The long and short of goals

Some of your brain modules know your long term-goals.  Some of your brain modules know your short-term goals.  Trouble is, those goals are in different modules. 

The modules that make up your language system know about your long-term goals.  But your language system only knows how to talk about goals.  The brain modules that handle doing things don't handle talk.   That's why people have trouble with instruction manuals.

What you need to do is to put your language modules in touch with your quiet modules. 

But you will do things in concrete reality.  Your quiet modules deal with concrete reality.  You connect your language modules to concrete reality by planning  You translate abstract goals into concrete plans for getting from here to there.  

If you don't have a plan, you don't have a goal. You just have a wish 

Into a string of short-term goals and the joblets it takes to reach them.

And that helps you turn turn on your quiet modules.

And that keeps your quiet modules happy

You notice when your long term goals don't fit what you want to do in the short term.  You get two options:

Option 1:  Change your long-term goals to fit your short-term goals.

Option 2:  Change your short-term goals to fit your long-term goals.