7 Ways to Engineer Success for Any Goal

Seven strategic approaches for how to engineer success for a long-term goal.

Written by Dr Alice Boyes

Each of the following seven approaches provides a strategic lens for how to engineer success for a long-term goal, whether it's personal or professional. They offer different paths and show you where to focus your efforts to achieve the success you want.

They fall into three categories:

As you read, keep in mind that each still requires an execution layer, involving the systems and habits needed to translate strategy into achievements.

Note: The examples aren't recommendations, they just illustrate the strategies well.

At the end, I'll help you understand which approach is best for your goal.

1. Backcasting

Backcasting involves imagining a hypothetical future and working backward to figure out the present-day requirements to achieve it.

For example, Dr. Peter Attia uses this idea when discussing healthspan. If the average 60-year-old has organs that will last 20 more years, and you want to live 20 years longer than average, then at 60 you might aim for the strength, fitness, and health markers of a typical 40-year-old, whose organs would be expected to last the 40 more years you desire.

Backcasting shares similarities with reverse engineering, which we'll cover shortly, but the key distinction is that reverse engineering analyzes success stories (and seeks to understand and apply the causal drivers from those), while backcasting emphasizes defining the present-day requirements for a chosen future goal (e.g., "If I want adequate heart function in 40 years, what must be true today?")

2. Incremental (e.g., 1%) Improvements

This is a forward-looking strategy. You take where you are and make small improvements.

Beginners will typically improve the most by focusing on the basics, the core pillars of success in whatever they're trying to accomplish.

At advanced levels, continued gains in the basic pillars might be difficult, so the person might seek to influence a wider variety of variables to eke out gains. For example, they might target variables their competitors have ignored to gain competitive advantages.

Identifying new variables to target can come from approaches like first principles thinking, which means breaking things down to the most basic truths and distinguishing them from assumptions and conventions.

3. Eliminate Bottlenecks, Responsively

7 Ways To Engineer Success For Any Goal

While we might have many things we could improve, at any point there is usually one bottleneck that is preventing us from reaching the next level. It can be difficult to predict our next bottleneck. For example, if you're trying to do something more consistently, your current bottleneck might be fatigue, boredom, or recurring obstacles (like injuries). In a responsive approach, you address each bottleneck as it becomes the limiting factor, rather than trying to predict the next limiter or work on everything at once.

4. Reverse Engineering From Your Own Successes (or Successes Within Your Organization)

Reverse engineering looks at success stories and tries to pinpoint what drove them. What do the success stories have in common that differentiates them from average or below-average performances and performers? It focuses on identifying the biggest causal drivers, not just correlations.

For example, what are the top 10% of salespeople at your company doing differently from everyone else? Which of these factors is causal, and what's repeatable or systematizable?

On a personal level, when you're performing at your best, or doing things you can't do at other times, what's different? What are the causal drivers? If you commonly make a specific self-sabotaging mistake, what's different when you don't make it?

5. Reverse Engineering From Outside Successes

Reverse engineering from outside successes looks at people outside yourself or your organization who have achieved what you're attempting.

You can study different fields with core similarities. For example, if you are a runner preparing for a 5k, you might study other 5k runners or other endurance athletes, but even people outside of sports can provide insight—such as anyone achieving the same underlying goal, like consistency or mental resilience.

A downside of reverse engineering is that it doesn't account for changing conditions. For instance, studying how to win a fast race might not help you succeed in a slow "sit and kick" race.

6. Experiment and Iterate Based on the Results

Experimenting can help you achieve improvements when you already know what you want to target and the causal driver you're trying to exploit. But it can also help you identify what to focus on when deciding between options or exploring new pathways.

For example, a student might experiment with different study techniques and adjust their study habits based on the results.

7. Assumption-Busting Questions (Such as What Would Make My Current Problems or Goals Irrelevant)

Imagine if our student asked "What would it mean if I don't need to study this material?" instead of asking how they could learn the material better. What if they didn't need to pass a test on it? What if they didn't need to understand it at all? Sometimes it's better to challenge a requirement rather than meet it, or challenge an assumption rather than optimize for it. Assumption-busting questions can seem nonsensical but reveal cracks in our thinking. What if the test was worth such a low percentage of their grade it wasn't worth the effort? What if the material was so prone to changing that it's better looked up than memorized?

What Is the Best Approach?

At this point, you're perhaps asking which approach is best. The "best" approach is likely to be the one that feels simplest to you. What feels simple varies by person. Usually, many approaches would work if consistently applied. Complexity reduces consistency; therefore, going with what feels straightforward to you will likely increase your success. While mixing approaches might minimize drawbacks, it also adds complexity, meaning that sticking with one primary approach can often be best. With these seven strategic approaches in your toolkit, you can pick from forward-looking, backward-looking, or responsive pathways to engineer the success you're after.