If You Want To Succeed, Stop Thinking About Goals
Setting goals can be problematic for some people, myself included. The issues begin when you realize that setting goals mean that you are also defining your own failures. Then, you run into the problem that many goals require you to go from 0-10 by tomorrow. You might be able to force that for a short time, but almost inevitably, you will fall back to your baseline and struggle to start again.
You will get stuck in the trap of defining your goals in terms that end up being either too broad or too narrow.
You might say, “my goal is to lose weight.” But what exactly does that mean? Do you want to eat healthier or do you want to exercise more? How much weight do you want to lose? When do you want to lose it by? Etc.
If you cannot answer these questions, you are setting yourself up for failure. It will be too easy to neglect your plans and forget about the goal altogether.
If you set your goal too narrow with something like, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds in 30 days,” you will become too focused on the outcome to appreciate the importance of the process. You will be more worried about hitting your desired outcome than actually implementing changes that last. Even if you successfully lose the 10 pounds, what comes next? Do you try to lose another 10? Do you try to maintain your new weight?
Chances are you will get stuck in a perpetual cycle that never addresses the underlying issues that made you want to change in the first place. You will be chasing one benchmark after another and you will likely never quite find your footing on anything stable.
This is why it is important to create systems to help you toward your goals.
Systems vs Goals
I came across Scott Adams’ principle of systems instead of goals while reading Tim Ferriss’ incredible book, Tools of Titans. In the book, Tim Ferriss outlines Adams’ principle as follows,
“This [using systems instead of goals] involves choosing projects and habits that, even if they result in ‘failures’ in the eyes of the outside world, give you transferable skills or relationships. In other words, you choose options that allow you to inevitably ‘succeed’ over time, as you build assets that carry over to subsequent projects.”
My interpretation: goals can present obstacles in progress because they represent fixed objectives that are quickly discarded upon failure, or require constant updates once one has been attained. Systems on the other hand, though they can be created with goals in mind, emphasize the process rather than the endpoint.
If we apply my interpretation to the example of weight loss, instead of setting a goal of just losing weight or losing 10 lbs in 30 days, a more appropriate goal would be living a healthier lifestyle.
The system you create to progress toward a healthier lifestyle would include implementing a few new habits such as healthier eating and regular exercise. From there, you can experiment with new activities and expand your system as you see fit. Maybe, you take up yoga or meditating or get back into that sport you used to play.
This way you are not focusing on a short-term change, but rather a long-term strategy to merge your system into your day-to-day life.
If you can follow this system on a regular basis, you will naturally lose the weight you wanted to and you will continue to progress far beyond any one-dimensional goal.
Scott Adams’ Systems Application
Scott Adams started blogging as a system for writing. When he began, he was already a very successful cartoonist, having created the Dilbert comic strip. But he wanted to develop a skill that he thought might serve him well in the future. He outlined this system in a blog post, saying:
“Writing is a skill that requires practice. So the first part of my system involves practicing on a regular basis. I didn’t know what I was practicing for, exactly, and that’s what makes it a system and not a goal. I was moving from a place with low odds (being an out-of-practice writer) to a place of good odds (a well-practiced writer with higher visibility).”
He went on to explain that the second part of his blogging system makes use of the dedicated and captive audience he has accumulated over time. He is able to experiment with different voices and topics to test what works and what doesn’t, based on the feedback he receives.
Eventually, the Wall Street Journal contacted him to write a series of features that became very popular. He knew how to write and what to write about because he had been practicing on his blog. The success of the articles, along with his blog, lead to a book deal that has since turned into many books, speaking engagements, and business opportunities.
Rather than focusing on the goal of becoming an author, Adams focused on improving his skill in writing. He didn’t have an end goal in mind when he began blogging. He just figured it would be useful to become more adept at long form communication. He was already creative and successful, but he lacked experience in writing more than a few pieces of dialogue in a cartoon strip.
The payoff for his blogging system took years to materialize, but when it did, it was well worth the time he invested.
My Personal Application
Through the bulk of my adult life, I have struggled mightily with formulating goals and defining a general direction to take. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I took the time to just write down anything that came to mind. I split these ideas into 3 different categories which I borrowed from Tools of Titans and which Tim Ferriss borrowed from Benjamin Franklin.
Those 3 categories are health, wealth, and wise. I decided these would be the pillars that I build my life around. They are distinct enough to encompass the different areas of my life that I want to improve. But they are also just ambiguous enough to mean whatever I personally want them to mean.
It was at about the same time that I discovered Scott Adams’ principle of systems. I took this principle and tried to apply it where I could on my list of plans and goals. There were many that weren’t applicable because I was too vague or too specific, but I just wanted to start small and build from there.
Over the past few months I have tested a few different systems; some of which I have amalgamated into daily, or at least almost daily, practices. The three I’ve come to focus on are
1. Writing
This system I stole directly from Scott Adams.
I always enjoyed writing growing up, but I stopped after finishing University. I would think about starting again only to get stuck thinking of what I should write about or if I even had anything worthwhile to say. I came to realize that what I am writing, or why I am writing it, is not important. What’s important is the act of writing itself.
So, on March 7th, 2017, four months before I scribbled down any goals or knew who Scott Adams was, I challenged myself to write 200 words a day for 200 days. On October 26th, 233 days and 126 212 words later, I finished the challenge. It wasn’t perfect, but I made it all the way to the end.
I learned a lot about myself through what essentially became daily journaling. There was some reflecting, some prophesying, and definitely some long-winded recounts of mundane daily life.
But I realized that there is a big difference between writing for yourself, with no expectations that anyone else read it, and writing for an audience. The latter is a hell of a lot more difficult. If I want to really progress with my skills, I need to write with purpose.
That is why I am writing this now. I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my writing, but I think it is a vitally important skill to develop.
So, until I figure out if and how I want to use writing for money or meaning, I will continue to write about what comes to mind and see where it takes me.
2. Reading Out Loud
I created this system for a couple different reasons.
The first being to help to improve my writing. I read somewhere that a good strategy to improve your own writing, beyond just reading a lot, is to find the best writers and read their work aloud. It allows you to better explore a writer’s voice and style as they intended it. I have found this to be especially true with fiction books.
The second purpose of reading out loud as a system is to develop my speaking voice. I am trying to focus on things like enunciation, sentence flow, and eliminating verbal tics.
There are tons of words that I can read perfectly in my head but can’t quite get out of my mouth when reading out loud. One of those words was ‘peculiar’. I would consistently trip over it as I was reading, so I’d stop and move it around my mouth and get a better feel for it. Now I can ride from that C to that U all day.
I’m not sure if it just one of the apparent afflictions of millennials, or a sign of a society-wide degradation of communication, but filler words such as like, um, uh, you know, have become rampant across western culture. I am not immune from leaning on speech tics, so I read out loud in an effort to train myself to become more articulate and thoughtful in how I communicate using spoken words.
Luckily, my girlfriend enjoys when I read to her, so I am able to practice with an audience. However, she does not enjoy when I stop to say ‘peculiar’ 3 times every time I see it.
3. Pull ups
The first goal I set for myself before I began applying systems was to successfully do 8.5 dead hang pull ups in a row by the end of the year. I started the year barely being able to do one. When I set this goal in July, I could do maybe four. I thought about setting the goal at 10, but doing more than double what I could do at the time seemed like a stretch.
As I said before, the problem with setting goals is defining failures, and I do not do well in the face of failure. I set the bar for what I deemed an achievable 8.5 pull ups and continued to the next idea. Two months later and I had not made any significant improvement. I would do pull ups now and then but there was never any consistency.
I decided to rethink my approach. I asked myself why I set the goal in the first place. I had never been good at them before and I saw it as a sign of overall weakness. Being 26 years old, I told myself I should be moving toward better physical condition and not headed the other way. My struggle with pull ups was a pressure point for this insecurity.
I realized that achieving a specific number of pull ups was not the actual outcome I was looking for. I didn’t want to be able to do 8.5 pull ups; I wanted to be stronger.
With this in mind, I stopped focusing on doing 8.5 pull ups in one set and instead began doing a minimum of 20 a day, in sets of whatever I could muster.
I have been using this approach for two months. When I push myself I can now reach 9 in a row (but only once followed by a long water & wander break). The fact that I achieved my goal doesn’t even matter anymore. I have shifted my focus to use pull ups as a system to build strength rather than as a means to prove to myself that I am strong enough to reach an arbitrary number.
Don’t Forget Your Dreams
With all I have said of the benefits of using systems rather than goals for personal improvement, I would be doing a disservice not to say that I think having a plan for your life is incredibly important.
I have struggled with overcoming fear and defining purpose in my life. For a long time, I looked for an external source to show me the way. I was longing for some sort of passion to come into my life, but I wasn’t willing to look for it. I got stuck blaming the world for my lack of opportunities while I sat idly by.
It has only been over this past year that I have come to realize that nobody is going to save me. No one is responsible for my success or happiness other than me.
If you want something in life you have to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. You have to foster the will and discipline to create positive change and move toward where ever it is that you want to go.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson says, “you see what you aim at.”
If you don’t take the time to think about where you want to be or what you want to achieve, then your life will never change. Try to visualize a future you would be proud of and then trace back the steps to determine what skills will help you get there.
It is my belief that the best way to try to get what you want from life is to implement systems that will increase the probability of those things happening.
Change that lasts comes slowly.
Just slowly begin working toward your goals. Create a system to keep you improving well into the future. Focus on what you can do today to help yourself become better, and in time, you might just become the person you always hoped you would be.
If you enjoyed the ideas I outlined here, I highly recommend you check out Tim Ferriss’ Podcast episode #106 with Scott Adams, and also Scott’s book containing the original incarnation of the principle of systems, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.
Originally written & posted Nov 30, 2017
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