Goals and Motivation

The internet says so again and again and again and again: one must set goals to be successful.

My bold claim: Goals don’t work on me.

I don’t mean deadlines. I can work really hard (and also a little smart) to meet a deadline. Externally set constraints aren’t goals, though.

What I am talking about is the kind of goals everybody and their poodle is supposed to be setting for themselves nowadays.

To be clear: I know how to set goals. My goals are SMART. The SMARTest in the neighbourhood, indeed. I have my OKRs and my ONE Thing lined up perfectly. My goals have goals.

It’s just that they don’t produce the expected effect.

I’ve come to realise that missing or making my goals isn’t a source of motivation for me. Back in my business days, when my revenue figures weren’t as planned, it really didn’t keep me up at night. It merely bothered me on an abstract level, because, you know, if you set goals, you’re supposed to achieve them. I shrug, at best.

On the other hand, show me a flaw in my product or in the customer experience and I get restless. Show me a disfunctional process and my brain doesn’t let go until it’s solved or until I’m fast asleep (and then it just continues to work on it without me.)

That thing about process is important to me. I’m a systems thinker. I react to poor performance by trying to improve what I call “The Machine”. It’s the set of systems, standards and procedures that I cultivate to help me operate at a high level. In my business, those would be e.g. sales call templates and checklists, or the priorities for the week or even my method for setting those, etc. My basic assumption is: When the machine works well, goals take care of themselves.

Of course, my business ultimately failed, so you’d be forgiven to dismiss all this. I readily admit that my “Machine” wasn’t there yet. But I do think I’ve been rather successful overall over the course of my career, so maybe I’m not doing it completely wrong either.

So at some point I decided that missing my goals will not make me feel bad and that’s all right. Maybe goals simply aren’t the silver bullet for everyone. (I do however think all poodles should set goals for themselves.)

I guess this all makes me a rather poor manager but a strong creator and organiser.

Why do I still set goals, then? Because it’s a useful planning exercise. In the words of Eisenhower:

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

In setting goals, I have to think about what I really want to achieve and what are effective and realistic ways of getting there. That thinking is invaluable.

But once I’m done with that?

I send my goals off to find a poodle to torture instead.