How to Achieve Long-Term Goals: #1 technique every coach uses.

Most people fail to achieve long-term goals because their goals stay foggy, vague, not deconstructed, sequenced, selected and kept accountable.

Achievement that lasts has very little to do with talent and everything to do with the process.

When “get healthy,” “become a better leader,” or “grow my business” is still a blurry vision, it’s almost impossible to know what to do on any day, let alone what to track, what to practice, and what to improve. And how to put the whole thing together.

I walk you through one of the most fundamental coaching skills I use with clients: deconstruction (goal decomposition). We take any complex goal and break it into smaller, defined milestones and trainable subskills you can act on today. I ground it with a practical health example using the big four pillars of well-being: sleep, nutrition, exercise, and stress management, plus the real subskills inside nutrition like meal planning, protein, hydration, and emotion regulation.

Then I bring in Tim Ferriss’s DISSS learning framework: Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, and Stakes. We talk about the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) so you focus on the few actions that create the biggest return, how to sequence skills so you’re not “building a tabletop with no legs,” and why stakes and accountability are the difference between ideas and results. I also share how to use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude to identify components, prioritize the high-leverage pieces, and draft a plan you can schedule and measure.

If you want better goal setting, skill building, and a simple system for personal growth that actually works in real life, hit play and share it with someone who needs it.  

Transcript

Deconstruction Turns Vision Into Steps

Health Goals Broken Into Subskills

Coaching Means Measuring What Matters

Tim Ferriss And The DISSS Method

Selection And Sequencing For Fast Gains

Stakes And Accountability

AI Prompts Plus Recap And Share

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, unlocking our next level and shaping our next chapter. A combination of coaching, behavioral science, emotional, stress regulation, thought restructuring, therapeutic approaches, CBT, ACT, DBT, and motivational psychology, all kinds of tools and strategies and methodologies you're gonna learn about here, besides all these stories and research and applicable tips to help you every day to get back into this game of becoming your best and learning, figuring out what it's gonna take for you to get to the next level. So, yes, if you're the kind of person who is interested in living your best life experience and becoming your best, this is your podcast. And especially if you're a fan of science, scientific method, research, and things that work in real life, not just good on paper or as a theory and idea. Today, guys, you're gonna learn one of the fundamental skills of any coach, one of the fundamental skills of learning a complex skill or achieving a long, complex goal. This is at the core, at the foundation of any coaching experience. And if you look at the successful people or people who we consider talented athletes, politicians, entrepreneurs, artists, when we look at work of a master again in any domain, in any arena, entrepreneurs are also masters of specific domain or arena. You know, it takes quite a lot of work and a lot, a lot of different skills to uh build a successful business in the world that lasts and keeps on growing. But anyhow, when we look at all these quote-unquote talented people, it looks to us like they have some sort of secret source, some sort of talent, something born in it. But actually, to get a consistent excellence and mastery, they needed to do something else. Not just sort of ride away from their talent. No, they needed to learn, whether they are aware of that or not, how to decompose or deconstruct a complex goal, a complex skill into components that are manageable and that are actionable today. I'm gonna read something from my blog where I felt like I expressed it better. So deconstruction or decomposing is all about turning a vague vision into smaller, defined milestones you can wrap your head around and act on. Cascading a decade-long plan or vision into something you can work on today, breaking down something as abstract and overwhelming sometimes as better leadership or leading a more meaningful life, or simply improving and building your most robust health. So breaking down those complex goals and skills and aspirations into most important ingredients, sub-skills you can practice, track, and improve. And when you look at achievement in any arena that required many months, years, sometimes decades to achieve, that's what people who do those things are really good at. And sometimes they don't think about it, sometimes they don't internalize it, they just do it. But if you look at any achievement again, especially the one that took a lot, a lot of years and or months of work, and from the outside it looks like it's just some sort of magic. That is usually consistent work on skills in that domain or arena to create the outcome, like eventually the one that we all admire. So at the foundational level, it's all about this deconstruction skill. And a lot of people don't achieve their complex and long-term goals, is because we don't approach it in this way. Let's take, as an example, health to make it more grounded in reality. If you want to maintain and create a state of really great, robust health, there are a few things that you need to be able to do on a consistent basis. But let's take the big four: your sleep, your nutrition, your exercise, your stress management. And in each of them, you also have sub-skills. Let's take nutrition. So having a good nutrition skill or a balanced eating skill, however you call it, means learning how to eat enough essential nutrients like proteins, like essential fats, like certain vitamins and minerals and fiber and hydration. It's not eating crap on a regular basis that replaces all of the good stuff that your body needs to function, right? It's meal planning, it's regulating your emotions so you don't again end up eating salad once a week and the rest of the week is kind of all over the place or overeating at night all the time, which compromises your sleep and then makes it a lot harder to master that other domain of health that is really important, which is sleep, and then maybe your weight is not great, and being in consistent energy surplus, or what now some scientists call energy toxicity, is actually not great for you as well. So learning how to eat in your calorie budget or in your calorie balance, learning how to uh yeah, simple hydration and get the electrolytes with your water, not just the water. So all of the skills, you know, cooking meals or getting them somewhere, shopping for your healthy meals. Like there are so many different skills that you need to be able to do on a consistent basis to create your version of good eating habits as to build one foundational pillar of health. And then there are obviously other pillars again, like the big four sleep fitness or exercise and movement, and then you have your stress management, and each of them also has sub-skills that you need to be able to do consistently if you want to create and maintain great health. It's kind of like if you want to create a result of having uh healthy teeth without you know cavities and all of this stuff, yeah, you want to master for sure a habit of brushing your teeth and maybe flothing and just taking regular care of your teeth. So, with every uh complex goal, there are sub-goals and sub-skills that are needed that uh in order for you to have that consistent goal. And the beauty of life and the beauty of any complex pursuit, guys, is that anything that you want to achieve, it's gonna be uh it's gonna consist of those base steps or base ingredients or base skills, which are not complex. And that's why great achievement is available to everyone. But what is challenging is to once you define all the subskills that are needed, to actually put consistent practice that you track, that you measure, that you adjust, you know, certain things you keep doing, certain things you stop doing, certain things you start doing. So doing that and measuring what matters, that big outcome, are you moving towards what you are actually after, what's actually meaningful and matters to you, what actually you want, instead of just you know, chasing numbers. So getting back to those basics, and then once you master one skill, moving to the next, and then to the next, and then to the next, until you sort of build this whole picture and you get the result that you want. I always say that the goals you don't have is the result of the skills you haven't built yet. So once you build all of the skills, things just fall into place, like kind of like a puzzle. Once you put almost all of the pieces in place, the rest of the pieces kind of fall into place. You don't even need to think about that. And that's what good coaching really does, especially for people at a certain higher level of development, when all the easy stuff you kind of did already, and so there is only that complex stuff that requires more reflection, more awareness, more uh tracking on top of what you already have in order to start moving forward, right? If you take an area, for example, of leadership development or figuring out how to create more leverage in your life, or even building your business to the next level, there are quite a few uh ingredients and skills that you need to work on and improve on, and then put together so you get the complete picture of either better leadership or a more meaningful life or business that grows consistently. So, and that's again what the coach, a good coach, does really well. It helps you to deconstruct, to see all the pieces, become aware of them, evaluate where you are uh in terms of your capacity for each skill, and then put together an action plan that you're gonna measure, track, adjust to work on all of these skills until you get to the level of this bigger goal proficiency uh that you want. So that is a fundamental again, skill or the fundamental process methodology that all of the coaches do, no matter whether they coach for health and fitness, performance, nutrition, weight loss, no matter whether they coach for business, for relationships, for leadership development, for public speaking, for any domain. It's the same process. And I want to also share something with you from Tim Ferris. He is, if you don't know who he is, look him up an entrepreneur, an investor, a human guinea pig, a podcaster with probably the first podcast that got super popular. And then, you know, after that, like we have Huberman and uh actually a lot of people he interviewed, he introduced to podcasting, and then they blew up. So Tim Ferry is an interesting personality, recently created a game, wrote a lot of books, and he has in one of his books uh this learning or acquiring complex skills methodology that starts as well with deconstruction that I found to be, and you know, he achieved proficiency and almost like world record-like results with this methodology in many domains, not just one from I don't know, wrestling to swimming to uh racing, drumming, and doing I think dancing tango or or some other dance. But this framework works and it starts with deconstruction, and again, at it at the foundation, any learning process, any good learning process would take this methodology, would use this methodology. And the more you use it in a structured way, the better results, the better growth, more predictable growth and results you're gonna get in more complex skills and goals. So let me introduce to this framework as well, which starts with the decomposition or deconstruction of the skill, which is breaking down again complex skills and goals into milestones, smaller learnable units. And but the first step in that yeah, deconstruction is figuring out like what are the skills, what are they all the components? And these days we are super lucky because we can just ask AI hey, what are some of the skills of good sales process or business growth? And you can describe your business, etc. Like, what are the things that I need to master to learn to improve in order to again either master skill or achieve this goal? So we are very lucky that we have artificial intelligence helping us with that, and then you can ask it to evaluate yourself and create a plan of action to attack every skill. But then also the second, by the way, the framework that Tim Ferris created in his book what was it for our chief. That's the name of the book. That is actually, yeah, it has quite a lot of cooking, but it's also about learning. So the framework is DISSS, but it has four components deconstruction, selection, sequencing, sequencing, and stakes. So DSS. First is deconstruction that we talked about just now. The second one uh is selection, and uh, team Ferris proposes using A to 20 analysis to get more results faster. What is A to 20 analysis? Figuring out what are the pieces that make the biggest difference, just like in health or fitness or sleep or uh sales or leadership development, uh speaking relationships, there are certain things that are that produce more leverage, that produce more results when combined together than others. And that you can also ask uh artificial artificial intelligence, whether that's chat GPT, Claude or some other agent, like what are, if you were to do 80-20 analysis of on these uh skills that you help me to deconstruct, what would be the most important pieces that I need to start with and to bring to you know some good uh level sooner than later to get maximum return on investment of my time, my energy, sometimes finances, etc. Right? So, what's the 20 that gives 80% of results? So you can ask artificial intelligence that as well. So the second step is selection, and it is very important. You don't want to be working on some minor skill of I don't know, of figuring out whether you got your last digits of I don't know, potassium, magnesium, or something in nutrition when you can't uh stick to regular meals as an example. Then the second S is sequencing. So it's let's take swimming. You know, in swimming, you need to be able to, like, I don't know, get in the water and learn how to move your hands and uh your legs appropriately. And I I'm not a swimming teacher, so it's actually hard for me to deconstruct that skill. But in nutrition, for example, we start with learning how to eat regular meals, learning how to eat enough protein, learning how to eat fruit and vegetables at every meal. Those are some foundational skills, and we usually start with regular meals and meal prep to eat enough protein. In leadership development, for example, we often start with figuring out your why, your core values, your vision, so then we can optimize our development program for what it is that you want to achieve and what it is that you stand for and what makes your life meaningful. So, sequencing is very important. Otherwise, again, you can be building a table that has no legs to stand on. And then again, you can use AI to help you with that as well, like how to better sequence my either skill acquisition or studying program. And then you have stakes, and stakes are all about having skin in the game and having accountability. Self-accountability is the starting point. So have reminders, have measurement, have tracking system, but others' accountability and external accountability works a lot more powerfully. So having someone, even if that's someone is a friend or a family member or a co-worker, someone who checks on you for doing the work, doing the work, that is very powerful. Like very often with friends, for example, I would have those pacts when I would check in with them with some with something, and they will check in with me with something. And you'd be surprised how all of a sudden you find all the time, all the motivation, all the resources to actually do the thing that you weren't able to do for like months because nobody would check on you and you didn't feel like you had any accountability. Some people use also different websites to, for example, put some money in the game, and if you don't do the thing, your money will be donated to your least favorite charity or just you know going somewhere else, not into your pocket. So there are all kinds of accountability, which again is really important to stick with things, especially if those things will take decades. That's why, also when building a business, actually having a team is so amazing because then you have other people you're accountable to. You can't just say, Oh, you know, today we are building this thing and I have like 10, 20 people, and tomorrow I change my mind and I'm just gonna, I don't know, go to some monastery and meditate. No, that actually doesn't work like that. The more people you're accountable to, the more you're gonna stick even with the most complex and hardest challenges and goals. So, to sum up this episode, basically you already have all the pieces you need to start achieving complex goals and strategies and you're working on your next level or a meaningful life or a better leadership or business growth or meaningful relationship, whatever that is, you already have the methodology. So now it's putting in it to practice. But who sum it up? Don't forget to share this podcast episode, guys, with at least one other person who might be struggling with figuring out how to like tackle this complex goal, this complex thing that they have. Maybe they keep going for it and backwards and losing motivation or things just don't fall into place. I definitely feel like this with my business, but now I know what's actually the missing piece, and I'm working, and until I'm on I unlock this, I'm just not you know going anywhere else, and I'm super focused on just one thing. But uh share this podcast episode with at least one other person. We all need these reminders, and there's a better way of achieving our goals and working on things that matter to us. So share, and then maybe have it a part of your conversation with your group of friends or your family or your co-workers. And now back to the framework. The first step is decomposition or deconstruction into smaller milestones and uh steps and uh skills that you can start working on today. And again, artificial intelligence will help you with each of these steps, which is super amazing. Then you have selection, the 8020. You kind of want to get some results, you know, sooner than later, right? So 8020 or Pareto principle is very helpful with that. It has been used in for growing companies, for uh getting more return on investment of any kind, it works beautifully in life in general. Like 80% of everything actually comes from 20% of things. So selection is important again, artificial intelligence can help with that as well. Sequencing in the right order. Again, don't forget that in order to build the table, you kinda wanna have the legs first to put the top on. Otherwise, if you you know create the top and no legs, well, there is no table unless you're okay with eating on the floor. So sequencing is also important, and then stakes, accountability. You gotta have some skin in the game. Otherwise, especially uh on a long, complex, big goal with you know a lot of moving parts and things that can slip your mind. Like if you have no accountability, you almost certainly have already lost. So, deconstruct, select, sequence, and stakes. So that is the full methodology from Team Ferris, D S S S. And start with deconstruction. And after you finish listening to this podcast episode, just go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask Hey, I'm trying to achieve this goal. What are the components? the uh uh all the pieces that needs that i need to put together all the skills that i need to be good at in order for this to happen and then create you know evaluate yourself on each skill and ask what you should start with and then ask to propose a either learning program or skill acquisition program or just working on stuff program and then schedule those things into your calendar with some stakes and skin in the game thank you guys for tuning in i thank you for listening don't forget to keep learning deconstructing and keep growing and till next time just try to invest a little bit more in growing your better so talk to you soon have an awesome day