How to Be Awesome at Your Job

897: Jon Acuff: The Three Steps to Achieving Any Goal

Sep 11, 2023

Jon Acuff, NY Times bestselling author, shares practical advice for achieving goals, including breaking them down into smaller steps and maintaining motivation. They discuss overcoming imposter syndrome, the power of desire, and creating a motivation portfolio. They also emphasize the importance of creating from a place of love.

40:24

Episode guests

Jon Acuff

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Quick takeaways

Create a motivation portfolio with multiple sources of motivation to stay motivated and push through challenging moments.

Conduct a 10-hour experiment to test your desire for a goal and narrow down your goals to those that resonate with you and warrant further pursuit.

Deep dives

Bringing Your Own Motivation

John emphasizes the importance of bringing your own motivation as it is flighty and tends to disappear during a goal. He suggests creating a motivation portfolio with multiple sources of motivation, such as pump-up jams, positive reminders of the benefits of achieving your goal, and having accountability partners who matter to you. By being deliberate about motivation and recognizing that excellence can be boring at times, you can stay motivated and push through challenging moments.

Achieve Your Goals: The 3-Step Plan

01:59

Brad Montague on Creating from Love or For Love

00:56

Introduction

2min

Goal Setting and Achieving

10min

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Through Doing the Work

2min

The Power of Desire

16min

Maintaining Motivation: Creating a Motivation Portfolio

5min

Creating from a Place of Love

6min

Jon Acuff reveals why we often struggle to meet our goals—and shares practical advice for achieving results.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) How to make your loftiest goals more reachable.

2) The “right” amount of goals to pursue.

3) How to stay motivated when things get tough.

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep897 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT JON —

Jon Acuff is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Soundtracks, Your New Playlist, and the Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done. When he's not writing or recording his popular podcast, All It Takes Is a Goal, Acuff can be found on a stage as one of INC's Top 100 Leadership Speakers. He's spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges, and companies around the world, including FedEx, Range Rover, Microsoft, Nokia, and Comedy Central. He lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and two daughters.

• Book: All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential

• Book: Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking (Overcome Toxic Thought Patterns and Take Control of Your Mindset)

• Podcast: All It Takes Is a Goal

• Website: JonAcuff.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action” by John A. Bargh, Mark Chen, and Lara Burrows

• Product: Leuchtturm1917 Notebooks

• Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

• Book: The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

• Personality: Mike Peasley, MTSU professor

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