Behavior Gap Radio

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl explains why goals should grow out of purpose, not the other way around. Rather than starting with numbers or aspirational targets, he shows how a clear sense of purpose gives goals meaning, flexibility, and durability. When goals emerge from purpose, they stop feeling like pressure or performance metrics and start acting as directional markers that can evolve without shame. Carl shares client stories to illustrate how purpose anchors goals, keeps them from becoming brittle, and reminds us that the point was never the goal itself. The point was living in alignment with what matters in the real world, where plans change and clarity is always provisional.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl walks through how to write a Statement of Financial Purpose and why it matters more than values lists, slogans, or motivation. Drawing from personal experience and years of planning work, he explains how a clear purpose acts as an orientation device, not a prediction or a pep talk. A good statement of purpose narrows choices, reduces decision fatigue, and creates coherence over time, especially when trade-offs show up or conditions change. It doesn’t eliminate fear or guarantee outcomes. It simply gives you a heading when the path isn’t clear and reminds you how to decide when you don’t know.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl explores purpose-based planning, a quieter, more orienting mode of planning that becomes possible once the fires are out and there’s enough stability to think clearly. Unlike problem-to-solve planning, which demands immediate solutions, purpose-based planning asks a deeper question: What do I want this plan to be in service of? Carl explains how purpose creates coherence, durable direction, and meaningful constraints that make trade-offs clearer without making them easy. Purpose can’t be forced under threat, but when there’s space for it, it helps us choose which problems are actually worth solving and how we want to live while solving them.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl introduces problem-to-solve planning, a practical mode of planning meant for moments of urgency, constraint, or pain. Drawing from stories in the mountains, the ER, and years of reader questions, he explains why some situations don’t call for deep purpose or big-picture reflection. They call for action. Problem-to-solve planning asks one clear question: What are we actually solving for right now? When used well, it stabilizes the situation, reduces anxiety, and restores enough clarity and bandwidth to move forward. Sometimes the wisest plan is simply getting the arrow out of your arm.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl shares an essay on purpose, values, and goals, and why so much anxiety around planning comes from starting in the wrong place. He explains how goals feel brittle and high-pressure when they’re mistaken for purpose, and why missing a goal can feel like a personal failure when the deeper “why” isn’t clear. By untangling purpose (the enduring why), values (how it shows up), and goals (temporary, adjustable guesses), Carl shows how planning becomes calmer, more flexible, and more human. Start with purpose, let goals emerge, and allow plans to adapt without shame.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl asks a fair question: If the world is uncertain, and plans are just guesses, why have goals at all? He reframes goals not as promises or predictions, but as values-informed guesses that relieve pressure instead of creating it. Carl explains the three reasons goals still matter in an uncertain world: they give us direction when the path isn’t clear, they create a quiet gravitational pull toward what matters, and they offer hope when certainty isn’t available. Goals don’t lock us in. They help us keep moving.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl continues his exploration of what a plan actually is—and what it isn’t. A plan, he argues, is a hypothesis: a best guess worth testing, not a promise or a prediction. When we treat plans like guarantees, we invite overconfidence at the start and panic when reality inevitably changes. Instead, Carl reframes planning as an ongoing process of learning, adaptation, and course correction, where change signals insight, not failure. The real value of a plan is orientation, flexibility, and a clear way forward in uncertain terrain.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl begins exploring a deceptively simple question: What is a plan, really? After weeks of unpacking risk, uncertainty, and the limits of prediction, he reframes planning as a living practice—not a promise, forecast, or static document. In a world that isn’t stable or fully knowable, a good plan acts as a working model that helps you adapt, stay oriented, and remain aligned with what matters most as conditions change. This episode sets the stage for a deeper look at planning as an operating manual for navigating reality.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this bonus episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl reflects on a conversation with an entrepreneur facing what she described as “terror” on the edge of launching deeply personal work. He explores the difference between building something as a business case and creating something as art—and why the latter carries a unique kind of risk. When you say, “Here, I made this. I hope you like it,” you’re inviting the most intimate form of feedback there is. Carl explains why that fear makes sense, why it can’t be eliminated, and why the only real option is to feel it fully… and do the work anyway.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl shares Essay #4 in his ongoing series and reframes one of the most misunderstood ideas in planning: risk. Most of what we call risk isn’t volatility or headlines—it’s what’s left over after you think you’ve planned for everything. Carl explains why good plans don’t eliminate risk, why certainty should make us nervous, and why humility is not a weakness but a risk-management strategy. In a complex, adaptive world, planning isn’t about control or prediction. It’s an ongoing practice of awareness, flexibility, and learning to work with what inevitably shows up.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl revisits the critical difference between kind and wicked learning environments—and why experience can either make you wiser or dangerously overconfident. When feedback is clear, fast, and reliable, learning compounds, but when feedback is delayed, noisy, or misleading, experience can quietly teach the wrong lessons. Carl explains why real planning can’t assume experience equals insight, and why better questions—about feedback, time horizons, and the role of luck—matter more than confident conclusions.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl digs into one of his core ideas: You don’t solve the world you’re in, you navigate it. Building on the first essay, he explains why so much planning advice quietly assumes a linear, controllable world—and why that breaks down in the complex adaptive landscapes where most of life actually happens. From careers to relationships to raising kids, Carl reframes the frustration of constantly adjusting plans as a feature of reality, not a personal failure, and sets up the questions that come next about learning, feedback, and making decisions in a world that won’t sit still.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl introduces the first essay in a new series, The World Is Not What We Were Promised. He reflects on the quiet assumptions many of us absorb about how life is “supposed” to work—and what happens when reality doesn’t cooperate. Rather than fighting uncertainty, Carl suggests adopting a posture of living in wrongness and treating uncertainty not as a flaw, but as a feature. That’s where the real work begins.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl explores the difference between kind and wicked learning environments—and why misunderstanding feedback can lead us to learn exactly the wrong lesson. Drawing on examples from markets, backcountry skiing, and life decisions, he explains how delayed or unreliable feedback can turn experience into overconfidence instead of wisdom. Carl shows why outcomes aren’t always feedback, why “nothing bad happened” can be dangerously misleading, and why strong processes matter more than results in wicked environments. A crucial guide to learning safely in uncertain terrain.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl explores how many of our worst decisions come from playing the right game on the wrong clock. Time horizons shape how we interpret risk, success, discomfort, and progress—but most of us mix up short-term and long-term games. Carl explains why impatiently “digging up the oak tree” to check the roots derails meaningful work, how long-term thinking reveals signal over noise, and why borrowed timelines create borrowed anxiety. Align the clock with the game, he says, and you give your decisions—and your life—the chance to compound.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl tackles an uncomfortable truth: Luck plays a bigger role in our lives—and our outcomes—than we like to admit. He explains why, in complex environments like markets, careers, and relationships, good decisions can lead to bad results and bad decisions can occasionally pay off. Through stories, including a man who gambled everything on one roulette spin, Carl illustrates the crucial distinction between skill and luck, and why the real work is building a repeatable decision-making process. Recognizing luck, he says, brings humility, compassion, and clearer thinking in uncertain terrain.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/ 

In this episode of Behavior Gap Radio, Carl unpacks the idea of sense-making—the way we build just enough coherence from past events to take the next step in uncertain environments. Through a story from his New York Times days and reflections on how we interpret unexpected outcomes, he explains that sense-making isn’t about accuracy or perfect explanations. It’s about crafting a plausible story that helps us move forward. Carl shares the questions he uses to check his own stories—What am I noticing? What am I ignoring? Does this story help me act or trap me?—and reminds us that in complex, adaptive systems, story isn’t a luxury. Story is navigation.Want more from Carl? Get the shortest, most impactful weekly email on the web! Sign up for the Weekly Letter from Certified Financial Planner™ and New York Times columnist Carl Richards here: https://behaviorgap.com/