How to Set Goals in Notion with Goal Outcomes and Value Goals

I. Introduction

• Brief overview of the tutorial topic and purpose

II. The project database

• Explanation of what the project database is and how it was covered in the previous video

III. The goals databases

• Explanation of what the goals databases are and how they are related to the project database

IV. The pillars and Pillar support items

• Explanation of what the pillars and Pillar support items are and how they fit into the overall system

V. The cycle review video

• Explanation of the importance of the cycle review video and how it ties everything together
• Discussion of the designated cyclical periods (weekly, monthly, quarterly) and how they are used to check on progress and make sure priorities are still relevant

VI. Assessing progress

• Discussion of how the pyramid hierarchy and pipeline pyramid make it easy to quickly assess progress and identify areas that need attention

VII. Next steps

• Overview of the importance of the next few videos and encouragement to subscribe for updates

VIII. Mind and Machine newsletter

• Introduction of the newsletter and explanation of the valuable insights it provides
• Information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe

IX. Conclusion

• Thank you for watching and preview of future content

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Hi everyone, welcome back to our ongoing series on how to create a life operating system in Notion. Today, we're going to talk about goals and, in particular, goals databases.

I'll talk about the relationship between them, but just as importantly, how they fit in the middle of our alignment zone in the middle of our pillar to pipeline pyramid. This way, they are aligned with the projects and the tasks beneath them and the pillars, and the guiding principles above them.

It's super important that your Notion project management system, your life operating system, and your knowledge management system, that has the high level and the low level, are very clearly interlinked and aligned. So that the visions and aspirations you're moving forward towards them, you're taking steps day-by-day in small increments of work that are adding up to the mid-level and the high level aspirations and visions and goals you have for your life.

So, the only way that happens is if you have a system where they're all interconnected, and that individual hourly tasks are not independent of the big aspirations and goals that you have assigned for yourself and that you've prioritized. At the same time, you need to set priorities, you need to have clear designations of what matters most in terms of the goals you're pursuing, and how to measure and evaluate whether you're moving toward or away from your goals.

So, all of that is in today's video. The previous videos on the project database roll very directly into this one. The way you accomplish your goals is you establish projects. Projects move you towards your goals, you define specific goal outcomes in your Notion goal settings, and you determine which projects you need to undertake and complete to accomplish those goals. And then projects are made up of tasks, individual units of work. Those tasks advance you towards completing the projects, just like projects advance you toward completing your goals.

So, it is the hierarchy and then it rolls up very directly, but goals are also in service of something bigger. Goals are in service of your values and your aspirations, and who you want to become in your life and the things you ultimately want to achieve and be known for, things you want to do for your family and other people, and for your business. So, it all integrates.

That's why we have this system, so that we can define the things at the top, the things we ultimately want to achieve and become, and we have various levels of execution to make sure we get there, all the way down to the hour-by-hour, day-by-day activities we focus on.

So, let's get into it. From our top-level dashboard, the command center, we jump into the alignment zone and in the alignment zone, we have the pillar to pipeline pyramid. We previously did a video on the task database, which or what I call the action items. The last video prior to this one was on the project database, which showed us how we created projects and aggregate tasks to accomplish those projects. All of those projects are assigned to one or more goal outcomes, so the projects are not just off-hand, they are in service of very specific outcomes we have set as goals.

The next level above in the pillar to pipeline pyramid is the Goal outcomes, which are very tightly attached to the Value goals. So, we're going to talk about those two today in this video. So, let's open both of them up.

One of the reasons I like this tool system is you can open up any two of these right next to each other, and look at them in tandem.

In the gold pipeline, which is the center of the pillar pipeline pyramid, we have value goals and goal outcomes. We talked a little bit about this in the alignment on video, so if you haven't seen that, it gives you an overview of this entire dashboard, but now we're going to go in deeper.

So, goal outcomes are the very specific things that are measurable and trackable as you evaluate whether you're moving toward or away from the goals. You know when you've accomplished them, because they are very specific, measurable, and quantifiable. Value goals, on the other hand, represent things that you value, things that you want or hope for that are important to you, but they're not measurable, just things within your being.

The reason for having two of these, separate value goals and goal outcomes, is that you have to have something measurable and quantifiable, so you know if you've achieved it, it's not ambiguous, you can't cheat with your subjective evaluation. But I find that if you just start to list your goal outcomes, you will limit yourself. The things that are measurable might not really be direct proxies when you're just thinking off the top of your head to the things you value the most. And they also feel very transnational, they feel kind of cold, they feel like okay, if I have to measure that, that's a viable goal outcome, but that doesn't really speak to my passion for what I'm trying to get at beyond the numbers, like what's in my soul.

So value goals are the things I value, I can come to goal outcomes that are more meaningful and more relevant if I start with less rigid requirements for measureability and quantifiability. And I start with something like, I want a thriving business. I want a business that's just moving, that dynamic things are happening, it's growing, it's got people who are engaged and fired up about it. That's not measurable, that's a subjective thing, but that's what I want. If you really ask me where I want, that's where I'm looking for. Well, how do I get a thriving business? I need to start by defining some things that are very specific I can work toward.

So as a first step, I have defined a goal outcome of creating and launching three products. That is a specific goal outcome. I need three products that I launched, and make available to the public. These need to be products that are relevant to what I care about and what I feel I have to offer. So that is a goal outcome.

Now, in my goal outcome database, I have creating and launching three products. So this is a relation from this database, the value goal database, to the goal outcome database. Every single value goal must have at least one, sometimes more, goal outcomes. Every goal outcome must have at least one, potentially more, value goals. Nothing can be orphaned and stranded by itself. If it's worth having as a goal, you need both values, need measurable quantifiable objectives, goal outcomes.

The reason for this two-step process is that I get better goal outcomes if I just come up with goal outcomes on their own. They have less meaning, they're not as internalized, they don't touch my values, and therefore, I am less motivated to do them, and they just feel transactional. So, I basically created this as a two-step process to help me establish the goal outcomes in a more meaningful way to me.

The text describes a personal system for setting and tracking goals that the author has developed. The system is based on the idea of two types of goals: "value goals" and "goal outcomes." Value goals are things that are emotionally meaningful to the individual, and serve as the guiding principle behind the system. They represent what is truly important to the individual and are the guiding force behind the actionable goals that are set. Goal outcomes, on the other hand, are more specific and measurable. They represent the steps or actions that must be taken in order to achieve the value goals.

The system also includes a way to track progress towards goal outcomes through a progress bar, which can track progress based on specific numbers or by subjectively judging the completion of tasks or projects. The system also includes a status setting for each goal outcome, with the options being "not started," "underway," and "complete." The completed goal outcomes can then be checked off and moved to a completed status.

The author also mentions that a similar system is called OKRs (Outcomes and Key Results). The author notes that the terminology of "value goals" and "goal outcomes" may be clearer than the language used in Notion OKRs, and that the author's system is intuitive and logical. The author believes that the system allows one to get both things that mattered to the individual and the measurable process by creating something that is emotionally meaningful and actionable.

Talking about value goals, but there are some things you know are gonna be important, just in the future, you know, they're gonna be priorities in the future, so why not just listen, have him here.

During our quarterly or annual reviews, you can assess whether the future for that value goal has arrived or not, but is there when you do these periodic reviews?

But during week-to-week, month-to-month, quarter, to quarter, you're operating focused just on the underway value goals, priorities, just help you sort out in your mind what you're emphasizing at any given point.

I designated him by business health, or family. And then I like the list challenges. What is the biggest obstacle in your way to achieving that? It just forces a little bit of reflection and thought. And then of course, they're alike to go outcomes back down on the goal outcomes.

I do have a term, so that I can get a ballpark sense and sort by grouping where I think this is something I can achieve within three months, something that's gonna take three to six months, 60 to 12, or over a year. It just helped me break it down so I can see what's the time horizon is for execution on the Goal, outcomes, now, just like they're signed upward, the value goals, they're also assigned downward to projects or projects below them are signed up to go outcomes in most cases, so in most cases, you achieve a goal outcome by coming up with the project or two or three in working towards the goal outcome through the project.

In some instances, you don't actually need a project, you could just have a series of tasks or habit could help you get there. For example, one of legal outcomes is to read and summarize 20 leading books in my field, I summarize have in one of my Volts, I have my book fault, I will read the book and do extensive notes and summarization of that so that I can get the most knowledge and learning from that book. Now, that's a goal, outcome. I don't actually need a project to read books. Reading books is a habit, and I have a habit database that defines the habits so I don't actually have a project for my book reading and summarizing goal outcome however, and habits and routines which is another database which we'll get to a little bit later.

I have my daily reading hour to give you a peak into my Notions habits database, I have a few settings but frequency daily, it related to what goal outcomes related to what pillar, the learning pillar, he related to of a workspace on thought enhancement tools and techniques and is tagged a learning and a time of day is assigned. So, daily in the late afternoon or evening every single day, I have a reading hour and that moves me toward my goal outcome of reading and summarizing 20 books. I do the summarizing as I read and it's in service of the learning pillar, so every single goal outcomes must have either a project or routine habits, routines are not specific units that you're checking off and have it finished date. They are daily or weekly things you do on a regular basis, those can move you toward a goal outcome. But most of the time, it's the project because it's just the nature of goal outcomes that projects are in most cases the unit of work that moves you toward it, just take a peak inside these work spaces for value goals.

I have the goal of building extraordinary knowledge in my field. So how do I go about that?

Well, I have it as an underway status, I have a priority assigned to it, I have the challenges defined for what I think I need to overcome to do it.

The challenge is that there's a massive amount of material to cover and that consumption is slow. Well, that's, life, but I'm defining it upfront, so I know what I have to overcome to get there.

It's in the business category, it's attached to two goal outcomes. Reading summarizes books and interview 15 experts in my field for the podcast, the podcast I do. So, by doing those two things I'm moving toward gaining extraordinary knowledge in my field.

There are other things they do, too, as a matter of routine and habit, but these are two explicit goal outcomes that I'm measuring and tracking that are tied to my valuable of achieving extraordinary knowledge in my field. So, if we open that up, we a have a workspace for this value goal.

We have a couple of questions. I always like to ask myself for each value goal, Why this value goal in this case in terms of achieving extraordinary knowledge in my field to serve clients with better insight to have more to share at a higher quality.

How will you achieve this? This is a couple of steps voracious reading, listening to targeted podcasts smart selective video, consumption speak with thought leaders on my podcast at events and in online groups. So just be very deliberate layout specifically how you're gonna get there, and broad strokes, and then create the goal outcomes that are gonna get you there. In this case.

I have two, they're the same ones up here, but now, we've got all the information, so if we are thinking it through, more thoroughly, some of them you might actually build out this workspace and add notes and comments and resources in articles or whatever, that might help facilitate this, as you achieve different goal, outcomes, and hand-off information to future goal outcomes all in the service of extraordinary knowledge in your field.

So that's looking inside of one of the value goals. I don't use the work spaces and the value goals that often I do use them a lot. And projects, as we talked about in the project database that is the main work space for execution on projects, but somewhere in the middle, more than the value goals, I do use the work spaces in the Goal outcomes because as I've said many times, you'll have many projects to get to a specific outcome, so you don't wanna accumulate all the knowledge inside of project. If when that project dies that knowledge is still valuable if the knowledge is valuable across multiple projects in service, if I go outcome, it should be aggregated in the goal outcome work space.

So for example, I want to create and launch three products that is the goal outcome in service of solid a growing financial footing. So I wanna create and launch three products. Now, this one has a lot going on in my subjective assessment is that I'm about 50% on my way there, now in service of two value goals, a thriving business and a solid and growing, financial footing the thriving business is about business, solid growing financial footing is more about personal. So that's why I had them as two separate value goals.

Then we've got projects which we'll get to below the pillars and service of which is product development action. I enter specific tasks and the term is three to six months, so those are the database item. Now down here, we have the workspace. As always, I ask why this goal outcome. So why do I have these goal outcomes?

The speaker is highlighting the importance of being very deliberate and specific when setting goals, in order to have clarity about what they're trying to achieve. They mention that they love working with clients, but that this limits the number of people they can reach and the number of things they can do. In order to better serve a greater number of people, the speaker plans to change their approach by working with fewer clients and spending more time on creating products that can reach a larger audience.

To achieve this, the speaker mentions using a project and task database, which contains a table showing which tasks will help them succeed with a particular project. They also mention a "Goal Outcomes" database, which they use to look at which projects will help them succeed at a particular goal outcome. This is described as being the same thing as the projects database, but at a higher level.

The speaker also mentions that they have several projects underway, some of which are in progress and others which are planned for the future. These projects are all linked to action items and tasks, and they're all tied to specific goal outcomes. The speaker describes using a template to create a new goal outcome and how to use the template to filter and organize the projects and tasks related to that goal outcome.

Overall, the text describes a system for organizing and tracking goals and related projects and tasks, with a focus on being specific and deliberate in setting goals, and linking day-to-day tasks to higher-level aspirations. The speaker also mentioned wanting to reach more people and his solution would be creating products which can reach more people and also to spend more time on that than on one-on-one client coaching.

After looking at the project database in the last video, in this video next, we're going to look at the pillars in the Pillar support items. The video after that will be the extremely important cycle review video. This is where you do the weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews, which is what ties all of these together.

It helps keep them on track and keep them aligned. These work because in designated cyclical periods, you go in and check on them, and you make sure they are the things you value, and that they are the priorities that you want to set and they're still relevant.

The things that are done are checked off, the things that need to be moved into active status, are moved into active status. The things that are going sideways, they're not quite getting there, are addressed during the cycle reviews. You see where the problems are occurring, and you get everything in line.

But by having these databases in this pyramid hierarchy, and the pillars to pipeline pyramid, it's very easy to quickly do a weekly, a monthly, or quarterly assessment. See what's working, see what stalled out, see what's orphaned and get it back on track.

So the system makes those reviews extremely easy and relatively quick and that makes it kind of fun. In the next few videos are really important, if this is of interest, be sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to get updates on future videos, leave thoughts or questions below and like if you found this valuable.

I also write a newsletter called Mind and machine on increasing human capability. I give always several of my best notion templates to anyone who subscribes to the newsletter. You can, of course, unsubscribe at any time, but I hope you'll give it a chance. I work super hard to pack it with a lot of valuable insight.

The newsletter link is also below in the show notes. Thank you for watching, lots more to come.

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