Week 1 Worksheet
Page 3 of 10Step 1: Dene a clear goal
Now try to make the goal more specic, concrete and constrained. Note how the MIT Challenge had
very specic criteria (pass exams/complete programming projects for 33 classes) and wasn’t just to
“learn programming” or “learn computer science”. I want you to be similarly specic.
In general, there are three ways to do this:
1. Constrain the outcome (e.g. I want to pass the CFA exam, get As in my classes, speak French
conversationally)
2. Constrain the curriculum (e.g. I want to read all the books in the Personal MBA series)
3. Constrain the timeframe (e.g. I want to invest 5 hours per week for 3 months)
Try this now—make a constrained goal for your project:
Are you committed to this? Does completing the goal ll you with enthusiasm to get started? If no, go
back to the start and try to rephrase your project until it does. You might want to spend time thinking
about why you’re learning this subject rst.
Yes No