Humans are not automatically strategic

Abstract

Humans do not have a natural inclination toward strategic goal setting and achievement. This is despite having the capacity to understand and verbally communicate abstract concepts related to goal-setting—an ability that emerged only relatively recently in evolutionary terms. As such, people tend to pursue goals haphazardly and neglect optimizing their progress. The article proposes heuristics to improve goal achievement, including identifying desired outcomes, articulating goals explicitly, gathering relevant information, and systematically testing and selecting the most promising strategies. It then discusses the challenges of training oneself to adopt these heuristics and suggests avenues for further exploration to address them – AI-generated abstract.