We are 3 months into 2024, how's your progress looking?

Everyone tells you to have goals, but they rarely tell you how to achieve them.

And those who do give generic advice like:

“Write down your goals”

“Make a vision board”

“Use deep work for your goals”

Now I agree with all of that, but it’s hardly useful for getting you closer to your dreams.

I know this because it’s exactly how I attempted to achieve some of my goals.

But it also left me grappling with:

• burnout

• confusion

• lack of progress

• emotional rollercoasters

I knew there had to be a better way to structure goals.

So after hours of researching how people like Jeff Bezos, Alex Hormozi, and Dan Koe plan their goals, I started using the Input-Hypothesis framework.

This is a framework that focuses on what we can control instead of abstract and arbitrary goals we set like:

• Make 10k online

• Grow a social media following

• Get promoted

These are great to start, but they rarely get us across the finish line

Instead we reframe these “goals” as ideal outcomes.

Simply put these are the outcomes we would like to achieve over the course of a year.

Then we take our ideal outcomes and create a hypothesis:

• If I post content, I will grow a social media following

• If I create a digital product I will make 10k online

• If I meet all my OKRs for the year, I will get promoted

Here’s the formula so you can use this on your own: If do [x] I will achieve [y]

Now that we have our hypothesis we have to turn these into trackable 'goals'

This is simply a process of deciding what is the direct action you will take:

• Meet OKRs

• Post content

• Create a digital product

And deciding how often you need to do it

Once we have those 2 factors we can create our input goals:

• Post 365 pieces of content this year

• Build 5 digital products this year

• Finish 5 OKR related projects this year

This gives us a trackable input goal that is 100% in our control

The hypothesis is important because we could be wrong about our inputs

You might find out that you need to post more or less than 365 times to achieve your goal of social growth

But you can never come to that conclusion if you're not using input driven goals

As you progress, you can assess your performance with the following questions:

• Did I complete my inputs?

• Did those inputs achieve the desired outcome?

This provides a much better compass for achieving our goals overtime.

It’s a paradigm shift

This is a small shift, that has big implications.

It makes your goals completely dependent on your individual actions on a certain time horizon with a concrete step by step to get there.

WITH a built in metric to track success.

Anything that is measured will be improved.

The reason I think this is so powerful is it gives us a specific way to know what’s working and what’s not.

Let’s say your goal is to make $10k online this year.

Your input hypothesis is that if you build and launch 5 digital products you will meet that 10k goal.

Now at the end of the year let’s say you built and launched 5 products but had 0 sales.

Your input was lacking something.

It could be:

• Marketing

• Product Quality

• Demand for product

Or a million other things, but you eliminated one of those options and have a much better compass for what to do differently next time.

Your new input-hypothesis could be:

If launch 5 digital products and run paid ads for 3 months, I will achieve 10k in sales.

More specific and once again direct metrics to track if it’s working.

To summarize:

Set & test hypotheses for goals (e.g., post content to grow social media)

Define actions (post 365 times) as trackable input goals.

Adjust based on outcomes.

Happy inputing.

Talk soon,
Matt

PS: my latest video on the secret to living without anxiety is out now. Check it out and roast me in the comments please: