eventhough i believe Goals are overrated, some level of goal setting is necessary to determine direction and to have the ability to work towards something.
If you approach a big problem with Intent To Try, then at every plausible stopping point part of you will be trying to convince you that you’ve done enough. And thus, at every plausible stopping point, you’ll need to spend willpower to continue. Find a soccer game instead — some way to focus your attention on useful object-level tasks, with the pursuit of the important goal turned into an implicit unconscious background assumption so deeply ingrained in your plan that you can hardly see it any more.
As for how you make or find the soccer games, that’s a discussion for another day. For now, my generic suggestion is to (a) generalize from the above examples and (b) imagine someone who’s “playing soccer” with respect to your task or problem, and ask yourself what they might be doing. The key is to make the pursuit of your goal implicit, and spend your focus on the subproblems.
the above concept is very similar to obliquity
whenever you are setting “large” or multi-hop goals, it’s always benefitial to make it an implicit result than chasing it headon.
it’s better to operate from a point of assumed competence and confidence