Can Goals Be Fun?
I've always struggled with setting goals and finding a balance of how many to work on at one time. In this post, I explore Ali Abdaal's framework for setting and sticking to goals on a quarterly basis.
As part of my adventure beginning this website, I looked into a lot of resources online. A primary inspiration for me was Ali Abdaal’s YouTube channel. Ali is a former med-student turned content creator, who publishes a ton of great videos on productivity. I’d highly recommend checking out his channel.
Right after I created this website, I came across his video on goal setting. Instead of looking at goals as – well – goals, he prefers to call them quests, and Ali focuses on two areas when creating his quests: work and life. Those areas make this a somewhat natural segue from my previous posts.
Why Quests?
Ali believes that goals are a lot less painful if they’re made fun – hence renaming them to “quests.” By limiting himself to just a main quest in each of his work and life areas, he gives himself fewer things to focus on. He also sets his quests on a quarterly cadence.
This concept really resonated with me. I’ve considered goal setting before, but it’s never really stuck. I know what a SMART goal is, but that didn’t necessarily help me get any better at setting or sticking to goals. I think I struggled with knowing what the right amount was for setting goals. Ali’s guidelines really worked for me, so I decided to put his framework to the test.
The Quest-Setting Framework
I found this framework late into the first quarter of 2025; instead of a quarterly quest, I did a monthly quest for March to start small and align myself for Q2 if I liked the framework.
There are 5 areas as outlined by Ali when setting up the quest. I’ll use my work quest as an example.
Name the Quest
The first part is to simply name your quest. For my example, I wrote that my work main quest is to get in the habit of creating blog posts.
Outline Its Importance
Next, he asks you to outline why this the most important thing you can be doing. Example: This work quest is the single most important thing for me to accomplish this quarter because it’ll help me write more frequently and get in the habit of posting each Sunday.
Define Completion Criteria
From there, you should outline the hard, verifiable criteria by which you’ll consider the quest a success. Ali emphasizes the importance of “verifiable.” Think of this like the “measurable” element of the SMART guidelines. For my work quest, I couldn’t just put “have a running blog.” Here’s what I settled on: To complete this quest, I commit that by March 31, I’ll have (1) published a total of 4 blog posts and (2) spent at least an hour writing each week. Both metrics are measurable.
Explain the Excitement
After defining your criteria, Ali recommends including why this quest excites you. For my quest, I wrote that it feels exciting and compelling for me because I’ve always wanted to write more and make it a core part of my life.
Set Steps for Success
Finally, he asks that you document the steps you will take to make sure the quest gets completed on time. To make sure I complete this quest, I will (1) publish 1 blog post by Sunday of each week, (2) create a recurring weekly task to spend an hour writing, and 3) prioritize the writing task over all non-quest-related tasks.
That’s my work quest as set up according to Ali’s framework. I’ll include my life quest for March below, which includes all the same steps.
Life Main Quest:
My life main quest is to watch the first 6 videos in Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series.
This is the single most important thing for me to accomplish this quarter because I’m writing more via the blog, and I want to gain experience with fiction.
To complete this quest, I commit that by March 31st, I will have finished the first 6 lectures in the series.
This feels exciting and compelling for me because I want to write more, and I genuinely enjoy watching these videos.
To make sure I complete the quest, I will chart out when I must finish each lecture by to stay on track and set a reminder to watch each lecture for 25 minutes each day.
Revisiting Your Quest
Once you’ve defined the quests, Ali recommends revisiting them weekly to make sure that you’re staying on track. As part of my review, I add a red, yellow, or green emoji next to the name. From the screenshot below, you can see that the blogging quest is on track, but I marked the lecture series one as off track since I missed a couple days watching and have fallen behind pace.
How's It Going?
March 31st will mark the end of my first try at quarterly quests. So far, I’m on track to finish my quests on time – assuming I’ve caught up on some lectures.
Framing them as Ali outlines above really helped me cut away other, less important things and focus on seeing two projects to completion.
I may not have gotten done everything I wanted to do during this time, but I do feel like I tackled the ones I focused on well. I intend to set two new quests for myself in April to continue this habit in Q2.
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