Make 2026 the Best Year of Your Life (Evidence-Based)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel.

In this video, we are talking about the GPS method

that will drastically improve your chances of achieving literally any goal

that you set your mind to.

So, it contains a bunch of evidence-based insights

that have been combined into this fairly easy to follow system that's completely free

and takes like somewhere between 5

and 10 minutes to actually do.

So, whether you want to build a business

or you want to get fit

or you want to find the love of your life

or you have goals in literally any other area of life,

if you follow the GPS method,

you are just way more likely to achieve that goal.

And by the way, if you're new here, hello.

My name is Ali.

I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur

and author of the New York Times bestseller Feelgood Productivity.

These days, my main gig is that I'm the co-founder of Sparkle Studios,

which is a sort of app development company where we're building productivity apps

that we wish existed in the world.

And on the side, I've been making YouTube videos since 2017,

documenting my journey from medical student to doctor to entrepreneur

and author and sharing the books

and ideas and strategies

and tools that can help us build a life

that we love.

So, if that sounds good, you might like to consider subscribing if you like.

So before we dive into the GPS system,

there is one key piece of theory that this entire system is based around.

Now this might sound obvious, but it's surprisingly powerful,

which is that every goal you want to accomplish is merely a series of

tasks or actions that you do.

So if you are not accomplishing your goals,

you are simply not doing the things

that it would take you to accomplish your goals.

Like if you didn't need to do stuff,

then your goal would just happen automatically.

And the reason it hasn't happened yet is

because you're not doing the right things.

And that is either

that you don't know what the right things are to do

or you do know what the right things to do are,

but you're not actually doing them.

And pretty much all of goal achievement,

all of the evidence around it can basically be summed down to those things.

What is the goal?

What are the actions that are actually going to get you there?

And then how do you get yourself to actually do those things?

And it's this concept, these three concepts that the GPS system is based around.

Like for example, let's say I wanted to get fit

and that was my goal for whatever reason.

In order to get fit,

I have to do a series of actions like eating healthily

and hitting the gym

and doing some cardio,

all of that kind of stuff.

If I wanted to start a business,

there would be a series of actions like figuring out my idea

and like coming up with a product

and finding people to buy it.

And so the whole idea behind the GPS system is

that we are breaking down these three components into an actionable system with a

nice acronym that we can use firstly to actually achieve the goals

that we set and secondly

as a diagnostic tool where

if we are struggling with something we can just run it through the GPS

system and then we'll see exactly why we are struggling.

Great.

So having established that let's actually talk about the GPS system.

Now the GPS system stands for goal, plan and system.

And within each of the components of goal, plan and system,

there are three factors or three things that we want to be considering.

This might sound like a lot,

but literally it takes less than 10 minutes per goal that you set,

maybe even 5 minutes to like figure out like the three components of the

GPS system.

And if you just follow the system,

you are drastically more likely to actually achieve the goals that you set.

All right, so let's start with component number one, which is the goal.

Now, when it comes to setting the goal in the first place,

there are two broad mistakes people make.

Mistake number one is not being clear

or specific or concrete enough about what the goal actually is.

What is the thing you actually want to do?

Things I hear a lot

when I do events is like someone will set the goal

that they want to stop procrastinating.

It's like, okay, but what does stop procrastinating actually mean?

You've probably tried to set the goal of stop procrastinating for a decade

and it hasn't succeeded.

So, there's like something going wrong here.

Similarly, I speak to people who say

that their goal is to start a YouTube channel.

But like right now, you could go on youtube.com,

you could click new channel, and congratulations, you've started a YouTube channel.

Have you accomplished the goal?

Well, probably not because when you say start a YouTube channel,

you actually probably mean some things other than that,

but like you haven't yet taken the time to get specific

and concrete about what you actually mean by

that particular goal.

So, the way we avoid this mistake is by getting really specific on what

are we actually trying to do.

And the trick here is in the specificity.

It is so much easier to work towards a specific

and concrete goal compared to a vague

or an abstract one.

I often hear people say, you know,

I want to start a business

or I want to start a lifestyle business

because I want financial freedom.

I'm like, okay, that's great, but that's a very vague abstract goal.

Start a business for financial freedom.

It's like, what does financial freedom mean?

Like, how much money are we talking?

And starting a business

that makes you 100 grand a year

or 500 grand or a million a year is very different than starting a

business that you can sell for $300 million.

Like, those approaches require drastically different paths

and both of them could be a business

that gets you to financial freedom.

So what actually is the thing that we are going after?

The second big mistake people make

when it comes to goals is choosing goals

that are not emotionally compelling enough.

You really need to understand why do you care about the goal.

A lot of us choose goals from a sense of should

or a sense of obligation.

Oh, I really should take care of my health.

I really should do

that thing because like ah you know society

or parents or what people will think

or you know all

that all of that kind of stuff.

But in general, it is

so much easier to achieve a goal

if you have some compelling reasons

as to why you care about actually achieving

that goal.

Ideally, those reasons would be intrinsically motivated, not just exttrinsically motivated.

Again, the evidence on this is clear.

People who follow goals from for extrinsic purposes like fame

or money or status

or you know that kind of stuff.

A you're a lot less likely to actually hit those goals,

but b you are also less likely to enjoy the process of hitting those

goals.

So, we want to get clear on why.

Why do we care about the specific thing?

And then the third component of the G component of GPS is what are

your anti- goals?

What are the things you want to avoid on route to achieving your goal?

Like let's say your goal was, I don't know,

to build a $100,000 a year lifestyle business in the next 12 months.

That would be a reasonable goal.

It's quite specific.

Maybe your reason why is because you really want time freedom.

You want the autonomy to be able to control your time,

to be able to pick your kids up from school.

That's a reasonable why behind it.

And you might set the anti- goal like along the route to building this

business,

I don't want to have to work on the weekends.

I don't want to have to work more than 40 hours a week.

Like these are all good constraints uh

that you can set on yourself

because it's not just about achieving your goals.

It's about achieving our goals without like torpedoing the other aspects of our life.

What specifically is the goal?

Why do you actually care about achieving it?

What are your reasons?

And what are the anti- goals or constraints?

What are the things you want to avoid on route to achieving the goal?

And here are some examples of this in action.

So, for example, for me,

one of my health goals is I want to reduce my visceral fat levels

by 50%.

That is the what.

It's specific.

It's tied to a number.

In general, whenever you can put a number on your goal,

it makes it it that's a hack for like getting more specific

and like quantifiable and clear about what what you're actually trying to do.

Why do I want to decrease my visceral fat levels?

Well, I recently became a father

and I would like to not die of a heart attack particularly soon.

And visceral fat levels are like the things

that like directly contribute to your risk of a heart attack

or a stroke or something.

And I have a family history of heart disease.

And thanks to my poor South Asian genetics,

even though I don't look that fat,

like I actually have quite a lot of visceral fat in my abdomen according

to Dexa scans that I've done.

And so really, I would like to be around for my wife

and child and hopefully future children without dropping dead of a myioardial inffection overly

soon.

And then in terms of anti- goals, things I want to avoid.

Yes, I want to reduce my visceral fat levels,

but I don't want the process to eat into the time

that I spend with my wife

and my daughter.

So I don't really want to be going on runs in the evenings,

for example, because that's like family time.

And on screen, we will put some other examples of goals.

This, for example, is the goal for getting a girlfriend and the what, why,

and anti- goals that you might choose in that context.

And this, for example, might be the goal to start your lifestyle business.

So, the what, the why, and the anti- goals associated with that.

And of course, you are very welcome to pause the video

if you'd like to look at these examples in a bit more detail.

Oh, by the way, if you're watching this video,

then maybe one of your goals is to grow your social media presence.

And that is where the sponsor of this video comes in.

And that is ManyHat.

Now, ManyHat is a platform that basically helps you create automations on social media.

So, for example, you might have seen on my Instagram

or on other people's Instagram the whole thing around comment the word book

and I'll send you a link to my book

or comment the word guide

and I'll send you a link to my guide.

Usually, the book or the guide or whatever the thing is,

those are lead magnets

that are capturing emails

so that we as the business owners can

then connect with our audience on a platform that's not social media

because then we get their email address.

Now, obviously doing this stuff manually would take a lot of time,

especially if you have a big audience.

But what ManyHat does is

that it is a metaapproved automation platform

that makes it super easy to create automations

so that when someone triggers a particular keyword,

you can then define a series of actions that are going to happen next.

And you can do really cool stuff with it.

So for example, on my Instagram,

if you comment the word Angus on any of my posts,

then you might get a little Easter egg.

You can use ManyHat to create DM automation.

So if someone DMs you a particular word,

you can almost like create like a little quiz funnel

and do an automated chat qualification process for them

if you want.

And of course, you can use Many Chat for things like

if someone comments a particular word on a video,

you could send them to some kind of resource

or lead magnet or to book a call

or for whatever the thing

that your business does.

So, if you would like to grow your audience

and find a meaningful

and automatic way to connect with them,

then check out ManyHat.

There's going to be a link in the video description.

So, thank you so much Manyhat for sponsoring this video

and let's get back to it.

Okay, so having established our goal,

the next thing we want to do is we want to figure out what

is the plan.

Now there is a fascinating debate

that goes on in the world of personal development in the realm of goal

setting and that is about the importance of goals versus systems.

So you've got the systems camp

which was popularized by James Clear in his wonderful book atomic habits.

And the general vibe

that people took away from

that is that you don't need to worry too much about the goals.

What matters is the system.

Like the system is sort of like the daily habits.

The example he used in the book I think was

that everyone who runs the 100 meter sprint in the Olympics,

they all have the goal of winning a gold medal.

But obviously not all of them can win the gold medal.

And generally the person who wins,

it's because they had the best system

or the best habits in order to practice

and train to get to

that particular goal.

This is all well and good.

However, if your goal is to win the gold medal in the 100 meters

Olympics,

that is a very different system you would follow compared to

if your goal is to win gold medal in swimming at the Olympics

or even if your goal is to get a girlfriend

or even if your goal is to start a business.

That's not to say the system is not important,

but like the goal does in fact define what what you're actually doing

and what's the system

that you follow.

Then on the other side of the camp,

you have the people that don't really care about systems.

They don't really care about plans.

They just care about the goals.

This is sort of like the manifestation law of attraction folks who are like,

man, if you just have crystal clarity,

you just really got to get clear on exactly what you want,

then the universe will conspire to give it to you

and all of those sorts of things.

And the classic criticism of that is like, okay,

but you can have a goal to become a millionaire,

but unless you follow a plan

and like do stuff like follow some kind of system to get there,

it's not actually going to happen.

And so I think both camps do have some kind of merit.

And so basically the plan is the bridge between the goal and the system.

The goal is sort of like the destination you are trying to get to.

The system is like you know putting one foot in front of another in

order to get to the destination.

But the plan is sort of like your road map.

It's it's like the path you follow in order to get to the goal.

So there are three components of the plan.

The question you want to ask yourself is what are the three to five

major moves that will get me to my goal.

So for example, if my goal was to reduce my visceral fat by 50%.

The three to five major moves I might define

as uh 10,000 steps per day,

hitting 150 gram of protein per day, staying underneath 2,200 calories a day,

making sure I do three sessions of zone 2 cardio three times a week,

and making sure I do three sessions of weight training with progressive overload to

avoid losing muscle.

Those are like five major moves

that if I followed those things

and actually did them would be pretty likely to get me to my goal

of reducing my visceral fat levels.

This is like the plan,

the plan that you follow to get to the goal.

The next part of the plan is we ask ourselves is the plan actually

realistic.

So is it realistic in theory?

I.e. in theory will the plan get us to our goals?

Like assuming we followed the plan to 100% accuracy,

would we actually get to the goal as a result of following the plan?

Does the plan work in theory?

And we put a percentage amount on that.

And then we also ask ourselves in practice, will I actually follow the plan?

What are the chances of me actually following through on this plan?

And this I find is a really, really, really important part of the process.

A lot of people are very good at setting goals.

Like they're like they know what they want,

but then the plan

that they choose to follow in order to get there just doesn't make sense.

I know a lot of people who are choosing to start their first businesses

because they want to get to,

I don't know, $10,000 a month in passive income.

It's like, okay, cool.

We're we're clear and specific about the goal,

but then the plan

that they are following is just very unlikely to actually get them there.

Even in theory, even if they followed the plan,

it just wouldn't get them there.

And that means that they just haven't picked the right plan.

And these days with like Chad GPT and Claude and AI tools,

it's not that hard to come up with a plan

that actually gets you to your goal.

But you have to kind of be thinking in this way,

otherwise you end up choosing plans that just don't make sense.

Oh, and by the way,

if you're interested in a totally free

and easy way to incorporate the GPS system into your own goals,

then my team and I have actually trained a totally free AI model

that is literally trained on the GPS system.

We call it the GPS coach.

And so it's sort of like Chad GPT,

but just way more specific

because it's specifically about the GPS thing.

and it will basically ask you a series of questions

so that it can kind of coach you through the process of like figuring

out the GPS for your own goals.

So, there'll be a link down below in the video description

if you're interested in

that.

It is completely free.

For example, I know people who have the goal of getting to $10,000 a

month in passive income.

And the plan they want to follow to get there is number one,

posting on Instagram once a week.

Number two, trying to get companies to sponsor them for posting on Instagram once

a week.

And number three, doing this for about 6 months before giving up.

Now, even if you followed that plan, you posted on Instagram once a week,

you tried to reach out to brands and you did it for 6 months,

would that get you to $10,000 a month in passive income?

Absolutely not.

Like, there's all sorts of issues with that plan,

but like the primary one is

that posting on Instagram once a week is really just not enough to get

anywhere.

Maybe if you're posting once a day

and you're doing it for like 3 years,

then maybe you could get to

that goal in in terms of like the passive income goal.

Also, brand deals isn't really passive income,

so you'd actually probably want to be be creating your own digital product

or something like that.

Also, depending on what your niche is,

Instagram might not even be the best platform for it.

You might actually choose LinkedIn or YouTube or Tik Tok instead.

Like, there's all sorts of things that are wrong with that plan.

And often what I find is

that people just don't take the 3

or 4 minutes to actually think,

what is the plan I actually want to follow?

And does the plan even make sense in theory?

And then sometimes if the plan does make sense in theory,

you still need to ask yourself, will I actually follow the plan?

For example, if my goal was to produce visceral fat

and part of my plan was running for 5 hours a day.

Okay, in theory that will massively increase my caloric expenditure,

which will put me in a calorie deficit,

which will probably reduce my visceral fat.

But what are the chances

that I'm actually going to run for 5 hours a day?

Those are pretty low.

Therefore, if any of these numbers is under 80%,

this is sort of like my threshold for this.

That is a sign that I need to rethink my plan.

And then the final component is something that I call the crystal ball method.

This is based on research from the psychologist Gabriel Urtting Ingan who has come

up with this Whoop method where basically the whole vibe is you kind of

want to imagine a crystal ball

and you want to figure out like let's say you project in the future

and you did not achieve your goal

or you did not follow the plan.

What are the top three reasons as to why you didn't follow the plan?

Like what are the top three reasons why it didn't work?

In the case of reducing my visceral fat, for example,

reason number one why it doesn't work is maybe I

if I think back to past attempts at doing this,

number one, I just blow over my calorie my calorie limit of 2200

and so I just eat way more calories than

that,

which means I'm never going to reduce fat.

Number two is maybe I lose a lot of muscle

because I haven't hit my 150 g of protein with enough of a training

stimulus to retain muscle.

And maybe number three is I don't do my 10,000 steps a day,

which means I'm end up in a caloric surplus rather than a caloric deficit.

And then that makes the whole plan go out the window.

So in this context,

even just taking one minute to just visualize what is your plan for achieving

the goal and then what are the top three reasons why it might not

work.

This is mental forecasting.

You're sort of predicting what obstacles you're going to run into before you're getting

started with the goal.

And then you come up with a plan to address those obstacles.

So again, using my fat loss example,

how do I make sure I stay under 2200 calories?

Well, I should probably track on My Fitness Pal.

How do I make sure I stay at 150 g of protein?

Well, I should probably track it on My Fitness Pal.

How do I make sure I get 10,000 steps a day even

when I'm busy?

Well, I have a walking treadmill literally off camera

and so I can make sure I'm tracking my step count on my Apple

Watch and I'm just sort of making sure

that if I'm in Zoom calls

or whatever,

I'm sort of walking on the treadmill to passively get those steps in without

actually having to go out

and go for a walk.

Those would be like just three random examples of obstacles

that could get in my way of not achieving my goal

and then things I might do to overcome those obstacles.

Again, on screen, this is what the plan might look like for the girlfriend

example and this is what the plan might look like for the start a

lifestyle business example.

And again, you are very welcome to pause the video to have a look

if you would like.

Okay, so now we get to the boring bit, which is the system.

So there are three components of a system.

So the goal was where do I want to be going?

Like what's my destination?

The plan is what do I need to do to get there?

The system is answering the question of how will I make sure I stick

to the plan?

What daily and weekly actions do I need to do to make sure I

actually stick to the plan?

Because again, lots of us are very good at setting goals,

but we suck at sticking to those goals.

There is an execution gap.

We have the intention to do the thing

and then we don't do the bloody thing.

And the reason why is

because we have not stuck to the plan assuming we have a plan in

the first place.

So there are three aspects of the system.

The first one is tracking.

For example, this meta analysis basically collected 138 different studies

that covered nearly 20,000 participants.

And they basically found that the people that monitor their progress towards a goal,

i.e. they track their progress towards achieving that goal.

Those people were way more likely to actually achieve the goal compared to people

that did not track.

Again, you've got the classic weight loss example,

which is if you just step on a set of scales once a day,

you are likely to lose weight

because just simply being aware of the number makes you start making micro decisions

that cause you to lose weight.

Similarly, you know, ever since I got a Whoop band,

I've been aware of my sleep score.

And so my sleep has improved really without me having to do anything other

than just looking at the number every day

because when I see things like,

man, my sleep score was only 64%.

It will just nudge me to do sensible things like get an earlier night

and make sure the room is set to the right temperature

and all that kind of stuff.

It is enormously helpful to track your progress towards your goal.

So the question you want to be asking yourself is for whatever goal I'm

following,

for whatever plan I'm following, how can I track my progress towards it?

When I was writing my book, Feel Good Productivity, for example,

I made the most progress

when I had a Google sheet

and I was tracking how many words I was writing every day.

Back when I was studying for my exams at Cambridge University Medical School,

the highest performances I ever got in the exams were the ones where, again,

I had a Google sheet where I was tracking the syllabus

and I was sort of color coding it red,

yellow, green depending on how confident I felt about that particular topic.

People who go to the gym

and end up getting jacked tend to track their workouts.

They don't just go to the gym and hope for the best.

They actually write down on some kind of notebook

or some kind of app exactly what they're doing.

People training for a marathon are far more likely to actually be able to

run a marathon if they are tracking their runs,

looking at their heart rate,

looking at their heart rate zones

and sort of adjusting their plan

as they go along.

Component number two of system is to ask yourself how will you remind yourself

of your goal and of your plan.

For example, there was this study I think 2017 from Dominican University

and basically what this study found is

that if you just write down your goals,

you are 42% more likely to achieve them.

And there was another study I came across.

I can't remember the exact reference,

but it was basically showed that if you look at your goals every day,

you're just again way more likely to achieve them.

If you remind yourself of what you are trying to do,

then you know the brain has a tendency to forget.

You know, we all set New Year's resolutions, New Year's goals,

and then like a week goes by, 2 weeks go by,

and we have completely forgotten what the goal actually was.

And so there is a lot of value in just reminding yourself to look

at the goal.

How do you remind yourself to look at the goal?

Well, you can do things like a daily journaling practice.

I've made videos about that.

You can do things like a weekly review.

We've done videos about that.

My favorite thing is to just stick blocks of time in the calendar.

So, for example, if I know

that one of my goals is the visceral fat thing

and my goal is to run three times a week,

it's just super nice to put those three blocks of running in the calendar

and set it to repeat for the next 3 months

or 6 months because at least every time I look at the calendar,

I'm reminding myself that like, oh yeah,

this was a thing that was important to me.

You could use an app like my team

and I have built an app called Momentum,

which is sort of like a habit tracker with accountability squads built in.

And this gives you notifications every day. like I get a notification to remind

me to do my 10 minutes of stretching every day.

The other example is I have a vision board

that I've created that I have

as my desktop wallpaper

and this reminds me of what some of my goals are every single time

I go on my computer.

So the question you want to be asking yourself is what are the reminders

I can implement into my life

that will actually help me stick to the plan.

And then the final component of system is accountability.

Most of us really struggle to hold ourselves accountable to ourselves for the goals

and the plans that we would like to achieve.

And so having some kind of system where you get an accountability squad

or an accountability buddy to help hold you accountable is enormously helpful.

My team and I have this online mentorship program called the Lifestyle Business Academy

where we mentor people one-on-one to help them build their lifestyle businesses.

And a key component of that is accountability.

We are checking in on you every single week to make sure you're doing

the things you said you were going to do.

We give you a Google Sheet scorecard to fill in every single week

that asks you how many hours you worked,

how much content you posted, how many discovery calls you took.

We have like a checklist process to help you go through the process of

figuring out your niche

and figuring out your offer.

And if we see that you're falling behind,

like a lot of students tend to do,

we ping you a message in the one-on-one support channel being like,

"Hey Johnny, noticed that you're falling a little behind on blah blah blah.

What's going on?

Anything we can help with?"

It's an accountability system more than anything else.

So, if you just spend 5 minutes defining your tracking system, your reminders,

and trying to come up with some sort of accountability system,

whether it's a friend

or a family member

or like a WhatsApp group

or using our app Momentum

that has accountability squads built in.

All of these things in the system component are again going to make you

way more likely to actually follow your plan

and actually achieve your goal.

Now, at the point where you've taken five

or 10 minutes to define your GPS for any of the goals

that you're working towards,

you're going to want to check out this video over here,

which is a video containing, I think, five really quick,

really easy evidence-based principles

that you can follow to again drastically increase the chances

that you're actually going to achieve your goal.

So, plan your GPS method for any goal

that you have and

then check out that video over there to be able to put it into

practice.

Thank you so much for watching and I will see you over