What to Focus on Instead of Goals?--by James Clear
We
all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better
shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a
best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.
And
for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and
actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I
would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the
gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.
What
I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting
things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there
is a much better way to do things.
It
all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.
Let
me explain.
The Difference Between Goals and Systems
What’s
the difference between goals and systems?
* If you’re a coach,
your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at
practice each day.
* If you’re a writer,
your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you
follow each week.
* If you’re a runner,
your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the
month.
* If you’re an entrepreneur,
your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and
marketing process.
Now
for the really interesting question:
If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your
system, would you still get results?
For
example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a
championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day,
would you still get results?
I
think you would.
As
an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I’ve written
this year. (You can see them all here.)
In the last 12 months, I’ve written over 115,000 words. The typical book is
about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have written enough to fill two books this
year.
All
of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn’t
measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count
goal for any particular article. I never said, “I want to write two books this
year.”
What
I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after
sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I
focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed
the same (or perhaps better) results.
Let’s
talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.
1. Goals reduce your current happiness.
When
you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough
yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”
The
problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put
happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach
my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”
SOLUTION:
Commit to a process, not a goal.
Choosing
a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it
my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me
out.
But
we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves
to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel.
Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily
process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big,
life-changing goals.
When
you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present
moment and improve at the same time.
2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.
You
might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s
not always true.
Consider
someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months,
but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to
finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no
longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a
particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?
This
can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working
on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build
upon your progress for the long-term.
SOLUTION:
Release the need for immediate results.
I
was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of
clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It
wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout.
For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded
myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a
day.
In
a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish
the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t
reach it, then you feel like a failure.
But
with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based
thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the
process and not missing workouts.
Of
course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights
in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are
about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the
end, process always wins.
 3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.
You
can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)
But
every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be
and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make
progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will
arise along the way.
SOLUTION:
Build feedback loops.
Each
Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most
critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the
conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each
week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week
provides a feedback loop that tells me if I’m doing things right. When that
number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.
Feedback
loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep
track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is
going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a
system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.
Fall In Love With Systems
None
of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are
good forplanning
your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.
Goals
can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but
eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what
matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.
(source : www.dailygood.org)
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