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I have a confession to make: I don’t have goals.
Wait, what? How can I not have goals and still be doing so well? My RSS subscriber count grows daily (250 262 last time I checked), my traffic is increasing, I get blog consulting jobs, and I’m having a great time.
I’m going to tell how I do it in just a minute, but before we get into that, let’s talk about goals. It has been pounded into us that We Must Have Goals. Furthermore, these goals must be Specific. In fact, they must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based. Oooh… that sounds so awesome in a business meeting, doesn’t it?
What else have we been fed about this?
- Break large goals down into manageable, smaller objectives
- Write our goals down to make them specific
- Post them where we will see them
- Read them to ourselves every day
- Tell them to other people as a means of creating social pressure to stay committed
BULLSHIT. At least, it’s bullshit for me. Whenever I have tried to Be A Good Person and follow any of the points above, I never seem to be able to stick to my goals. Most of the time, I can’t even remember them after a while. If I have to play amateur psychological tricks on myself that don’t even work, then I’m obviously trying to do something that doesn’t work for me.
We feel guilty if we have a hard time with goals, as though we were weak-willed, or something. Well, you know, some people are just different. One of the keys to success is knowing yourself, and I know that what works for many people doesn’t work for me. And that means it might not work for you, either. Most people reading this will probably think I’m strange, and that’s fine. Some of you will feel exactly the same way, however, and you will feel that I’m speaking for you, that finally someone understands.
So, to provide a contrary point of view to all the happy-dappy goal-setting talk out there, let’s take a closer look at the above points and do some myth-busting:
Break large goals down into manageable objectives
The idea is that a goal may too big to see our way through to its completion. It is so intimidating that we can’t figure out how to even begin. So, take that large, audacious goal and turn it into a hundred little ones. I can’t think of a better way to make a mountain out of a molehill, can you? There’s another name for this, by the way: it’s called project management (and I should know, because I have managed projects and taught it to hundreds of people). If you really want to feel like a goal is impossible, go ahead and turn it into a task list that’s five miles long. No thanks!
Write our goals down to make them specific
We’re told that if you don’t write down our goals and make them specific, then we won’t know what we’re really aiming for. I say that if we have to write it down before we even know what it is, then we don’t know what we want in the first place, and we’re just making something up to fill a void. If we don’t know what we want and we can’t say it without even hesitating, then engaging in a writing exercise is just shooting blanks.
Post goals where we will see them
What for? Are we going to forget them? They must not be very important if for some reason we need to subject ourselves to self-administered propaganda in order feel okay about what we’re trying to do. Seems to me this is already an admission of failure.
Read goals to ourselves every day
Are you kidding me? What is this, some kind of magic business spell? Or are we trying to convince ourselves of something we never believed in to begin with? Remember that scene in American Beauty when Annette Benning freaks out and is quoting her ridiculous affirmations to herself? Oh yeah, I want to be just like that.
Tell them to other people as a means of creating social pressure to stay committed
If we tell others about our goals, the thinking goes, then we create an obligation to accomplish the goal or we risk the disapproval and chastisement of our friends. Better to achieve the goal than to let our friends down, right?
Let me ask you a question: do you really think other people want to be dragged into some kind of psychological game that you’re playing with yourself? Not only that, but unless your friends are at the same level of success as you or higher, they will not be of much help. And even if they are at your level or higher, they may not really want you to accomplish your goal, because your failure makes them feel better about themselves. Yes, it’s petty and twisted, but that’s how a lot of people are.
How can we get things done without goals? Desires!
So if I don’t have goals, what do I have? I have desires.
Big.
Hot.
Burning.
Desires!
I don’t have a goal to increase RSS subscribers, I have a big, hot, burning desire to increase my RSS subscribers! I don’t care how much, because it’s never enough and I want more. There is no point in thinking about numbers or rates. Whatever number I see when I check my Feedburner stats, it needs to be higher, end of story. I do not simply have a goal to speak at a blogging conference one day, I have a yearning desire to do so, like a dream that must be fulfilled. I am driven to reinvent business blogging as something new and distinct from other types of blogging. Nearly every blog I see on the internet is a blog that needs my help. This is not just a difference in semantics. Goals are artificial constructions–that’s my whole argument against them in a word. Desires, on the other hand, are natural. They come from within, from fire and passion. Ever heard of a cold desire? Me neither.
Desires must build
Unlike goals, which are artificial to me, and which must be dealt with using artificial mechanisms that feel fake (again, to me), desires are natural and must build up over time to boiling point. I experience different desires at different levels of strength within me. Several of my desires have boiled over and because of that I have been furiously working on the next version of Remarkablogger, which involves several things happening at once. I am moving towards this as naturally as a plant bends towards the light.
But other desires haven’t built up as much steam, yet. I can feel them, but they’re not matured. They’re not to the point where they must be unleashed or else. As you can see, this is very different from setting goals, but that’s how I “get things done.”
I have another confession
If you’re thinking that making desires a reality is the same as setting a goal and then achieving it, you are mostly correct. I have another confession to make: what I’m really talking about here is that this is how I set and accomplish goals. In order to get you to see it a little more like I see it, I had to commit business methodology sacrilege and blaspheme against goals. I wanted you to question some basic assumptions and teachings, shake things up a bit.
Thinking of goals as desires and not over-structuring them is a method that works for me. It’s a method that’s authentic to me. If it feels fake or like I’m trying to be something I’m not, I can’t do it. And even if I tried, my blog would suffer–you, my readers and clients–would suffer for it. And we just can’t have that. Every time you read something I write or work with me to help your blog I want you to think: this guy’s on fire!
Thanks
I want to thank Christine O’Kelly for writing about how to achieve ridiculous goals. Her post really made me reflect and think about what I do and how I do it, and I realized that the whole goal-setting thing for me didn’t work–had never worked, and that doesn’t mean I’m weak or a failure–far from it, because I’m succeeding at everything I desire to do. I was inspired by her to really think about this issue.