The Best Goal is No Goal | Hacker News Reader

The Best Goal is No Goal

zenhabits.net

68 pointsdjshah53 comments

I disagree with this post, and think it's bad and incorrect advice for most people. Spending lots of time thinking about what you want, writing and rewriting how you could get there and the details, planning on how to get there, etc, etc, etc - much of it is fruitless, but eventually you build some large overarching themes for what you want for your life.

At that point, yes, you could abandon formal goal setting and still do things mostly correctly. But it's terrible advice for most people.

Then some of it is wrong:

> The idea of having concrete, achievable goals seem to be deeply ingrained in our culture.

Something silly like 90% of people don't have concrete, achievable goals. If you don't, I'd strongly encourage you to start thinking about what you want, and writing it down, and occasionally revisiting/rewriting what you want. It'll do wonders for you.

Yes, you won't follow the plan to the letter, but you will live a more meaningful life and get more of what you want.

Eisenhower quote: "Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable."

Something silly like 90% of people don't have concrete, achievable goals.

This is true. And much of the remaining ten percent have the goal of making the other ninety percent feel ashamed of that. ;)

I skeptical of this. For one, a goodly chunk of those making people feel ashamed of not having goals are probably in the no-goals demographic themselves. Most of the ten probably have better things to do.

Spending lots of time thinking about what you want

Trouble is, my ultimate goal in life is to do this as little as possible.

Then you, unlike most people, already know what you want. If that's truly your ultimate goal that is.

It's an enviable state. My goals usually change too often to get very far with any particular one.

seriously?

Of course, you don’t actually end up getting there. Sometimes you achieve the goal and then you feel amazing. But most of the time you don’t achieve them and you blame it on yourself.

No, where the author goes wrong is believing that unmet goals == failure. The best thing to do is not drop your goals, but stop labeling yourself a failure, blaming yourself, etc... when you miss them. Sure, the only one who can "own up" to that missed goal is you, but leave it at that and don't make it a cycle of negativity.

Just a quick example -- in my HS track years I had a goal that I wanted to break 2 min for the 800m... On the best race of my senior year, I kicked a tad early and gassed out about 15m before the finish, running a 2:00.46.

It'd be quite silly to feel poorly for running the fastest 800m of my life just because I missed my goal (which also would have given me the school record).

To continue the running analogy, goals should be akin to saying "look how far I've come", not "look how far I'm from" the finish line.

'No, where the author goes wrong is believing that unmet goals == failure. The best thing to do is not drop your goals, but stop labeling yourself a failure, blaming yourself, etc... when you miss them. Sure, the only one who can "own up" to that missed goal is you, but leave it at that and don't make it a cycle of negativity.'

Exactly.

I've set out to accomplish a great many things, and have, by all accounts, failed at most of them. However, while I may have missed may goals, these pursuits lead me to accomplish other things.

Having goals is mind hack to get you off your ass and into motion, which about the only way anything happens, planned or not.

Wow! You are an elite runner. I highly recommend "Once a Runner" by John L. Parker if you have not yet read it. It just got reprinted in paperback.

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/091529701...

I agree, the goal of goals for me is to set them slightly beyond what I can realistically achieve. Then, when whatever skill I'm developing actually matters, it is more than adequate. This is the strategy I am using to train for my next marathon.

To live the way he describes, you don't need "no goals", you only need to be able to let go of goals that require steps that you're not passionate about right now. It often takes goals to get me doing things, which is good.

The trouble with goals for me comes when following a goal makes me lose sight of the greater goal, which is feeling good in a wholesome, sustainable way. I've followed external goals to the point where I became very ugly inside at points in my life. The older I get, the less I tend to abide paths that require me to step significant distances away from the greater goal -- that is, to feel bad in the present.

In a sense, I've learned to live my life by a greedy algorithm: do what feels best in the present, and don't worry too much about the future. The mathematician in me is very suspicious of this leading to optimal attainment in my life. In my better moments though, I remember that the greater goal isn't "attainment" per se, but simply the quality of feeling in the present, and those worries dissipate...

The mathematician in you should be very suspicious of any algorithm leading to optimal attainment in life.

This article is interesting but the perspective isn't balanced.

What works for one person may (and likely won't) work for another. We all work differently, we all learn differently, we're all motivated by different things. It's true that some people may fly happily through life without so much as a thought to personal or professional goals. People who do not define goals have an equal chance of being successful as those who carefully plot their course. A lot of the time, it's more about effort then it is about short term goals.

The underlying problem here is that a lot of people, some of whom are successful, don't know themselves very well. I believe that it's important to know exactly what your learning styles are, where you draw your motivation from and what makes you happy.

Personally, I record long term goals and then think (but don't write) about what it's going to take to reach them. Every day that I devote a significant amount of effort to whatever goal I'm working on, I put an X through the date on a calendar. This is surprisingly rewarding and when I see a chain of X's, I don't want to break the line. This works for me, but it might not work for anyone else.

I think the author's onto something, but unfortunately, he never comes out and says the word that could give his article some real legs.

The word is "improvise".

You can plan, you can set goals, you can track milestones, (or not, if you follow the article), but at some point you'll hit a crossroads where all you have to go on are your experience and your instincts. And then you'll have to act.

You'll have to improvise.

And to me, these moments of improvisation are where life is at. They're the moments we remember. The moments we tell stories about. The moments when success and failure are born.

Now, the author seems to be living a life of pure improvisation. That's a beautiful thing. However, it's most certainly not a goal-free thing. He's eliminated the "how" (he makes it all up as he goes along) but he hasn't eliminated the "what". He still has goals. He still has wants. Heck, his number one advice is to "follow your passions" -- and what's passion but an overwhelming desire to achieve some goal?

What he really ought to have said is, "Know yourself, know what you want, but don't tear yourself up over the logistics."

It's fine for Leo to talk about how great it is to not have any goals. What he kind of glosses over is the years of hard work and goal setting/achieving that was required for him to get to this point.

It's like a highly skilled musician telling you that he never feels the urge to take lessons and practice.... of course not. He already has the strong foundation needed to allow for his new lifestyle.

That's actually not what he's saying at all. He's saying only do the things you feel the urge to do. He says that for himself it's usually blogging.

I wonder how he blogs if he never has a goal in mind? I imagine he doesn't just write random words down. If you don't ever set goals then how do you ever create anything that requires more than a few simple steps? Surely you must have an end result in mind.

I think the message he really wants to get across is a combination of 'be more spontaneous' and 'don't be afraid to change your plans', which isn't the same thing IMO.

Do you set yourself a goal of "Get X amount of karma on Hacker News"? If not, how do you ever comment? Are you just writing random words down?

Sometimes, people just do things because they want to do them. You don't need to invoke metacognition on every single element of your day, and in fact it's rather exhausting to do so.

No that's not what I meant - let me put it another way.

Say you get the sudden urge to build a car. That will probably require weeks or months of work to complete, so it's a goal that you have to keep in mind while you do all the related jobs - sourcing parts, designing and building the bodywork, etc. If you don't set yourself that goal then what should you do instead? Purely following your day-to-day whims can leave you with a string of unfinished projects in your wake - surely just as disheartening as trying and failing at a particular goal, if not more so?

"Don't set goals, just do things" is bad advice if you find yourself wanting to create anything bigger than an afternoon's work.

"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think that this mentality is a better balance between having no plans and singlemindedly following a plan. Being flexible and willing to change your goals is an important ability.

This advice, in true zen fashion, is both good and bad.

Still, there's something about writing a blog called Zen Habits that seems rather un-Zen.

Zen Habits [...] seems rather un-Zen

You're right! I never noticed that before.

My favorite example of this phenomenon is the label I saw on a fancy candle at a friend's house: "Zensual". That is so hilariously consumeristically hedonistically oxymoronic, it's delightful: http://www.zensual.com/index.php. (I talked to an American guy who spent a year at a 12th century Zen monastery in Japan. What it was really about was managing the pain from frostbite cleaning stone floors with freezing cold water in the winter and welts from being struck on the back by senior monks with big sticks. "Zensual" indeed!)

Much of this is about the 20th century collapse of Western religious institutions, corresponding exactly, I think, with a hunger for alternative traditions to fill the resulting vaccuum. Prior to WWII this was mostly drawing on Hindu traditions; after WWII, from the Beats on, Buddhism. But these imports have been inexorably and fundamentally transformed on being drawn into our vaccuum.

A writer I like put it this way: The East never came west. What came west was a Western version of the East.

Or rather, nothing ever came west. Modern "spirituality" is just repackaged, and somewhat shallower old fashioned Western spirituality.

Otherwise, show me the western buddhist who really denies the law of excluded middle while programming. Or the western hindu who lets pests and parasites infest his property and body because "all life is sacred."

> Or rather, nothing ever came west.

That's simply not true. Asian culture had a tremendous influence, even if somewhat misunderstood or reinterpreted, on the West. Our exam system in universities is inspired by the Chinese. People like Voltaire did admire Confucius' way to (not) talk about God. Leibniz was impressed by Yi-king's numerical perfection. Etc. (I agree that the zen-this and dao-that we have nowadays is an uninformed Western distortion, though).

Edit: And I dislike the quote in the article. I read Daode Jing many time, in different translation, and I don't remember having seen this. Anyway, any quotation of Chinese classics that do not give the reference is deemed to be a joke (like those Confucius said jokes).

It's in Chapter 27 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. It's by far the most prominent recent English Dao. I like Mitchell's translations, but when he strays into editorializing he makes me cringe. (Also - an irrelevant pet peeve - he or his publishers came up with one of the most obnoxiously hubristic titles I've ever seen in "The Gospel According to Jesus").

I agree with your main point. Not only has much come West, much of value has come West. For example, I consider the Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching to be a masterpiece. Our civilization -- heck, my life -- has improved immeasurably by exposure to the Sanskrit and Chinese classics.

On the narrower point of California Buddhism and similar spiritual trends, these do seem to me to be all about rebellion against Western religion, so they're tied up (often unconsciously) in issues that have nothing to do with the models they seek to emulate. In fact both of the two great spiritual trends going on right now -- the other being aggressive atheism -- seem like attempts to fill the same void. Presumably these will give way to other trends over time. My guess (could be totally wrong) is that people will eventually rediscover their own traditions.

Someone who worked at one of the big Zen institutes in San Francisco told me that they were visited by a highly regarded Japanese teacher who walked in on a large room full of silent meditators, hung out for a while, then angrily yelled "You're all looking for God" and stormed out.

> It's in Chapter 27 of Stephen Mitchell's translation. It's by far the most prominent recent English Dao.

If we talk about the first sentence in this chapter (http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=27) I fear I can't agree. Waley's translation reads "Perfect activity leaves no track behind it", which is way too far from "A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving". The Chinese text is straightforward and the context present no difficulties. Word to word meaning is "good, walk, no, tracks" and the actual meaning is about doing things the natural way, avoiding artifices, avoiding to leave "human prints" on the world, a very common rant in Daode Jing.

Agree with the rest of your comment. I'll add the rebellion against Western religion is frightening, because those who spit on Christianism today could be the fanatics of tomorrow.

You can't agree that the sentence quoted is from Mitchell's translation? I assure you it is.

I say nothing as to whether it's accurate or not. I wish I could read the original like you. One of my dreams, in fact, is to do so someday.

"Good walk no tracks" is actually a fine translation as far as I'm concerned. It communicates a great deal, leaves a lot of interpretation out. It has that quality of mystery-combined-with-practicality which is essential to the whole book. I wish they'd publish a literal translation like that. Maybe you should!

Incidentally, can you also understand the original text of the I Ching? And commentaries on it?

The I Ching is not exactly a text, it is more like a beautifully organized list of named symbols, with their first-hand commentaries (attributed to Confucius), and comments on these comments (like in HN threads). The overall picture draws an interesting landscape of evolving configurations, but I fear some comments on the symbols may have lost their meaning, so no, I can't understand I Ching.

An exam system, Voltaire and something that impressed Leibniz don't seem very fundamental impacts to me.

The fundamental ideas in Eastern thought do not seem to have made any penetration whatsoever in Western culture.

For example, the Eastern removal of self consciousness doesn't really exist. Eastern forms of thinking haven't introduced anything new in the West. Hindu veneration for all forms of life equally doesn't exist, except perhaps for some philosophers such as Singer that most don't take seriously.

Can you point out anything truly fundamental in our culture that has come through Eastern thought?

Quite true. I think people should stop reading those "lifehacking" blogs. They just prevent you from doing things and thus keep you from gaining worthwhile insights on your own which are way more useful.(I can't stress this enough)

I have to confess that I, too, spend too much time on those websites. My conclusion is: I was a better "lifehacker" when I was 16 (quite some years ago).

The best lifehacks I have I develop myself. Perhaps not as good as someone else's lifehack, but since I developed it, it is most effective for me.

However, reading lifehacking blogs is useful in retrospect. If I identify a hack I've already developed, I now have a frame of reference from which I can learn something useful from their hack.

"Zen Habits" certainly seems like an oxymoron.

I wonder how this works out for students.

I'm in my third year of college. I love to mess around with whatever piece of tech I can get my hands on. For example, this year I've tried out Scala, MongoDB, Pylons, ArchLinux, x86_64 assembly, Tcl, and writing Python extensions in C. I've also done a fair bit of reading on compilers and virtual machines, but not enough to write one myself. Besides, of course, the usual reading I do. What do I have to show for all this? A slightly larger ~/src/. What did I learn from all this? More than I can describe in words.

I know loads of people who have a laser-beam focus. Unlike me, these people get more done. They actually finish projects. On the one hand, I would love to have made sizeable contributions to projects I'm passionate about but on the other hand, I don't think I can or even want to have that laser-beam focus. At the end of the day, I'd rather be a happy Jack-of-all-trades than an unhappy master-of-one.

Of course, I get flak for this all the time, which makes me wonder if everyone is right and I'm just too stupid to see the error of my ways.

To me, having no goal means having no particular goal, not being married to a particular outcome. It doesn't mean not working hard or ignoring opportunities. It means being flexible.

If you're on the way to pick an apple off a tree and you a diamond catches your eye on the way, you should allow yourself to be distracted for a moment. And you should not be so intent on a goal that you ignore everything else.

As a generally rule be careful of long term advice. If you can't see the result of an advice sufficiently in two weeks and you don't know a lot of people who have succeed with such advice don't take it. I'm normally open to zen habits articles, but when advice can side track you from your objectives for months it should be taken with great care.

As a generally rule be careful of long term goals. If you can't see the result of a goal sufficiently in two weeks and you don't know a lot of people who have succeed with such a goal don't follow it. I'm normally open to HN comments, but when a goal can side track you from your enjoyment of life for months it should be followed with great care.

> Consider this common belief: “You’ll never get anywhere unless you know where you’re going.” This seems so common sensical, and yet it’s obviously not true if you stop to think about it.

Obviously he’s never heard my favorite, from Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”

I don’t like the absoluteness of saying that people should have “no goal,” but I’ve very much preferred a vaguely-defined path. Getting lost is a great way to learn how to think on your feet, and adapt to opportunities as they come (and sometimes “somewhere else” is closer to where you want to be) — but having some direction or overall aim is important.

There’s wandering, and there’s wandering toward what you want / what makes you happy.

I liken it to a global search algorithm, such as simulated annealing. At a certain point the search entropy should be high, so as to avoid getting stuck in a local minima. However, at other times the search entropy should be low so the actual optimum can be found.

Yes, most of life can be explained with computer science analogies. There should be a book about this.

I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with SMART Goal setting. The basis behind SMART Goal setting is to set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic goals that can be met within a certain Timeframe.

You, and only you, should control whether or not you attain your goal. That is the only way to ensure that success is wholly dependent on your actions. I'm a big fan of goal setting as I truly believe that my life would be a chaotic mess even without a simple to do list. I get easily distract, and without goals would never actually finish what I started.

this is dumb advice.

the crux of his post is that you should follow your passions and do what you love, which is good advice, but that in no way should be an excuse for not having a disciplined, focused long-term plan to get there.

imagine a startup/business saying: "screw goals/plans and holding ourselves accountable, we'll eventually find product/market fit and achieve scale just by doing what we feel is right at the moment." very similar to personal decisions in life.

long-term goals are incredibly important because they keep you treading on the journey. of course, there's randomness in the path (unexpected events/obstacles, crazy learning curve, etc), but maintaining a long-term focus improves your odds of getting over those hurdles and getting to your destination.

now that i'm thinking about this, good re-read of pg's old post on deterimination and discipline: http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html

To all those being critical of the idea, consider this:

The only difference between a life with goals and a life without goals is the amount of guilt you put yourself through for not meeting goals. If you live a life with goals but don't make yourself feel any guilt for not reaching a goal, surprise -- it's the same thing as not having goals.

My father used to tell me "it's all about the journey, not the goal".

As a kid I thought that was silly, but as I grew older it made more sense.

As an adult, I would sum up that statement as follows: When you look back on you life, would you like to say look at all these goals I completed, or look at how much I enjoyed the journey of all my years?

Actually, looking back, the great memories are about the problems I have overcome, not the times when I was enjoying myself.

I'd like to say both of those things :-) Look at the great things I created, and look at the fun I had doing it.

Yes following your passion is always a good advice I guess, but that doesn't mean you have to stop setting goals.

It might be a cliche, but goals (when written down, reviewed daily, visualized) have more effect than just giving you direction in what you do on a day to day basis. Goals change the way you react to opportunities that arise and seem to do magic. At least that is my personal experience. Old almost forgotten goals suddenly became reality for me. My advice: do what you like most and set goals to use that passion to get results.

This article is good for sanity, but goals are necessary for business

As is the pivot.

I know where I'm going, I don't know where I'll end up.

I think the better Tao of goals is not by having non-goals, which becomes a goal itself, but by having flowing goals that change, grow, diminish, and lead to more and more branches. There are two commonly used metaphors of the Tao: seeming opposition and imitating water. I think the latter isn't given enough attention.

I think most of the comments are are missing the main point of the article: enjoy the journey instead of painfully achieving a goal. Goals are wonderful. However, I think our society is a bit too goal oriented (i.e. be a doctor, get a law degree, go for the promotion).

Have goals and enjoy the journey. Maybe I'm reading too much into the article, but that's what I got.

This is sometimes the case in computer search algorithms as well -- sometimes trying to minimize error or some heuristic of distance to the goal performs worse than just searching for things that are 'different' from previous things you've found. My PhD work is on 'novelty search' which is an evolutionary search without a goal.

I disagree with the notion that can only get what you want by looking for it from the corner of your eye, instead of looking head-on.

"Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present." --Jean de la Bruyere

Reply on news.ycombinator.com