Here is how to get a lot of value out of 43things.

1 Post a few goals.

Start by posting a few specific, concrete goals that you can achieve. They might be goals that take a long time to achieve or a short time, but they should be specific and achievable by you.

Here are some specific goals:

• have fresh flowers in my apartment
• write letters of thanks and praise to my supportive profs
• take lessons in continuo realization
• memorize all 88 constellations
• kiss in the rain
• make 1000 Wikipedia edits
• eat spaghetti aglio e olio every day for a week
• float in a sensory deprivation tank
• figure out my new garmin which is a lot harder than the old one

Sometimes people post broad political goals, like getting someone elected or getting a law passed or getting their whole society to think a certain way. These really don’t give you much benefit because you can’t achieve them. They are way out of your control. However, you can draw upon the urge that leads you to think of those kinds of goals and convert them into something specific and achievable: canvass for a certain candidate in a certain election, volunteer at a specific organization, preach on a street corner, write an article about the topic and get it published, write your congressman, etc. Goals like these are easy to convert into action of the kind that makes you feel good very quickly, as well as generates achievable results.

Another kind of goal that is seldom useful is the vague, improve my life sort of goal. Some examples:

• live, love, and laugh
• be completely honest with myself
• stop procrastinating (possibly the worst goal on 43things: posting it is procrastinating)

If you can translate a vague goal into specific action that you really do, great. But if it doesn’t lead you to action, it’s probably not giving you much use. These sorts of goals are traps, luring you into patting yourself on the back for having good intentions but not really doing anything that you find fulfilling.

2 Look around and see what other people are doing.

I’ve found much joy and inspiration in reading other people’s goals and their progress (mostly from the specific ones; the vague ones usually are dull to read). Seeing what other people are doing gives you ideas for wonderful things you could do.

Here are some ways to see what other people are doing:

• Zeitgeist
• The bottom of every 43things page has a bunch of randomly selected goals.
• Look at people’s home pages and read their lists of goals. Every active goal page has a link to the home pages of people doing the goal or who have done it.
• If you find someone whose goals look interesting to you, click the “Recent Activity” link on their home page (up by their name).
• Subscribe to people whose posts and goals you find interesting, and check your subscription page occasionally. To subscribe, go to their home page and click the “Subscribe” link (near “Recent Activity”).

3 Cheer some other people’s goals and progress posts. Post comments.

When you cheer other people’s posts, pretty soon they start cheering you back. And then you fall naturally into a social network of helpful people with compatible goals. This is where 43things becomes something more than you can get by writing goals on a sheet of paper (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

When you post comments to other people’s progress posts, that’s when you start making friends.

4 Do actions that lead to fulfilling your goals.

This is the most important thing. It’s more important than completing the goals.

Really, you don’t need 43things for this. 43things is only a helper for taking this kind of action. If your participation on 43things doesn’t lead to your taking action that brings you fulfillment in the present, then either you’re misusing it or maybe 43things is not a good fit for you.

When you take action toward something meaningful to you, you tend to feel good right away. The good feeling doesn’t wait until the goal is achieved.

When you just post about goals without taking action, though, you tend not to feel much.

5 Post progress about your goals.

Take this seriously. Gather your thoughts and write a paragraph or so that says something specific and says it clearly and grammatically. Much of the benefit of this site is the way writing a short, coherent message for others to read leads you naturally to compose and clarify your thoughts.

Describe concrete steps that you took and the results that you got. Tell how you felt before, during, and after taking action. Of course, to have progress to post, you’ll need to take action (see above). It’s a wonderful feeling to mark a goal completed!

Progress posts are good place to post little tasks that are steps along the way to a meaningful goal. For example, if you have a goal of cooking an Indian feast, you might need to vacuum the house, clean the kitchen, buy an Indian cookbook, and go to the grocery store. Those are all good things to mention in a post, but probably not so exciting as goals in themselves.

Another useful kind of progress post is to describe the goal in more detail than can fit into the title of a goal. This both clarifies your thoughts and purposes, and helps other people understand what you’re doing and why it’s meaningful to you.

6 Kid around.

Part of the social support provided by 43things results from kidding around. People post frivolous goals and engage in banter and generally spread good cheer.

7 Look over your list and update it.

You may notice after a few months that you have done nothing on some of your goals. Some of them may no longer excite you. Some of them, you may have completed. All of these are good.

If you have no progress to post, then you might either give up on the goal or take action on it today. Or just leave it. Not all goals have to generate action right now to be valuable. Even an unachievable goal can be fruitful. But to make best use of your time on this site, your 43things goals should be leading you to take some sort of constructive, fulfilling action every single day (even if that action is just getting some rest).

If you have 43 goals, you probably have too many.