I hope you vote today¹.

You and I are so lucky to live in a time and place in which we get to choose our government. Democracy may feel like the natural state of affairs, but most of the human beings who’ve lived haven’t had much say in the matter of their own governance. We won the political lottery, my friend.

I know it sometimes feels like your vote doesn’t matter. I feel that way sometimes. Each vote is only one out of millions. But each of the millions and millions of votes cast is cast by a single individual, a person like you and me who carved time out of their Tuesday to participate in democracy.

In late September, my ancient laptop gave up the ghost.

It was a 2012 MacBook Pro, and it had recently been showing its age after years of loyal service. I’d spent the last few months replacing failing components and watching the machine struggle to run multiple programs, and I knew the handwriting was on the wall. All my data was backed up. When the sad day arrived, I was more or less prepared. Or so I thought.

At any moment, we can change our lives in the most awesome ways. At the same time, the best predictor of future performance is past performance. We can change, but we usually don’t–it’s a difficult pill to swallow. How can we improve our chances of creating personal change? Below are a couple brief thoughts.

I find it helpful to remember that a strong desire to change is necessary but rarely sufficient. We need plans and systems in our lives to keep us on track, because motivation always dissipates, even when we’re sure it won’t. No matter how great we feel at 10 AM, we’re certain to be less jazzed at 3:00 PM.

If you want to get better at life, you must set goals. But goal-setting is surprisingly hard to do well.

You’ve likely heard about the importance of setting “SMART” goals—that is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. These are useful guidelines, but the research on goal-setting literature is clear: there’s another critical ingredient we should consider. For illumination, let’s turn to the research of Edwin Locke.

Locke is an eminent industrial/organizational psychologist. His pioneering work on goal setting beginning in the 1960s forms the foundation of much of modern goal-setting theory (his work with Gary Latham is especially influential). One of Locke’s central findings is that the most effective goals tend to be difficult.

Imagine you’re a head of state—the president or prime minister of your country.

You’ve got a lot of power and a lot of responsibility. As you survey your spacious office and daydream about national infrastructure projects, your thoughts return to the present moment, and you remember that you have an important meeting in one hour.

You’re about to meet with Prime Minister Jones, the leader of a neighboring country, to discuss the complex, sometimes fraught relationship between your two nations. You last met with your counterpart six months ago, and though much was discussed and you each made some promises, you’re struggling to remember the meeting in any detail. What was said? Who said it?