It’s Fashionable

Everyone around is saying that you need to set goals and achieve them. Then set new goals and achieve them again. If you don’t achieve them, you should feel guilty, experience a drop in self-esteem, and urgently find ways to learn how to achieve goals. There’s an even sadder scenario—falling into the other extreme and stopping doing anything altogether. The idea of achieving goals, like the idea of low-fat products in its time, is just an idea. Let’s look at a less popular approach to this theory.

Business

This approach is very important in business. How else can you measure results if not by set goals, or how can investors understand how effectively the company is developing? In business, any metric or indicator ultimately boils down to the math of net profit. All other arguments are just for show. In the simplicity of a single measure, goal-setting works well because the outcome is quite binary.

A Wonderful Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity

Setting a firm goal for yourself is a great way to become too focused on it and miss something valuable. Life constantly makes its adjustments, and changing plans on the fly is normal. This approach is more natural for cultures with a flexible approach to time planning, for example, than for Germany, but cultures with a linear approach to planning could benefit from learning a bit of flexibility.

What Instead of a Goal?

Direction. As an alternative, consider choosing a direction in which you want to move. Don’t be afraid to try something new and be ready to consider opportunities that might be “once in a lifetime.”

Theory and Real Life

Often, everything looks better in theory than in practice. Often, the authors of fairly good books contradict their own creations (it’s quite likely that the author of this blog does the same from time to time). It often turns out that training and motivational speeches work only for a short period, and then they stop. For a meaningful life, you need something solid and fundamental, something not emotional that will evaporate over time. When your desire to achieve your goals fades, taking one small step in the previously chosen direction is much easier, and achieving it will improve your well-being.

I recommend watching this TED Talk: Emmanuel Acho: Why you should stop setting goals (yes, really) | TED Talk