but because they are staying  

agile, they adapt to changes that happen in their  environment without judging themselves, so they  

reflect on their progress, and when you reflect  on the progress you see things that didn't work,  

and so instead of judging yourself and saying like  oh it was terrible, you learn the lesson, and then  

you adjust your trajectory in the next step and  because sprints are so short it's very easy to do,  

and then you evolve into a better version of  yourself. So it's a really easy to understand  

process which makes you super adaptable,  you constantly stay in think with yourself  

and with the changes in the world because we know  that world does change, and if you set big goals  

for long periods of time, chances are something  externally going to change or something internally  

your beliefs, your desires they are going to  change, so you don't want to stick to long  

big goals. Now, before we start talking  about the details of setting those goals,  

I'm going to share with you the areas, and  how I do it. Just a quick ask for you guys.  

I love making those videos but I also want as  many people to benefit from them as possible.  

And there's only so much I can do, I can make  the video, I can try to make it very practical,  

very exciting, very fun, but I cannot make  more people see it because youtube algorithms  

work the way that you have to give it thumbs up  and then more people in our community will see it,  

so if you can take a few seconds right now to  click the like button, then more people will  

explore this method and hopefully more lives can  be impacted by it. So thank you so much for doing  

that. And let's jump back into our discussion.  So the structure of agile sprint is very simple,  

very straightforward. I love simple solutions. I  think simple is always best. And so it contains  

three weeks, so the whole sprint lasts three  weeks, we set goals for three weeks, just three  

weeks, then we take one week to integrate, and  then another three weeks, so each year you can  

have 12 sprints. So three weeks, three goals in  three areas. Just as simple as that. So I really  

like the phrase that, "If you have more than three  priorities, you have none." So I recommend that  

you limit the number of goals you set for yourself  for three weeks to just three. And not just three,  

I recommend that you break them down into three  areas, so one goal for each area. Reason being is,  

you know, it's just my personal experience and  also seeing lots of people who have very one-sided  

life where they push themselves really hard  professionally and then the personal growth and  

their relationships with people are suffering, so  because I really try to make my life more balanced  

and obviously balanced it's almost unachievable  thing but anyway. I recommend that you break your  

goals into three areas and set one goal in each  area. First area is personal growth. So how do you  

build a better version of yourself? It could  be goals around your health, fitness, your  

mindfulness goals, learning goals, anything that  makes you a better version of yourself. Second  

category of goals are professional goals, they are  related to your career in your business, in your  

job, money that you make, and also the impacts  that you make on external world, so this is the  

second category. And the third category is social  category, and I think it's critically important  

and many people ignore it until it's too late. So  it's about building, what I call "social cocoon",  

it's family, friends, the support that you have,  some people you can rely on when things get really  

rocky when things become unpredictable, and also  opportunities to expand your social circle through  

networking from meeting inspiring people around  you. So three areas: personal, professional,  

and social. So we have three weeks, three  areas, three goals. Now, super important part,  

probably the most important part of the method,  is reflection. The reason why it's so important,  

and I just want to highlight it to you because  not many people understand the value of it,  

it's not just something to check the box,  it's actually the core of the approach,  

so what we want in reality is not just to achieve  the goal, we want to learn, we want to learn  

what works for us, what do we like doing, what  inspires us, what are we good at. It's all about  

learning in the first place, and how can you learn  about yourself, how can you develop this insight  

into things you enjoy, things you're good at it's  by experimenting, so you use sprints as a way  

to have a better insight about yourself, and so  reflection is a weekly practice that you develop,  

every week you sit down, you sit down with a  piece of paper, and I'm actually going to give  

you a pdf version of it, off my planner, so you  can just follow along and there is this particular  

spreadsheet for where you can put all your  reflection notes every week. So what I do every  

Sunday, I sit down and I write my progress with  each of the goals, so that's pretty normal right,  

you want to track your progress. Next, I write my  lessons learned, and usually, the lessons I learn  

are based on mistakes that I made, so  instead of judging myself for how things  

were not going perfectly. Hello, things are  never perfect. So instead of judging myself,  

I look at the situations, I look at my behavior,  I look at my thoughts, my words, my actions,  

and then I analyze and try to derive lessons from  it. And this is the critical part because this is  

what helps you adapt because nothing can really  push you, you know, off the cliff, if you're  

learning your lessons, so lessons learned and  then the third - thing ways to improve next week.  

So if you do that then you have incremental  progress, week by week, sprint by sprint.  

And so in addition to achieving those goals, like  those three week projects for each of those areas,  

I learned a lot about my passions, about my  superpowers. I'm able to adjust my trajectory  

the way I move so that I can be a better version  of myself and build a better version of my life.  

So it's extremely powerful, and so I do that for  three weeks, so I set goals week one reflection,  

week two reflection, week three reflection,  and then I take a week of integration where  

I'm not setting any goals, and I'm just watching  how things kind of put, being put in place. Um,  

and, you know, it's just a time to integrate the  experience of those three weeks, and then towards  

the end of the fourth week, I set goals for the  next sprint, and then rinse and repeat. And then  

you have this opportunity to experiment, to try  new things, to learn new things about yourself,  

and really make your life so much more fun and so  much more meaningful. So that's pretty much it.  

If you enjoyed this video please feel free  to subscribe to this channel, I publish  

videos every week. And I try to keep them very  practical, very concise so that you can go ahead  

and implement what I'm sharing. And, as I  promised, in the link down below, I have a  

pdf version of my planner. So you can just print  it out, set goals for each of those areas, and  

just get started, you know you don't have to wait,  please. The best moment to start is now, so right  

now, after listening to all of this you might be  excited. So why not use this excitement? Why not  

use this dopamine which we have, and apply it to  trying something new. All right? So now, let's do  

quick summary, and then we'll finish. So today we  talked about setting goals and achieving goals,  

and we talked about failed goals first, you know,  all of us know this terrible feeling when we set a  

goal, and very shortly after we abandon it. So we  start excited but then we lose motivation, and we  

also sometimes feel like those goals are no longer  relevant, so we abandon them too. Agile method is  

based on the approach that a lot of technology  companies use but I applied them to my personal  

life and it gave me a lot of success. And so  the way it works, you set goals for three weeks,  

and then you learn and reflect on your progress  which helps you adjust and evolve, so you become  

invincible. And then we talked about the structure  of it. Three weeks, three goals in three areas.  

First area is personal - better version of  yourself, second is professional - your career,  

your business, money impact. And the third one  is social, this building these connections with  

people you can rely on, and expand in your social  network, and learning from other people. Then an  

important probably critical element is weekly  reflection, every Sunday sit down look at what  

you've accomplished for each of those goals,  lessons you've learned oftentimes lessons from  

mistakes, and ways you can improve going forward.  And then you take one week to integrate your  

experience, so three weeks of a sprint, one week  to integrate, rinse and repeat. Join my channel,  

if you found this video interesting, there's more  coming, and feel free to download the planner in  

the description below. I'll see you very soon,  I hope you give this system a try. Good luck!