Goal Obsession
“What is your goal?” is a powerful question to focus efforts towards achieving worthwhile things. Goals help us prioritize actions and resolve dilemmas as they arise — we can simply focus on actions that move us closer to our goals. Whether or not we achieve our goals (deliver the results we committed to), goals provide a sense of direction that creates motivation for individuals or groups to coordinate their efforts in a meaningful direction.
Most organizations set annual and quarterly budgets for revenues, market shares and profits that serve as the starting point for channelizing resources in specific areas. Without such targets to aim at, it would be very difficult to coordinate the day-to-day activities of thousands of employees working in different functional areas and geographical locations. Even at a personal level, we set goals like how many kilos we wish to lose or the number of books we wish to read every year or the number of blog posts to publish. These goals provide a motivation to focus on personal improvement in areas that are important to us.
However, despite their obvious usefulness and importance, too much emphasis on goals could lead to tunnel vision where we lose sight of the bigger picture. We often forget that specific and measurable goals (SMART goals, if you wish to call them that) are not ends in themselves but rather proxies for something meaningful we want to achieve.
Marshall Goldsmith, the renowned executive coach, puts it succinctly in his book “What got you here won’t get you there”:
Goal obsession is the force at play when we get so wrapped up in achieving our goal that we do it at the expense of a larger mission.
Goal obsession plays out in multiple ways. You could fail to validate your goal against your original objective, in which case the goal ceases to be an effective proxy for what you wanted to achieve. For example, you wanted to improve your health and decided that losing 10 kilos was your goal towards becoming healthier. However, in the quest to hit that numerical target, you worked out so hard that you ended up damaging a muscle or joint (making you less healthier). Or you ate so little that you felt exhausted and lost your mental composure more often, leading to anxiety and stress (losing your mental health).
Another way is where you misunderstand what you want in life. In this case, you might focus on one area of your life while neglecting another vital area. For example, you may want to ensure financial security for your family and end up working long hours to earn more. You think that financial security will make you and your family happier. However, in this quest to maximize earnings, you neglect the very family for whom you are earning. You might miss out on important moments that you could spend together with your loved ones. In the worst case, you might alienate your family so much that they no longer consider you as family.
A third way in which goal obsession plays out is when we misunderstand what others want us to do. For example, your boss might insist on a certain rather unrealistic revenue growth target. In this case, when it appears that we will miss the target, you might be tempted to adopt questionable or dishonest methods of hitting the number. This tendency would be further amplified if you have a specific incentive (monetary or otherwise) to achieve the target. In other words, the honorable pursuit of a difficult goal set by someone else could transformed you into a cheater, compromising personal values to please others. And all along, your boss might have wanted to actually improve earnings but assumed that earnings improvement could only come from revenue growth!
Goal obsession is about chasing the spotlight. It’s about being under pressure to meet deadlines and deliver on targets that seem important. You feel that you are keeping the promises you made to yourself or others through sheer diligence, discipline and willpower; something that feels right and honorable as we are working on it. And that is why it is important to periodically reflect upon our work and match it up against our values and the life we want to live.
I personally avoided being obsessed with my goal (to publish one article per week) for the last three weeks as I was adjusting to my newly married life. I could have probably stolen a few minutes or even a hour or two here and there to write a few hundred words as I was traveling with my family. In fact I even did that for a few days but then realized that I was compromising on my writing quality as well as missing out on creating memories that will last for years to come. I realized that the objective of this blog is not to write a certain number of posts or hit a certain viewership number but to write something that adds value to my readers and also improves my abilities as a writer. And so I happily abandoned writing for 3 weeks, knowing that something more important deserved my undivided attention.
The next time you feel the pressure to trade-off an important aspect of life for hitting a numerical target, take the time to reflect on whether you are being goal obsessed. And if you feel you are, relax and take pleasure in missing the goal. Then, like Douglas Adams, you could say, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.”
