A good heuristic for goal-setting is that they should be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria">SMART </a>(specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound). Implementation intentions, formulated as IF... THEN... plans <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065260106380021">tend to work better </a>than just focusing on an outcome on its own. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy">Planning fallacies </a>also need to be watched for as many goal-setting efforts can be overly optimistic.

Systems are often built off of concepts of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management">scientific management </a>and organizational theory, but applied to one's personal life. Thus business concepts like standard operating procedures, quarterly reviews and key performance indicators get repurposed as self-improvement concepts.

On the other hand, learning is also a basic psychological process. Every time we change from experience, get better at anything or remember something, we're learning. In this second sense, learning is a core concept of self-improvement. Like habits, learning has been studied in incredible detail, making it a rich source of research-driven insights into self-improvement. Some might argue that learning is the core of psychology itself. I've spent more time writing about this core concept than anything else, in part because I feel it has often been neglected in self-improvement, perhaps because many people conflate it with studying. Learning in the first sense, of deliberate studying, is also an important tool simply because it's the means by which one can understand the other tools better, so I tend to give it priority even if other authors don't.

In any field, there are a few ideas that are core to understanding everything else. Biology makes little sense without evolution. Physics without symmetries and conservation laws is baffling. All mathematics can be built out of sets. Self-improvement isn't usually regarded as an intellectual field.

What are the Core Ideas of Self-Improvement? | Scott H Young

Jennifer Truong