Our mission is to help people achieve any goal and so far people have added more than 230k to Lift. But that’s not the limit of your ambitions.
So, in order to make sure we cover any possible goal you have, we’re re-introducing the ability to add a custom goal.
Next time you search for a goal, we’ll also allow you to sign up for whatever you’ve typed (even if we don’t already have it in the system). Searching and creating are basically the same process.
However, custom goals have interesting implications around what we’re doing to build in extra coaching (you’ll often be the only participant in a goal that you created). So, let me give some background.
Our job is to keep finding ways to make Lift stronger, so that you can tackle harder goals. Our recent focus is on coaching you through the decisions, tricks, and planning needed to achieve any goal (the last release note, for 1.9.6, talked about how our research shows focusing on your ability is more effective than focusing on your motivation).
That coaching comes in three forms.
#1. Twenty-one step discussion prompts. Each of these prompts is something that you’re going to have to consider if you really want to succeed. As you get more successful, you may go through multiple rounds and may find yourself paying less attention to the prompts—that’s a positive sign. But until you reach that level of mastery, consider them a roadmap for successfully adopting a new goal.
#2. Community discussions. Since most goals are shared by many people, the answers to those discussion prompts give you a way to learn from each other. Nobody knows the problems and solutions of a particular goal as well as the people actually tackling them.
#3. Expert coaching. We’ve brought in a few dozen expert coaches, and will be bringing in many more. These goals have much more specific steps. This is one of our long term dreams, that every expert is able to support their advice with a Lift goal to help people actually follow through.
A new custom goal is only going to have coaching option #1, the standard prompts that we ask people when we want them to think completely through their goal. But that’s still more than you would have had otherwise.
In practice, it’s usually better to pick a more general goal name, especially if it already exists in the system. That lets you keep an unbroken history if your definition of success changes and keeps you in touch with our community. I’d definitely recommend that path if it’s available to you. If not, enjoy your new custom goal.
Last, I think there’s still some confusion around 21-day cycles. We think we can make that interface much more clear. The release after this addresses them and makes it less likely that you’ll accidentally archive a goal that you’re planning to track for longer.
