Achieve a Major Goal in 8 Weeks

Join the Thinking Lab Labor Day Launch
(9/7/2026 through 11/10/2026)

Three times a year* in the Thinking Lab, we pick up the pace and focus our energy to get a major goal accomplished in 8 weeks. This is how we make sure our great intentions don’t dissolve into inertia or get lost in the daily routine.

If you want to jump start a major project this fall, join us for the Labor Day Launch. By participating in this program, you will:

• Set a goal or resolution that makes a material difference to your health, wealth, or relationships, which you will achieve in 8 weeks.
• Troubleshoot and overcome any practical difficulties that stand in your way.
• Build measurable emotional resilience to draw on as you pursue other challenging goals in the coming year.

Our soft start is on Labor Day, with the free 1-hour class, “Mindset and Strategy for Achieving a Major Goal in 8 Weeks.” Everyone gets revved up on Thinking Day, Saturday, 9/12/2026, during which I coach everyone to finish defining their initiatives so that they can hit the ground running on Monday of week 1.

*The three annual Thinking Lab Launches kick off on New Year’s, Patriots’ Day, and Labor Day.

Wait a minute, this sounds like a lot of time. How much work is this going to be?

First of all, if this is a major goal, it definitely will require significant time. Plus, learning and implementing the Launch process will take some time above and beyond the time you put in on your project. How much time depends on your schedule and your interest — and whether you need to fill in some mental skills.

The typical Thinking Labber needs to budget at least 3–4 hours/week extra for this program, over and above the time to do the work on the goal. Most days you will spend 15 minutes “thinking on paper.” Most weeks you will take an hour or so to either attend a coaching session or do more in-depth thinking on some issue. For example, unless your goal is already clear, you will probably need extra time right at the beginning to clarify your goal. You will also want to listen to the other coaching calls and live classes for inspiration, but with the convenient private podcast listening option this can be done while driving or doing chores.

If you don’t already know how to do thought work using “thinking on paper” or you are unfamiliar with basic introspection techniques and/or the principles of “motivation by love,” you probably will need to work in some skill building. I recommend new Thinking Labbers work through my 6-hour course Do What Matters Most  as soon as you enroll in the Thinking Lab, just so that you can get some basic tactics under your belt. Or in some cases, we will conclude together that working through one of the other courses available in the Thinking Lab will help you get the results you want. Then you’ll make that part of your project time.

However, I will encourage you to stay focused on your goal, using your existing knowledge and skills, and take full advantage of the group coaching opportunities to fill in gaps. You need to be able to learn as you go, and learn from experience. That is more important for achieving your goal than knowing all of the theory and tactics available to you. You can spend a lot of time in learning mode, because you will have access to literally hundreds of hours of recorded materials in the Thinking Lab. But that is not the best use of your time.

This is one reason we have only three Launches a year. The Launch period is intense goal work. Between Launches, Thinking Labbers are in “maintenance mode.” They continue to make progress on long-term goals, but not at the intense pace as during a Launch. These quieter periods are a great time to work through relevant self-study courses.

If that sounds like a lot of time, maybe your goal isn’t important enough to warrant a two-month push. The motivation for doing this work is your achieving your goal. If you are sure you’ll achieve your goal without the program, then don’t sign up! If you don’t have a meaningful goal you want to achieve, then don’t sign up!

If you have a goal that you really want, but you dread putting the time in, then you need this program. The group coaching and daily thought work is how you sort out why you don’t feel motivation to do something that is good for you. It’s also how you change your perspective so you do. Once you learn how to troubleshoot that kind of motivational disconnect, you will have a skill that you can draw on for the rest of your life.

What if I don’t know what goal to set?

First of all, there is a detailed process for “Defining an Initiative” that can start from where you are, with just your current commitments, and help you figure out what needs to be the major goal for the next 8 weeks. If you are feeling overwhelmed, this will be the way you get on top of where to focus and how to move forward with your existing commitments.

On the other hand, if you have a vague yearning for something, but you don’t know exactly what, you may make your initiative focused on clarifying your goals. For example, you might want to set as your goal for the eight weeks to identify a major direction for your life, and then go through my self-study course on Developing a Central Purpose. This is another reason there are three Launches a year in the Thinking Lab! Sometimes you figure out the goal in one Launch, then work toward it in the next.

The only person who can set and achieve your goal is you. But we can give you the moral and practical support so that if you falter and don’t know how to get back on track, you have the resources you need to regroup, recommit, and restart.

Promise #1: You will set a goal or resolution that makes a material difference to your health, wealth, or relationships, which you will achieve in 8 weeks

How do I know it will make a material difference to your health, wealth, or relationships? Because you will figure that out as part of the thought work. That is a critical step to setting a goal that motivates you to take the action. You will have the benefit of my feedback to make sure that your goal is sufficiently meaningful that it can be worked on consistently over these two months.

How do I know you’ll achieve it in 8 weeks? Okay, there is a little bit of sleight of hand here. The thought work is going to guide you to set a stretch goal that is realistic. It will also ensure you re-assess its realism, if needed, as you take steps toward it. Some people in the program will eventually conclude that their initial idea for a goal is impossible to achieve on this time scale. If that’s the case for you, you will figure out what is possible and do that instead. It may be that what you need to do is to establish a beachhead for your major goal — a significant result that shows you are on your way — and to create momentum so that you can keep working toward it for however long it takes.

When you have a major goal, it’s important that you don’t give up prematurely! The other two promises will ensure that.

Promise #2: You will troubleshoot and overcome any practical difficulties that stand in your way

I predict that every single person in the program will run into difficulties following through on his or her goal before the end of the program. Some will have problems the first day. Some may only have them at the end of the first month or later. But everyone will have problems. It’s inherent in pursuing a challenging goal. If you could achieve your goal without making uncomfortable changes to the status quo, you wouldn’t be enrolling in the program.

Here’s my second prediction: when you have problems, you’ll be tempted to avoid the issue. This is a predictable motivational event. If things don’t go well, if you have something that looks like difficulty or failure, it will be unpleasant. Every person on the planet feels aversion to unpleasantness.

It is going to take a bit of effort to take a look at what happened and regroup. If you don’t have a system in place to help you do so, your goal will just mysteriously slip out of mind, perhaps even for a week or two at a time. If this happens to you, it will eventually pop back into mind, and you will feel guilty because you’ve been ignoring it. That would make it even more unpleasant to examine, leading to greater aversion to it.

One of the key purposes of regular thought work and group coaching is to prevent that kind of vicious cycle from starting.

With the thought work, you will take a look at how things are going on a regular basis, in a neutral, non-self-critical way. You will learn to look at problems objectively, without jumping to the conclusion that something is wrong with you, or you’re “bad,” or “lazy.” There is no insulting yourself in the thought work. It is 100% constructive. If you have any trouble with the thought work turning into self-recriminations, ship a copy of it off by email to me and Lin Zinser, then come to the next coaching call. When we see your “thinking on paper,” Lin and I can help you reframe and get a different perspective. Our goal is to teach you that you can always get oriented in a constructive, positive direction by doing thought work.

Group coaching is also critical to nipping vicious cycles in the bud. You will hear about setbacks and discouragements in every coaching call. Whoever gets coaching on it — you or someone else — hearing the coaching will help to normalize the problem and give you ideas for how to regroup.

That said, you may need to develop some emotional skills to deal with the problems in a nonjudgmental, positive way. Hence the final promise:

Promise #3: You will build measurable emotional resilience to draw on as you pursue other challenging goals in the coming year

You can find a lot of sappy quotes about how failure is just a step on the road to success. And it’s not failure unless you give up. And it’s not failure, it’s a learning experience. And they’re all true. And that doesn’t make failure any fun. To anybody. Ever.

Therefore, I am not promising that the next two months will be fun. I expect you to experience some failure along the way, sooner or later.

What I am promising is to teach you skills for dealing with it, emotionally, so that you can come back and make a new effort.

This is the quality of emotional resilience, which you are going to measure and build throughout the 2-month program. How? Thought work. Yes, the thought work is how you build that strength. The thought work is designed to give you self-understanding. This means you are aware of your strengths and your weaknesses. Your skills and your limitations. Your motivation and your lack thereof. When you can be objective about what you bring to the table, you can set more realistic goals and troubleshoot obstacles in a matter-of-fact, efficient manner.

Learning to do this may require some coaching. That’s why there are two coaching calls every week. If you run into a tough spot, you can get help within a few days. Send us an email — I promise at least a short response as soon as I can, and we can talk about it on the next coaching call.

By the end of the program, you will have measurably more emotional resilience. This is a capacity that you can draw on for the rest of your life.

How do I know I can help you?

I’ve been teaching these skills for a long time. Over the years, I have run several programs similar to this. In every case, the people who did the thought work in a structured way on a regular basis got amazing results. The people who used my goal-setting tools got amazing results. The people who learned the introspection tools got amazing results.

Launch ran for the first time in January 2021, and it was a huge success. I doubled down with daily emails and 8 group coaching calls a month. After running these three times a year for six years, I saw so much growth and progress with Launchers that I merged it into the Thinking Lab to make the Thinking Lab a year-round coaching program with three bursts of energy — the three Launches — providing a great entry point for new members and regular boosts for ongoing members.

Why this design? It works. I got the idea for Launch when I checked out some competitors to the Thinking Lab and found some things they were doing that helped me be more accountable when I test-drove their programs — such as group coaching. I adapted what I learned for the original Launch program and it worked very well. In addition, Lin Zinser and I are both fully certified by the Life Coach School in a unique coaching process that meshes with everything I’ve been teaching for 20 years. It helps ensure that you don’t just get advice on the calls, you learn how to do your own thinking and solve your own problems. It’s a very effective method that we’ve both found can help you re-set your approach in a short conversation of only 15–20 minutes.

The program has been extremely successful, as you can tell from the testimonials. The results from the previous rounds were not a fluke. I believe you can and will achieve the results I’ve promised, because I have built in more than enough support for anyone who puts in the effort. As I tell all of my Thinking Labbers, be a squeaky wheel. I am always eager for feedback, good and bad. If you raise an issue, and I see I need to add something to the program, you can bet I will. I may write a new article. I may set a topic for a class. I could even put together a new mini-course. I am committed to doing everything I can do, to support you in doing your own work.

New Course for Labor Day Launch 2026

One of the ways I keep the Launch fresh is that I teach a new productivity course in conjunction with the 8-week program. For Labor Day 2026, this new course will be Putting Time Into a New Initiative. This course will teach you how to overcome the predictable challenges in getting enough time on task to succeed — and to keep the momentum going for the full 8 weeks. The classes are timed to hit when they will be needed most. Here’s the lineup:

Putting Time Into a New Initiative

 

1. Fitting an initiative in

When you start an initiative, you shift the status quo. You were already occupied 24/7; to make time for a push on a project, you will need to stop doing some things. This requires shifting your “scheduling infrastructure” at least a bit. We’ll discuss:

• Identifying your starting place
• The minimum change you need to make
• The benefit of daily review/planning

2. Motivating yourself in the heat of the moment

You may not “feel like” doing the thing you decided you should do at the time you decided to do it. We’ll discuss:

• Why this is predictable
• The principle behind motivating yourself in the heat of the moment
• Creating a piggy bank of motivators to draw on

3. Addressing the conflicts over how you spend your time

Once you put some time into your initiative, you start to see what falls by the wayside. That creates conflict. We’ll discuss:

• The risk of negotiating with the conflict
• The benefit of facing the conflict head on
• How to make the tough decisions about your time

4. Transforming pressure into heightened productivity

Pressure is a terrible motivation for work. It puts you into a mental state where you don’t think too clearly. We’ll discuss:

• Why you need to take pressure seriously
• The mentally effective way to adjust course under pressure
• The commitment to your mind

5. Learning from your results without guilt or shame

“No plan survives contact with reality.” This is a truism, but it doesn’t make setbacks and failures feel better. That emotional downer gets in the way of problem solving. We’ll discuss:

• How you motivate yourself to review
• The “no shame, no guilt” approach to problem solving
• Why that’s rational

6. Taking objective pride in your work

Your long-term productivity on a project requires that you get emotional payoffs as you work on it. How do you do that when it is slow and hard and you are self-critical? We’ll discuss:

• The risks and benefits of self-criticism
• The need to celebrate your successes at every level
• How you make pride in your work objective

See the calendar above at right for the schedule.