How to design a process to achieve any arbitrary goal

I sat in a lot of lectures in college. One of my majors was history and many of the early-major history courses were 100+ person lectures in massive halls. Because I can type far faster than I can write (even shorthand), I typed all my class notes throughout the semester. But when it came time for midterms or for finals, I realize I hadn’t retained much information from the lectures and I had a limited time to study. So, what to do?

I tried flash cards, which worked moderately well but were tedious both to create and review. I tried reading and re-reading my notes in rote memorization, which was time-consuming and mind-numbing but also moderately effective. And then I finally experimented with re-writing all my classroom notes: literally taking the detailed, typed notes I accumulated throughout the semester and transcribing them by hand. This was far and away the best study strategy from a ratio of effort in (and time consumed) to results received, and I used it for the rest of my time in college. The results spoke for themselves.

Life is full of dumb hacks like this, where doing something in a seemingly less efficient way is actually more effective at achieving the results you want because of the constraints you’re operating under. Transcribing my notes was a forcing function: writing by hand forced me — by virtue of my slower handwriting speed — to focus on the content of my notes and commit them to memory as I moved them from screen to page. The tightest constraint on my ability to get good grades in history lectures was my ability to retain the right information to recall during written examinations. Since written exams were often 80% of the grade (adding the midterm and final together), I focused on those as my point of highest leverage for the class. From there, half of the battle was figuring out which information to encode in my memory; the other half was encoding it.

I solved the first half by asking professors or TAs which subjects were likely to come up in the final, or asking what had come up in previous years. And I solved the second half by transcribing my notes rather than using any other memorization method. I found it far more effective than just endlessly re-reading my notes on my computer screen, and far less likely to lead to distraction. In a situation where time was a severe constraint — these weren’t my only midterms or finals happening, obviously — efficiency mattered as much as pure effectiveness, and the higher ratio of useful time to total time made this strategy the winning one.

The upshot of this is: if you have a goal, figure out your constraints and design a method for achieving it that optimizes for end-to-end effectiveness, not just the efficiency of an individual step in the process. In path-dependent processes, how you design early steps dictate your options at later steps. So if you optimize an early step without consideration for its impact on the efficiency of later steps, you might materially compromise the effectiveness of a process as a whole. Take the full picture into account.

Look at any of the meaningful goals you have in your life and apply this lens. It could be something small like “get a good grade on my history exam” or something bigger like “free solo El Capitan” or “find a life partner”. Then:

1. Draw a high-level roadmap: what’s the ultimate end goal, and what are the broadly different approaches you can take to it?
2. Identify your constraints: Is it time? Is it money? Is it ability to focus? Is it motivation? Are they real or imagined? Can you solve for any of them? (You can solve for “I don’t feel like it” or “I don’t want to” or “I’m not good at that”. Creativity here will be your friend.)
3. Filter the potential paths to the goal through the lens of real constraints. Or, develop alternate pathways that fit your constraints in creative ways.
4. Commit!

Bonus points if your roadmaps include commitment strategies to create momentum towards your goal. (More on those soon.)

I’d also suggest that this kind of heavyweight approach is most useful for either really important or really long-term goals. It’s probably not a good use of time to apply this to something like “have dinner tonight”.

All of this is to say: if you actually care about achieving a goal, you can design a process to make it happen. It might mean taking an alternative approach in order to optimize focus, minimize distractions, and improve likelihood of success. It could mean changing your surroundings, finding a coach, committing to a habit, creating an accountability loop, or much more. Do whatever crazy or silly thing you need to get the outcome you want. And always remember: it’s not a dumb hack if it works.