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A colleague of mine, Christian Knutson, of the excellent and highly recommended The Engineer Leader blog, recently sent me an article by Leo Babauta. The title is “Achieving without goals“. Leo, who’s the master of all things Zen and living life simply, argues that you should live without goals.
I think this is ridiculous. Let me explain why.
A life without goals
Yeah – that’s right. He says we shouldn’t have goals.
Basically, Babauta is saying that goals tend to get in the way of living life in a way that you can enjoy it. You do things you wouldn’t normally do in the name of “achieving your goals”. If you didn’t have goals, the argument goes, you could focus your day-to-day life on doing things that line up with your principles. That way, you would always live a life of fulfilment.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea here, but I think Leo’s missing something here.
Mission, Vision, and Planning
Imagine you’re the CEO of a startup. You’ve got a compelling vision for your business, and a strong sense of purpose – a mission. You think “Great! Now I just need money to make it happen.” So, like the good little entrepreneur you are, you head off to your local bank in search of funding.
What’s the first thing Mrs. Banker wants to see? A business plan. “Oh no, Mrs. Banker! I don’t have a plan. But I DO feel VERY strongly about how important my work is.”
Guess what? Mrs. Banker doesn’t care. You need a plan.
The same thing applies to life. It’s critical to have a mission and vision for your life. No doubt about that. Stephen Covey goes into that very idea in great depth in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
You need a mission and a vision for your life, but you also need goals to turn those ideas into actions.
The importance of goals
You need goals for a number of reasons. They:
- Help you to take action in life
- Give you a way to measure progress towards your vision
- Help you take control of life
- Help you focus your energy
- Help you to accomplish big things
- Help you to overcome the small inconveniences of life
Babauta argues that life is too random for your goals to have much meaning. Given the vast number of variables you can’t readily take into consideration, you can never really plan appropriately.
I can’t argue against that entirely. Life is random. You can’t have it all planned out to the last detail. I do believe, however, that you need a destination in mind to know if you’re moving forward. If the landscape changes, it will be your goals that keep you straight and true.
Your goals
What are your personal and professional goals? Tell us about them in the comments section below.
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I am not too familiar with what Zenhabit teaches, but I am familiar with the minimalist lifestyle, which seems to connect with Zenhabits.
Part of the minimalist lifestyle is setting up your life so it revolves around what you find important, what makes you happy, and what is actually important. When most people make goals, they are simply saying they will work hard to achieve x. With the new mindset, you would just work hard at that thing because it is what you want to do and you don’t have to reach x to be satisfied. It is not only a terminology change, but also the way you phrase it and how it resonates in your mind.
People make goals such as:
“I want to read x books this year”
“I want to lose 50 lbs in 6 months”
“I want to learn x topics this year”
“I want to be the best engineer in my company”
But a year later, what happens when you miss your goal? Are you upset? Did you really work at it and still miss the goal? Was the goal actually achievable?
If you change your life to be focused on what you find important, then these goals will happen naturally. You do not have to set a goal to lose 50 lbs is 6 months, you just eat healthy, exercise, and the weight will follow without any target or goal to miss.
And you don’t need to try to become the best leader or engineer, you just like those topics, study them, and learn them. There is no competition against other people, competition against yourself, or competition against an arbitrary value. You know you worked hard, because that is exactly what you wanted to do, and you learned as much as you can in that time.
In the end, you are happier with no goals. You set the goal to read 12 books this year, but work became busy and other important things came up. Do you change your goal and feel some failure? Do you try to rush to 12, miss it, and feel like failure? Or do you just read as much as life allows and at the end of the year if you read 5 or 20, you are happy because you know you took advantage of as much reading time as you could?
You can still call some of these things “goals”, but it is about changing your mindset and wording so they just become part of your life.
Hi JG,
Thank you so much for your commentary. You make some interesting points. I think what you’re arguing is that what’s most important in reaching goals is to set up your life such that it becomes almost inevitable that you reach them. It just becomes the way you operate. Is that the gist of it?
If yes, then I think that’s a very compelling way to look at things. You’re right that there are many factors outside of the realm of our control, and that sometimes we miss goals through no fault of our own. It’s important to recognize that and not view every missed goal as a personal failure.
Again – thanks for your comments! I really appreciate it.
Pat
On the most basic level, that is exactly what I am arguing, but it takes a lot to get to that level. Most people set goals for things they want to accomplish, but never get around to it. The goal setting to goal failure cycle continue on and it is not healthy mentally.
One part of the minimalist idea is to put the important stuff in focus and get rid of the distractions. You also really need to think about what the distractions are, because sometimes it is things you don’t think about (things you own, things you want, poisonous relationships, time wasting activities).
The first part of the process is to evaluate what is really important in your life and what is holding you back. Eliminate those things, simplify your life, and put happiness first.
Take your house for example. People (in general) treat a house as a status symbol, same as an expensive car, clothing, or watch. But does it interfere with your goals? Do you spend time maintaining and cleaning your house that could be spent working on other things that would actually make you happy? Do you spend money on your house (repairs, mortgage, insurance) that could be spent on things that make you happy?
Maybe in the end you realize you don’t need the 4 bedroom, 3 bath house to be happy (you really don’t), but can get a smaller house, apartment, or condo, and be even happier.
I’m not there completely, but I am moving in that direction. (I already have the small house when I could have gone much bigger). I’m slowly eliminating things I did that I thought I liked (fancy dinners out), but realized I hated. Same thing with watching television. I limit how much I watch because it distracts me from things I really want to do. I limit how much I work, even though I love my job, but I’d rather watch my son grow up because time goes fast.
Try to visualize the end of your life, laying there sick, and not knowing if you will survive another day? What becomes important to you? Is it that you live in a big house? Spent your entire life working 60 hours weeks and missed all your kid’s sports games or never got to travel? Probably not.
This thought process is also not one where you end up saying, “I never want to work” but one where you end up saying “I wish I could have done x job all my life.” This is incredibly powerful for people who completely hate their jobs, who just suffer through because they need the money to pay for stuff.
I have a job I love now (in engineering), so I no longer understand the excitement about hump day, or that it is Friday, or the phrase “working for the weekend.” In fact, I feel sad for those people.
Pretty great article! I guess it depends on the person of course – considering most people set goals that have no personal relevance to them. The truth of that matter is A LOT of the time – goals can do more harm than good. Here’s a pretty cool article outlining it:
7 Reasons Why Goals Don’t Work
Hey, interesting post. In my experience, which is a mere 23 years, I have found that having goals is in fact very important in life fulfillment and building as a person. Not achieving goals does tend to bring on discouragement but that’s part of life. It’s important to have long-term goals to set you in a direction that you want to follow and short-term goals that take you along those paths. The advice that I have been given that helps you avoid massive disappointment and helps you keep moving toward your goals is to celebrate your tiny victories and to enjoy the process. Acknowledgement of these small wins and having long-term goals not only gets you to where you want to be faster but overall it helps you maintain a better attitude and higher self-confidence. Not to mention this allows you to help as many people as possible along the way,
Thanks for the post and keep up the good work!
Ken
http://www.unchartedengineering.com
Hey Ken,
Thanks for your comments! Much appreciated. Great advice for sure! Goals are an incredibly important part of my life, too. But, it’s important not to focus myopically on goals without regard for the bigger picture. People and businesses alike should be guided by foundational principles – a raison d’etre, and goals should, ideally, align with those foundations.
You should send me an email some time. I’ve read through your blog and you’ve got some great stuff there. We should talk about collaborating some time!
Thanks again,
Pat