Issue 12: Reverse Goal Setting For Paper Writing
Visualizing the finish line before you get there
Hey all, sorry about missing last week’s issue. My nieces refused to let me write in peace, so I just wrote it off because I don’t get to see them much.
I wholly admit to having an addiction to learning systems on Youtube. I’m a dedicated subscriber to the likes of Ali Abdaal, Mark Manson, and Justin Sung (shown above).
But one issue I run into failing to translate the system from the general to my specific problems. It’s very fun to learn about a new system that will potentially increase your productivity; it’s another thing to actually do the work.
This gave me the inspiration for this week’s issue: giving specific details on how I’ve adapted (or am learning to adapt) a productivity system to my particular needs.
Reverse Goal Setting
The system that I’m talking about today is reverse goal setting.
In short, reverse goal planning is the act of planning out a goal starting from the end, as opposed to starting from scratch. With the finished product in mind, you must figure out the path to getting there.
Australian study god Justin Sung covers this more in detail, so I’ll leave this video here. I often return to it to remind myself of the technique.
Although I’m trying to apply this system to most of my tasks, the one I’ll focus on in this issue is my research and paper writing.
Planning a paper
In the last issue:
I talked about the specific ingredients that are needed for the paper, but here I’ll do my best to prescribe specific actions to complete them.
Here’s my initial shot at reverse goal setting:
It is hard to actually think about the project in reverse, but that’s the exact point behind reverse goal setting. It was very easy to write the first bullet point, “Submit the manuscript.” Like, duh, of course I have to do that.
But after that, you have to think about what you may have needed to work on right before it. I imagined that I would be working on the discussion since this section can only be written after you’ve shown off all your results.
An earlier version of this list didn’t have any of the sub-bullet points with all the notes to myself. I know that in theory I’ll have to work on this part of the project eventually, but I’m trying to force myself to actually come up with more concrete tasks needed to do it. For example, simulation experiments require a lot of computation. So much so that I might need to resort to cluster computing. If so, I should get my resources allocated now, so I’m not wasting time later.
The reverse goal planning forces you to think. For the longest time, I was obsessed with the bullet point for developing a new adaptive randomization algorithm. That’s the part where I get to do exciting research and algorithm development, stuff I like doing. But to even get to that point, I need to be able to simulate data that I don’t know how to simulate yet! But to simulate the data, I should probably find a model paper to see how they do it. Trying not to reinvent the wheel will save me a lot of time.
This list will definitely evolve as I progress through these tasks. As I encounter actual difficulties in the process, I can update the list and be able to identify more concrete actions to do each day.
On another note, even though the list appears in reverse order, it only appears in as a planning document in my Obsidian second brain. When I’m actually thinking about my day and planning tasks, I’ll pull them into the to-do list that’s actually on my phone.
I hope this was somewhat helpful. I have a lot of projects brewing in the background, and I wanted to give a realistic view of how I balance and get through them in real time.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend everyone.
Christian
😵💫 What am I working on right now?
Working on a video about Bayes’ Theorem and Bayesian Statistics
🧐 What am I enjoying right now?
Stuff — I am home a lot. Although I go to the gym frequently, I usually neglect walking. Recently, I got a walking pad, which is like a treadmill’s less powerful (and less expensive) cousin. Now I can easily get my 10k steps in while I’m writing or thinking about my research. Very useful.
📺 Recent videos
Explaining Power — a video explaining what power is and the different factors that influence it: level, treatment effect (in a two-sample setting), population variance, and crucially, sample size. A better version of the power visualization in many statistical textbooks.