Goals are guardrails

Last updated on August 14th, 2022 at 09:47 am

Should you set goals?

The problems with goals are well-documented.

• Goals end. When they do, people feel empty. Then they revert to their previous state. Land your dream job? A week later you’re back on LinkedIn. Lose 30 pounds and celebrate with pancakes. Accumulate a million in the bank, and wonder why you’re still not satisfied.
• Goals delay happiness. By setting goals you’re saying, “when I reach that milestone, then I’ll be happy.” Happiness is a state only the future you deserve. The current you? Back to the grindstone.
• Goals incentivize short-term thinking. Goals lead to tunnel vision. You’re tempted to hit that goal – no matter what. So you start cutting corners and juking stats.

There’s a popular line of thinking: instead of goals, we should focus on habits and systems. Habits and systems are better because when done well, they happen automatically. Little or no will power required! Work the system and the system will work for you.

But as Nat Eliason points out:

Here’s the problem. We can’t discuss what it means to improve a system without some idea of what improvement means. And it’s easy to get stuck in short-term planning if you try to think about improvement without goals to shape your thinking.

To expand on this: systems and goals are both just tools.

A system is how you reach the desired state.

Goals are the guardrails keeping you moving towards the desired state.

Like any tool, goals are in the hands of the wielder to use or abuse. It’s your responsibility to create a healthy relationship with your goals. Here are some ideas on how to do that:

Keep a constellation of goals

A handful of related goals are powerful guardrails for your time. I think 5-7 is the right number: enough so you always find one area to make progress in. But not so many where you’re spread too thin.

Everyone’s constellation of goals should include health, relationships, and money. Ideally, you reach a baseline level for each of these goals first. Why?

Because it’s hard to focus on other goals if you’re worried about making this month’s rent. And what good is accumulating money if you don’t have people you love to share it with? Of course, none of it matters if your health is in tatters (e.g. “a healthy person wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.”)

Calvin Rosser shared his goal-setting framework in his Doing Time Right course. The constellation of goals he used aligned with how I thought about mine, so I copied it.

• Career
• Long Term Goals
• Learning
• Relationships
• Leisure
• Health
• Finances

I track these in a spreadsheet, scoring my progress at the end of the week.

A constellation of goals works because at any moment, you can always make progress in some area of your life. Depending on your current priorities (more on that below) time on leisure is as valuable as time at work.

Keep score

Researchers wanted to understand the effect tracking had on weight loss. So in a study, they paired one group with wearable step trackers and another group without. They didn’t give extra instructions about diet, exercise, or habits.

The result: Those with the wearables saw an average 1% increase in body weight lost. They were also more likely to lose 5% body weight.

The takeaway: keeping score matters. It doesn’t matter what you’re scoring. Keeping score keeps you accountable.

If you’re going to use your goals as guardrails for how you spend your time, it’s important to track something. Using some of the goals above, here are ideas to keep score:

• Health: weight loss, steps taken, exercise sessions per week
• Leisure: books read, hikes completed, hours outside
• Relationships: phone calls made, positive interactions, date nights planned

I like breaking down the score throughout the year. So I have a “North Star” goal for the year. Then whenever practical, I break this down into goals for the quarter, month, and week.

For some, keeping score causes more anxiety than it’s worth. The trick is not getting emotionally invested in a goal. This is why we keep a constellation of goals. It helps you focus on your progress on all goals in the aggregate, and less on any individual goal at a single moment.

Continuous Prioritization

You have a constellation of goals. You’re keeping score. Great.

But now it’s time to go pick up the kids, and you’re still behind at work. You haven’t made it to the gym all week. You have drinks scheduled this weekend, but you just want to watch Season 3 of Vikings on Netflix.

How do you decide what goal to work on right now?

Through continuous prioritization.

Elena Verna explained this best. She spoke specifically in the context of managing career and family life, but the idea is generalizable:

“It’s not about balance, it’s about prioritization. You have to prioritize on an hourly, daily, weekly basis. Becoming a parent makes you optimize every minute of your day.”

I prioritize in two steps:

First, I review my constellation of goals and ask: if I only made progress on one goal today, which would I choose? That’s where I start.

Then, throughout the day I’m continuously prioritizing. Meetings come up, fires need putting out. When I task switch, I ask myself:

• What’s most urgent and important?
• What matches my current energy level?
• What matches my available time?
• Where can I add the most value?

Optimization

Most of us treat goal setting as a momentous occasion. We start on December 30th. Or on our birthday. We make vague promises about “doing better” this year. We’re optimistic about the next 365 days.

Then, unfortunately, the first time we revisit any of these goals is 360 days later. And to no one’s surprise, we made no progress.

That’s like glancing at Google Maps once before a road trip. Then trying to drive cross country without a second look.

What works better? Frequent check-ins on your progress towards your goals, making optimizations along the way. For example:

Let’s say your Relationship goal is reconnecting with your parents. You decide you’ll call home once a week, but you haven’t spoken in two weeks. Why? The first week you forgot. Why did forget? It wasn’t on your calendar.

The second week, you called and there was no answer. Why did no one pick up? Your parents didn’t know you were going to call.

So the incremental change you might make here: schedule time with your parents beforehand. Then put that on your calendar so you don’t forget.

That’s a simple example, but that’s the point. Optimization by definition is a series of small changes. 

How do you incorporate regular optimization into your life? Some steps that help:

• Daily check-ins. I set an alarm to check in with myself at noon and 9:30 pm. I ask myself two questions: What’s going well? How could I make it better? This usually takes about 2 minutes each time.
• Weekly retros. On Friday morning, I do a retro of my week: What did I say I was going to do, and what progress did I make? If I fell short, why?
• Look for optimizations. Looking at where I fell short, I ask: How can I improve next time? Usually, the answer is simple: add an extra reminder, budget 30 more minutes, put away my phone. If it’s a bigger challenge, I’ll ask myself: How can I free up more time, automate a solution, or pay to make this problem go away?

You are not your goals

Goals get a bad rep because it’s easy to let our identity and self-worth get wrapped up in whether we achieved them.

But you are not your goals.

You are not a blue verification checkmark. You are not your number of subscribers. You are not your role.

Once we’ve internalized that, it becomes easier to use goals.

Goals are a tool. When used properly, they are the guardrails that move you towards your desired state.

They give direction to how you spend your time, shut out the barrage of FOMO from your social feeds, and focus you on what’s important.

Goals keep you focused on playing and winning your own game.

Sources

Image: Nightmare Alley directed by Guillermo del Toro. A slow burn but the end justified the means. And a beautiful film to boot. Bradley Cooper’s career trajectory has been such a delightful surprise.