Goals vs. Systems

blog.dilbert.com

15 pointsartsandsci3 comments

This is one of those articles that feels both completely obvious and useless at the same time. Surely if you want to implement a system, that's a goal?

Goals help because they are a way of saying "I will do this by then", and you can measure your progress. Systems help because they keep you going after you've reached the goal. The hard part is knowing the difference, and then actually doing whatever you need to do to reach the goal or implement the system.

I think how you do something is more important than what you actually do. People focus so much on the what, when the process is something where you can learn about yourself and apply your knowledge to other avenues in life.

I would highly suggest reading his book. He goes into this a lot more detail in the book and why systems work better than goals. The reasons are entirely psychological and revolve around tricking your brain into not being discouraged by the occasional and inevitable failure.

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