Why it’s bad to set goals

We all want to achieve something in life — get in shape, build a successful business, create a wonderful family, win the competition. For most of us, the path to these things begins with setting specific and achievable goals. Until recently, this is exactly what I did.

I set goals for everything—the educational courses I signed up for, the exercises I did at the gym, the clients I wanted to attract. But over time, I realized that there is a better way to make progress in what is important. It boils down to focusing not on goals, but on the system. Let me explain.

The difference between goals and a system

If you are a coach, your goal is for your team to win the competition. Your system is the training that the team does every day.

If you are a writeryour goal is to write a book. Your system is the book schedule you follow from day to day.

If you are an entrepreneuryour goal is to create a million dollar business. Your system is strategy analysis and market promotion.

And now the most interesting

What if you spit on the goal and focus only on strategy? Will you get results? For example, if you are a coach and your focus is not on winning, but on how well your team is training, will you still get results? I think yes.

Let’s say I recently counted the number of words in the articles I wrote in a year. It turned out 115 thousand words. On average, there are 50-60 thousand words in one book, so I wrote enough that would be enough for two books.

This was a surprise to me, because I never set goals in a writing career. Didn’t track my progress. Never said, «This year I want to write two books or twenty articles.»

All I did was write one article every Monday and Wednesday. Sticking to this schedule, I got a result of 115 words. I focused on the system and work process.

Why do systems work better than goals? There are three reasons.

1. Goals steal your happiness.

When you’re working towards a goal, you’re basically putting yourself down. You say, «I’m not good enough yet, but I’ll be when I get my way.» You train yourself to put off happiness and satisfaction until you reach your milestone.

By choosing to follow a goal, you put a heavy burden on your shoulders. How would I feel if I set myself the goal of writing two whole books in a year? The very thought of it makes me nervous. But we do this trick over and over again.

We put ourselves in unnecessary stress in order to lose weight, succeed in business, or write a bestseller. Instead, you can look at things more simply — plan your time and focus on your daily work. By thinking about the process rather than the result, you can enjoy the present moment.

2. Goals don’t help in the long run.

Do you think that thinking about a goal is a great way to motivate yourself? Then let me introduce you to the yo-yo effect. Let’s say you’re training for a marathon. Work up a sweat for several months. But then day X comes: you gave it your all, showed the result.

Finish line behind. What’s next? For many, in this situation, a recession sets in — after all, there is no longer a goal ahead that would spur. This is the yo-yo effect: your metrics bounce up and down like a yo-yo toy.

I worked out at the gym last week. Doing the penultimate approach with the barbell, I felt a sharp pain in my leg. It was not yet an injury, rather a signal: fatigue had accumulated. I contemplated for a minute whether or not to do the last set. Then he reminded himself: I do this in order to keep myself in shape, and I plan to do this all my life. Why take the risk?

If I was fixated on the goal, I would force myself to do another set. And possibly get hurt. Otherwise, the inner voice would have stuck me with reproaches: «You are a weakling, you have given up.» But because I stuck to the system, the decision was easy for me.

A systematic approach does not make you a hostage to the “die but achieve” mindset. It just requires regularity and diligence. I know that if I don’t skip workouts, then in the future I will be able to squeeze even more weight. Therefore, systems are more valuable than goals: in the end, diligence always wins out over effort.

3. Purpose suggests that you can control what you really can’t.

We cannot predict the future. But that’s what we’re trying to do when we set a goal. We try to predict where we will be in a month, six months, a year, and how we will get there. We make predictions about how fast we will move forward, although we have no idea what we will encounter along the way.

Every Friday, I take 15 minutes to fill in a small spreadsheet with the most important metrics for my business. In one column, I enter conversion rates (the number of site visitors who signed up for the newsletter).

I rarely think about this number, but I check it anyway — it creates a feedback loop that says I’m doing everything right. When this number drops, I realize that I need to add more good articles to the site.

Feedback loops are essential to building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many individual links without feeling the pressure to predict what will happen to the entire chain. Forget about forecasts and create a system that will give signals when and where to make adjustments.

Love systems!

None of the above means that goals are generally useless. But I have come to the conclusion that goals are good for development planning, and systems are good for actually achieving success.

Goals can set direction and even move you forward in the short term. But in the end, a well thought out system will always win. The main thing is to have a life plan that you follow regularly.

About the Author: James Clear is an entrepreneur, weightlifter, travel photographer, and blogger. Interested in behavioral psychology, studies the habits of successful people.