Habits that lead to a goal
A long-term goal cannot be achieved on willpower alone. metatraining proposes using willpower for its proper task - creating a system of habits that forms a lifestyle where achieving a specific goal becomes natural and realistic.
The essence of the methodology
Motivation and willpower are used to launch achievement, not to carry the whole process in heroic mode.
The goal is achieved by forming habits that can carry repeated actions on autopilot.
Attention stays on achieving the goal, not on studying a technique and perfecting mastery before the start.
Practice
Most people who set long-term goals have some idea of what needs to be done, but for different reasons cannot start, continue, or see the process through.
Goal and recipe
You come with a goal and a recipe for achieving it, and we help turn them into an individual achievement practice.
Configuring the routine
You break your recipe into parts, identify and configure the routine, and create the conditions and environment for performing it.
Skills and habits
By performing the routine, you learn how to achieve your goal through practice, without studying materials about achieving mastery.
- Practice is not a separate technique, but as you go through practice and perform the routine, you may develop the technique that is useful specifically for your goal.
Willpower
Willpower is in some ways like a muscle - an important but limited resource. The age of Titans is over. You no longer need to hold the sky on your shoulders.
What do I want?
We use willpower to understand what you actually want and express it as a goal.
How do I start?
We use a burst of will to begin achievement, and small efforts to start an individual routine, not the entire goal.
How do I see it through?
We use willpower to get up and return even if you did not complete the pipeline or missed performing the routine.
- In our methodology, willpower is used where a limited deliberate effort is needed, applied not to the whole goal in general but to an individual routine or its reduced version.
Skills
metatraining distinguishes a separate kind of skill - metaskills. They change through practice and accumulated experience.
Ability
A practical skill - for example, digging with a shovel - forms through repetition of practical actions and routine.
Qualities
A personal quality - persistence, for example - is a stable expression of accumulated experience that gives individual form to a practical skill.
Focus on the goal
The metatraining methodology is that the necessary skills form indirectly and to a sufficient degree through practice.
- We do not say, here is a list of metaskills, let us choose persistence and train it.
- We say, here is your goal. Do what leads to it. Through practice, the qualities involved in achieving this goal will form and reorganize themselves.
Habits
A habit is a natural biological mechanism for conserving mental resources by automating decisions and actions in a previously learned context or scenario.
Brick
An individual habit is useful as a point of focus or as a model, but it usually does not exist in isolation. In metatraining, you break your recipe into routines - containers for elementary habits.
Wall
What is commonly called a habit is often a behavioral pattern, a system of several habits. In metatraining, you do not need to invent patterns or choose from a catalogue of habits. Everything happens while routines are performed.
Building
New behavioral patterns naturally change your lifestyle. You do not need to invent a new lifestyle or prepare a transformation roadmap. You perform the routine with focus on the goal, while habits work as autopilot.
- In life, habits form and operate unnoticed. Science has studied how this works, and we built it into the practice itself. You do not need to do anything special. The habits you need will emerge as you go through practice. This is not magic. This is how the brain works.
Motivation
metatraining is a tool for achieving a goal. If you have no goal, or if you have a goal but no desire, we will not be able to help. To understand whether you have enough motivation, you can answer three simple questions for yourself.
What do I want?
Is there something I genuinely want not merely to receive, but to achieve by applying regular effort over a long horizon?
What am I prepared for?
Is this something for which I am prepared to endure discomfort, limitations, and hardship? Is it something for which I can give up something substantial?
Do I need this?
When my goal has been achieved, do I want to be there and remain there? Am I interested in the achievement itself, or would it simply be nice to win the goal in a lottery?
- metatraining can help turn your goal into a clear and measurable achievement pipeline, but it cannot help with depression or melancholy. Before starting, you need to make a subjective estimate of whether you have enough motivation. For this, you can complete the online brief.
Minimalism
We put all theory under the hood so that you can focus on the road to the goal, not on how the engine works.
Practice is not the goal
You do not develop attention in order to be attentive, and you do not stretch in order to be stretched. You perform routines in order to achieve your goal.
Knowledge is not the goal
You do not polish quotations from great people, study 100 methods, or memorize terminology. To achieve a goal, it may be enough to know what gets in the way and what helps.
Habits are not the goal
You do not browse catalogues of habits or try on a suit made of behavioral patterns. It is enough to accept the habits that help and let go of those that interfere.
- It may seem that everything is easy and simple - it is not. But when setting out on a long and difficult journey, you put only what is necessary and useful in your backpack.
Wholeness
metatraining gives the practice as a whole, not in fragments. Practice is not separated from skills, skills from habits, habits from the goal, and the goal from motivation.
The methodology is built into the tool. We do not offer it separately as reading material.
We do not create motivation, but support it within the methodology.
We do not teach individual skills. The necessary skills emerge through practice.
We do not teach you to create individual habits. Without a goal, they are useless.
What next?
If you need to see how the method unfolds over time, open pipelines. If you need to understand how one pipeline works, open practice.