What Do Goals REALLY Do?
Lately I’ve been feeling like I need a method for goal setting. Maybe I need a Big Hairy Audacious Goal or a SMART goal. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that a goal setting method was unnecessary right now.
Misconceptions about Goals
I felt compelled to add a goal setting method to my system and wanted to know what was causing these feelings. I realized that I’ve been conditioned by several misconceptions about goals. Here are a few that were revealed to me:
- You Need Big Goals to be “Ambitious”: It feels good to feel ambitious. You haven’t given up on your potential and are continually pursuing bigger and better things. Despite the good feelings, ambitions are really delusions if you are not acting upon them.
I want to restore a Porsche 356 coupe, but I know I’m not going to make any progress in the near future (if ever at all). The thought of one day pursuing my dream makes me feel good about myself, but it doesn’t actually take me anywhere.
- Big Goals = Big Accomplishments: Just look at what Leo Babauta has accomplished. It’s definitely inspiring, but how does it help me? Does setting a goal of “running a marathon in under four hours by the end of this year” really help me get any closer to this accomplishment?
Setting goals doesn’t get you closer to accomplishment by itself. As James Mallinson noticed, consistently acting on small tasks, rather than focusing on large goals, produce results.
- Goals are needed to be successful: Joseph Campbell tells of the heroic journey common throughout mythology. In the beginning, the hero often comes upon his adventure by chance and then proceeds to enter the unknown (dealing with the unknown is the quality of the hero). A goal implies you know the end, which may close you off to the experience of life.
Reasons for Goals
Although there are misconceptions about goals that harm productivity, there are appropriate reasons to use goals. Here are a couple:
- They may inspire: Inspirational goals may inspire you to action, but they may also work against you. If the goal is significantly large and challenging, it may be overwhelming. On the other hand, if you do not want to do the small task, the larger goal may help you overcome your reluctance to get you “unstuck”.
- They provide direction: If you are making consistent action towards your desires, then goals are unnecessary. If you are too near-sighted, you may begin going off on tangents. Goals then become useful in helping you get back on track. They do not make you act, but keep you focused.
Goals are definitely useful in specific situations. Be aware that the compulsion towards setting goals may just be socially conditioned and you may not need any. The desire to set goals when you don’t need to disrupt happiness.
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WhiteHatBlackBox is about sharing my experiences on what works in improving life: getting things done, staying focused, increasing consciousness, and hacking behaviors. My passion is figuring things out and sharing how they can help us.
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Thanks for the great post.
SMART goals are really useful for me. It gives you a measureable objective when done correctly. And plus, I heard its popular in various disciplines from education to public health program planning. However, I see your point that goals are just empty words without action.
Yeah, SMART goals are very useful for providing a standard for your actions. I’m interested in what draws a person to uphold the standard and pursue the goals. If you care about your organization, then you have an incentive to uphold the standard because they depend on you. There needs to be some kind of connection to translate the words into actions. Thanks for the thoughts.
Love your site & the work that you do, but definetely disagree with the ambivelence about setting/defining big goals here.
Large Lofty goals are comprised of numerous tiny tasks, and what makes them large is the number of tiny tasks. We have hundreds of tiny tasks in our life, most of the time reoccuring tasks, so without large goals to prioritize or at least to remind us of tiny tasks which have big reward – then small tasks, with immediate needs (like doing laundry, taking the vet to the groomer, etc) always take priority or would fill up every day. At the end of a life, no one is going to look back with gusto and say, I always remembered to pick up my dry-cleaning – despite it being an essential small task.
By defining and having big goals, like restoring a Porsche, and breaking that down into small tasks like buying a book on Porsche restoration, starting a saving account to buy a beater Porsche, joining a vintage car club, getting a community college class schedule for “shop classes”, or taking a friend out for a beer who has restored a porsche in he past and could act as a mentor – you can work those small tasks into your routine and make progress to “bucket list” goals.
I definitely agree with you and the plan you laid out for me with the Porsche seems like a great way to get me on my way. It’s not that I’m against large goals or anything, but I just have a few personality quirks that make them difficult.
You mention looking back on your life and reflecting on the things that had meaning. I easily over-think things, so searching for meaning has and will lead me to spend a lot of time contemplating the fundamentals of truth in the universe. I try to keep myself near-sighted so I actually do things, rather then spending a lot of time thinking about it.
Thanks for the ideas. I’m not ready to start yet, but you’ve given me a plan of action.