Goals are Useless.

I think this applies to both personal and professional lives, but I’ll take the personal life example on this post (so it’ll apply widely to almost all of us)

I believe Goals are silly. Their close relatives “resolutions” are far worse. I’ll explain.

Think of any lofty goals you set for yourself : To read more, to lose weight, or to run a marathon this year, or go to the gym a lot, to get to a certain (high) savings number, to take up a new hobby, to travel the world etc. In most of the cases, setting these lofty goals is followed by not hitting them. In some cases, there’s the inevitable guilt of wanting to do something but never getting to it. If you’ve ever felt that feeling (“Damn, I really wanted to achieve ‘X’ but I’m just not able to get to it”), let me state that the issue is not you, your habits, your lack of discipline, nor an inability to focus on the goals you’ve set for yourself.

It’s the goals.

Goals aren’t useful in that:

• They create constant disappointment/guilt/stress etc. until such time that they’re achieved
• They don’t inform one of the “how” to hit them
• They don’t automatically create discipline
• They don’t account for your day-to-day constraints

The one thing goals are useful for is creating focus and allocating some mental bandwidth to said goal.

What works, then? Habits. How does one build habits? Systems.

Examples of systems that fit your daily routine, yet help create habits:
System for reading: I’ll read when I am on a bus, train, cab or flight.
System for hobbies: I’ll pick up my guitar and strum some tunes every time I’m watching an NBA game.
System for travel: I’ll go to a new place every birthday.

Instead of goals, think about your broader priorities in life, such as reading, fitness, travel, blogging etc. — and use systems that can easily fit your day-to-day activities. Goals have a way creating conflicting priorities in your life (Activity X vs. Y), while systems fit right into your priorities (Activity X ‘and’ Y).

Don’t waste your time setting goals — You’ll find that you’ve magically achieved them through your systems anyway.

P.S: 100% of the credit to Scott Adams for this line of thinking in his new book.
P.P.S: I was chatting with a friend who requested my advice, as he felt he was not using his free-time as a B-school student at Harvard for learning how to build products and startups. That conversation became the motivation for writing this blog. So if you’ve wanted to startup and be your own boss, but haven’t been able to move in that direction, I really hope this line of thinking helps.