Intentional Living — Notes

Picture a stack: at the bottom, what you’re doing right now; above that, your immediate plans; then your goals; and at the top, your core values.

When you align what you’re doing right now with your core values at the top of the stack, you transform from someone reacting automatically to someone acting with genuine purpose.

Discovering Your Values

Start by identifying which values matter most to you. Twelve core values drive all human behavior. To discover your hierarchy: list the twelve values with their definitions and rank them from highest to lowest. Your top values should feel instinctive — principles you’d never compromise.

If you’re uncertain, examine how you spent the past month. Where your time goes reveals what you genuinely value, not what you think you should value.

Fundamental: Every goal is really just an educated guess about where our efforts might lead us.

Why We Avoid Tasks

Research points to a few key triggers: we tend to avoid tasks that are boring, unpleasant, far in the future, or unstructured.

For unpleasant tasks: Aversion journaling — when you notice yourself resisting, grab a notebook and write about why you’re avoiding it. This forces you to confront your resistance, often revealing ways to make the task more bearable.

For boring tasks: Make the goal more challenging, not easier. Washing dishes feels tedious, but racing against a timer makes it engaging. Our brains crave stimulation — easy goals actually demotivate us.

For distant goals: Create a simple chart showing your target pace versus your actual progress. Update it weekly. This transforms distant dreams into tangible, manageable steps.

For unstructured goals: Build systems that give you no choice but to succeed. Connect goals to existing habits or create reward structures that only unlock when you follow through.

Building Desire — The Five Antecedents

Meditation — not to stop thinking, but to notice when your mind wanders and gently return focus to your breath. Over time, this builds awareness of which thoughts are just mental noise and which carry real meaning.

Journaling — write about how you genuinely feel about your goals. What would success actually mean? What would failure mean? Are you chasing something because you want it, or because it fits someone else’s idea of achievement?

See also: values-audit | gtd-notes | weekly-review-values-checklist