Goals Are For Losers

I used to agree with this, until I realized that without goals, I had nothing to really strive for. Nothing to stretch myself towards. Nothing to achieve.

To illustrate, a poor car metaphor: Your system might be to drive yourself constantly and to keep moving forward. However, without a destination, you could drive yourself around in circles and consider it to be progress by process, when you really could be driving to Brazil.

To relate this to reality, my system for a long time was to become great at programming. To become a mentor, to become someone people would look up to. Five years later, and this is all true. However, I'm still just a developer. I've become quite good at my craft (enough so that finding a mentor in my physical area is truly difficult), but I'm still just a developer. A cog in someone else's mechanism, my job and livelyhood at someone else's mercy.

Add a goal, however, of running the technical parts of the company I work for, and suddenly I have a reason to do things. To stretch myself. My days aren't filled with loosing because I don't run it all yet, but they're filled with small steps towards that goal. I'm using my processes to achieve the goal, and every step towards that goal is a win, not a loss. And that's not my final goal, either. It's just a step towards it.

The author's characterization of how people utilize goals is too broad. For many type-A personalities[1], using goals as a focal point works just fine. An ambitious student has a "goal to be a doctor" and endures 10 years of secondary education and residency to achieve it.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_personality

For other types, fixating on goals may be counterproductive. For them, shifting the emphasis to "systems & processes" instead of goals is better. (It seems like the description of "systems instead of goals" is a modern rebranding of the timeless advice about "enjoying the journey instead of the destination.")

For those where goals act more like a self-defeating hindrance instead of motivator, they can still use them in a different way: use the goal to first design the system. Then, let the concrete goal fade into the background of life. As the person works the system, achieving the goal becomes a side-effect. Instead of a goal to write The Big Novel, the "system" is to write 500 words a every day for pleasure. At the end of the year, you may get a decent full-length novel as a side-effect.

Ironically, for a so-called goal-tracking website, Beeminder's philosophy quite agrees with this. Namely, it's not about goals that you'll at some point reach and be done with. It's about setting up a system to force yourself to get inexorably awesomer day by day.

Which is also similar to the classic advice to make your goals S.M.A.R.T.(E.R.): http://blog.beeminder.com/smart & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403293

Who on earth thought it'd be a great idea to make the whole content on that webpage shift sideways as you scroll down the page? Thanks for that. I really appreciate designers making webpages more of a challenge to read.

Hyped up headline about semantics of timing of goals. Sure your longer term goals are going to be depressing and overwhelming if you don't have smaller achievable chunks that you can do today. But far from getting rid of goals they've just created a lot more little short term goals that they call a system instead. For me to achieve things it has helped to have a longer term vision of where I want to go and a shorter term series of steps about how to get there. Also to be ready for opportunity when it knocks but that is another comment.

Probably best piece of advice in here is that "80% of Happiness is easy, 5 things: eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, daydream an incredible future, flexible schedule...". Having a kid made me realize that most of the time if she's slept enough, eaten enough, has a dry diaper and some hugs she's pretty happy and the same turns out to be true of most people. If you don't take basic care of yourself you're going to have a hard time being happy.

I agree with this article and the book it is selling to a limited extent.

A mistake I made was creating goals which were grandiose, difficult to complete and focussing on those. When I did that, I definitely experienced everything that is summarised here. Eventually after untold stress I did reach that goal, but then what? Depression or a new huge goal.

It's probably okay to have those goals, but it's important not to focus on them. Set many smaller more attainable goals that lead towards reaching your larger goals and focus on those instead. You will complete goals more often and feel good more often, plus you can work towards completing small goals while still enjoying recent success.

Maybe that's what a system is though I'm not sure.

What the author calls a 'system', I think of as my 'process', but same thing really. Basically: trying to be in the moment and concentrate on one thing at a time.

Best take away: "Positive attitude - exercise, food, and sleep. Avoid overexposure to depressing news, music, movies, etc."

Seems to me a system is just a goal that's behavior-oriented, rather than results-oriented. "Make the best widget you can adhering to XYZ principles" as opposed to "Make a widget that sells 100,000 units."

Reminds me of Musk's first principles method.

"80% of Happiness is easy, 5 things: eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, daydream an incredible future, flexible schedule (do things when you want to do it)."

Hmmm, complete oppisite of me. And I daydream mainly about getting sleep.

"goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure"

Is that bad? Perhaps it's okay to fail a lot; for some, it may push them to work harder.

To quote the philosophizer Cyrus,

"Ain't about how fast I get there Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side It's the climb"