Back in 2010, I set a bold goal for myself. I took one of my websites and decided that I wanted to publish over 100 articles on it that year. I decided that by doing this, my goal was to accumulate more than a million readers by the end of the year.
To do this, I decided to take what, at the time, had been a modestly successful blog, and turn it into a kind of men's magazine for millennials. I found half a dozen people to write articles for me. I redesigned the site. I created a pipeline of content that would feed directly through me and be posted every other day. In my mind, I was building the foundations of my empire, a new brand to appeal to the sensibilities of the young, internet-savvy male.
It didn't even take three months for me to shut the whole project down. I deleted half of the new content written by others. I reverted the website back to the old blog. And I continued publishing at a meager pace.
Most would look at my abandonment of my goals that year as an unmitigated failure. But I look back and see that as one of the most valuable goals I ever set for myself. I will explain why later in this piece.
There are a million articles on the internet about how to set goals and how to achieve them. And sure, I will cover some of that here. But I want to propose something far more subtle yet far more important: Often the strategic failure of our goals can be far more valuable than their achievement.
How goal setting can help you
Goals give us something to look forward to, they give us direction. Goals help us track and measure our progress and understand our shortcomings. Goals are popular for a reason: they work.
Specific goals are best for external pursuits
Probably the most popular way to use goals — and the way you've used them in your own life — is to pursue a specific result.
I want to be an author, so I set a goal to write a book by the end of the year. I want to have financial freedom, so I set a goal to be debt-free by 2022. I want to look good naked, so I set a goal of losing 20 lbs before beach season.
Setting specific, measurable goals works extremely well in helping us achieve tangible, external achievements. This is one of the more robust findings in the research on goals.
Specific goals act as a sort of GPS for your life. And just like the GPS on your phone needs a specific destination to be useful, external goals really only work when you have a specific outcome in mind.
When you set specific goals, they become measurable and actionable, which then allows you to track your progress. These are sometimes referred to as "SMART Goals."
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound
General goals are best for internal pursuits
Alright, so throw a fucking parade for specific goals. They got us to the moon, built the pyramids, invented Disneyland. What's not to love about specific goals? Well, specific goals are great. The problem is that sometimes what we want is not specific.
For example, if I want to be a better writer, how do I actually measure that? Website traffic? Book sales? Glowing emails in my inbox telling me what a Grade A badass I am?
This is where we get into trouble with goals. Because if I decide that "website traffic = being a good writer," well, there are a lot of shady ways to build website traffic that don't involve good writing.
This shows us that the best goals are the ones that help us enjoy the process instead of focusing too much on the outcome. You need both general and specific goals to do that. You need the specific outcome to get you excited ("I'm going to earn a million dollars!"). But you also need the general goal ("I'm going to become better at my work") to stabilize that specific outcome and keep your self-esteem intact.
How goal setting can harm you
There's a dark side to goal-setting that is rarely discussed. And if you're not careful, you may succumb to it.
The reason goal setting works so well is that by focusing on one particular pursuit or measurement, you become better at shutting out the things that don't matter or don't help you. But, like anything in life, you can take this to an extreme.
Setting goals that aren't aligned with your values
One of the biggest traps people fall into is holding onto and pursuing goals that don't serve their core values.
Some people value achievement and self-improvement. Others value their intimate relationships. Others value having an impact on the world or creating communities. It's important to figure out your values before you start setting your goals so you don't screw yourself up.
Fuck other people's goals. Live out your values. You need to make sure your goals are for yourself, not for others.
Setting goals that create worse outcomes
Another mistake a lot of people make is setting goals that actually make their problems worse, not better. The means with which you pursue your goals are often just as important, if not more important, than the goal itself.
How to pursue goals intelligently
Balancing specific and general goals
The kinds of goals we set can have a big impact on how satisfied we are if and when we achieve them. Focusing exclusively on external, specific goals can make you feel like shit because they are value-neutral.
Balancing difficult goals with easy goals
Similar to the way that our external goals need to be balanced by internal goals, our incredibly difficult and ambitious goals need to be balanced with simpler, smaller goals. There's a bit of a Goldilocks phenomenon with goal setting — too hard and you lose motivation, too easy and the goal feels meaningless. This is why it's best to take an ambitious goal and break it down into easier, more attainable chunks.
Putting it all together
So we've learned that we should ground our external, specific goals with internal goals that reflect our values. We've learned that we should break down difficult, long-term goals into more attainable micro-goals. And we've learned that our goals should be ambitious but not so ambitious that they seem unattainable.
Putting it all together it would look something like this:
- What are things you value that you wish you had more of in your life?
- What general goals will help you maximize those values?
- What is an ambitious, external, specific goal that will help you achieve that general goal?
- What are smaller, easier goals that will make the ambitious goal more attainable?
Write that shit down. Pin it up somewhere you can see it regularly. And get to work.
When failing is more valuable than succeeding
Let's be honest for a second. We are bad at knowing what will make us happy. We are also bad at knowing what is doable and what is not. We're bad at predicting what sacrifices we're willing to make. Therefore, it's safe to say that we're going to be bad at choosing goals that actually serve us.
This is why it's sometimes more valuable to fail at a goal than to succeed — the failure teaches us what we should be pursuing instead.
The value of our goals is not in what we accomplish, but in the direction they give us. Goals orient us towards what we'd like in life and give us a little kick in the ass to start moving towards it. But if we discover on the way that actually, wedon't want that goal in our life, then we should drop it!
People who show flexibility in their goals turn out waaaaaay better than people who rigidly pursue their goals, especially when those goals aren't working out.
Remember, goals are just made up markers in your head. No one is grading you. No one is punishing you if you don't hit them. They're only as valuable as the benefits they bring to your life. So if they're not benefiting you, then drop them!