Have you ever pursued a goal so viciously that you’ve overlooked the fact that it’s the wrong one?
For the past year I’ve been reviewing a book or movie on this site every Friday. My goal was to write a weekly review for 14 months: from November 2011 until the end of 2012.
For the first few months, this was exactly the impetus I needed to attack the huge stack of books languishing on my “someday” list.
I cultivated a lifestyle of voracious reading, one of my favorite pastimes. When I travel, I read nonstop; when I returned to the U.S. two years ago, I lost that habit. Setting a “weekly review” target reconnected me with my previous lifestyle.
It also connected me with some of my favorite recent business/finance books: What the Dog Saw, Good to Great, and The Retirement Maze. Recommendations from readers also helped me unearth some great new discoveries.
But (as I’m sure you’ve noticed), for the past few months these reviews have been feeling tired, uninspired. I’ve even skipped the past couple of weeks.
This led me to the question: do I call it off?
My tenacious side said no. I pledged to see this through. Besides, I’m so, so close to the end of 2012. Only two more months!
My contemplative side said yes. This isn’t serving anyone. I’m not benefiting the way I did at the start of this experiment. My readers (as an aggregate, based on the viewership data) aren’t interested, either.
My nature is to grit my teeth and push through it, especially with only two months left on the clock. But what good does that do?
So I’m calling off the Friday reviews. I’ll still write reviews occasionally, if I read something I want to share. And you can always browse the archives.
Don’t Conflate the Means with the End
On a grander scale, I’m starting to figure out that the dogged pursuit of a goal – so celebrated in our Type A culture – isn’t necessarily the best choice.
Goals are just a tool, like a hammer. They’re useful for building the life you want, if used correctly.
But any good carpenter applies judgment throughout the process, and keeps the end result in mind.
“Am I building the thing that I want to create? Or am I just hammering away?”
People who spend years stuck in a job they hate sometimes describe themselves as having “climbed the career ladder … only to realize it was leaning against the wrong wall.”
That’s shockingly easy to do – not just at work, but in any facet of life — because we tend to focus on the what rather than the why.
It’s easy to celebrate achievement, which is visible and quantifiable. It’s much harder to celebrate – or even recognize – the “why” underpinning it all.
- What good am I creating?
- Who am I serving?
- What’s it all for?
Those questions aren’t as measurable as “Did I get a master’s degree?” or “Did I lose 10 pounds?” But they’re far more essential.
I appreciated the reviews
I agree that some were better than others.
I also am very jealous that you managed to read that many books! They always seem to end up on the backburner, unfortunately, for me.
Dreams and goals need to change, because we change in the process. I probably wouldn’t have set such a long-term goal in the first place, but good for you for getting the most out of it.
You should check out Mike Dooley, author of books, Infinite Possibilities; Leveraging the Universe and engaging the magic; Manifesting Change, It couldn’t be easier. He says start with the end results in mind and let the steps in between fall into place as you go. Just take baby steps in the general direction. Becoming so wrapped up in goals is what he calls “messing with the cursed Hows”.
@Connie – The cursed “hows” — as in, focusing so closely on “how” that you forget the “why” and “what” — can be a huge problem. I have a pretty decent image of my personal definition of career success; whenever I start to get distracted in my path, I ask myself if what I’m currently doing is leading me toward achieving that vision.
I appreciated reading the reviews, because I, too, read a lot. But, I can understand your position, because I get that way too, if I say I’m going to do something, I want to do it because I gave my word to do it, but sometimes we do need to take a step outside of ourselves and question the – why?
I guess we read so much EVERYDAY about social media and business in general, on how often we are supposed to “touch” our viewers/clients, etc. It’s easy to get caught up in all of that, but at the end of the day, I personally believe in quality over quantity. I know in the blogging world there are those who say we are supposed to blog daily or at least 3-5x’s a week. That doesn’t work for me, but it may work for others. It has to be what works best for you personally, because if not it will suffer.
You do a great job on your blog Paula, and I always appreciate stopping through and seeing what’s going on; especially with the great investment properties you have been procuring!
There are unintended consequences of a wrong goal. One is you learn not to do it again. Another may be to think it through more before you go ahead. I think you can learn a lot from any negative experience. The most important is don’t do it again. if you do, dump it as fast as you can.
I’ve ditched goals before (or fallen short of them), and been OK with is when I realised that they weren’t supremely important to me in the first place.
Intention and motivation is vital. Goals set simply for the sake of it are more likely to fail.
When the goal no longer has the same purpose or you realize you made it for the wrong reason then stopping before you waste more time seems like a good idea to me.
Thanks to your reviews, I now have a few more finance based books of my Amazon Wishlist
I’m glad you are being realistic with the relevance of your goal to you. Now we’ll have more Paula-centric posts each week 
Paula, I’ll confess I did not read the book reviews
but that’s just because they are not my cup of tea not because they don’t have any value.
However, on the topic of goals…I agree with what you say which is why I have learned that goals and life plans need to be written with pencil not pen…
The catch-22 of all of this is that you do not learn this until you try this first! So unless you make the “mistake” of chasing the wrong goal you don’t learn that there are better goals for you and that what once felt like the right choice for you was not.
Which is why I believe it is better to chase the wrong goal than no goal at all. As long as you have put some thought into that goal and it is in sync with what you want your life to be it’s better to run with it and then correct course as you go along than to stay put waiting to pick the “perfect” goal.
You are right Luis. If you don’t fail at something and/or set goals, then you probably aren’t doing anything, and as we all know, we learn the most valuable lessons typically by our failures; versus our successes.
Very thought provoking article. REviews have to come from energy and enthusiasm for me. If not, I don’t do them.
This was a great article. I have always set goals for myself but like life, goals must change. I always try to show others that their goals are just goals, the results are what matter in the end.
Pam
Something I’ve learned in the past month or two is “know when to fold em”. You’re not a quitter if you stop banging your head against a wall, you’re smart.
I was surprisingly refreshed by this post. I’m a goal-setter by nature. And am generally pretty determined in seeing my ambition through. So when I’ve been in interviews or otherwise asked about my biggest weaknesses, I often say it is my inability to turn around when I’ve locked myself in on a goal that doesn’t serve me or others (or is inevitably consuming me with no positive result). I think people believe I’m just skirting the weakness issue, but it really is a deficit in the way I look at things.
I’d love to see a post that talks about the red flags that the goal you’re chasing is the wrong one.
@Sarah – I like that topic (“How Do You Know If You’re Chasing the Wrong Goal?”) Off the top of my head, the first thought that comes to mind is the question of whether or not your goal is your own. I know a lot of people who pursue the path that their parents/their society/their spouse expects them to pursue.
This post reminded me of Leo Babauta’s writings about living a life without goals. You might want to check it out: http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/
Oh, I love this from Leo Babauta’s writings http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/,
“And there’s the rub: you have to open your mind to going places you never expected to go. If you live without goals, you’ll explore new territory.”
Thanks for sharing this site Rebecca.
@Chante – That reminds me of a beautiful quote from John Lennon: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
@Rebecca – Thank you for recommending that Zen Habits post. I read it a long time ago, but I had forgotten about it. (Even as I was reading the post, I didn’t remember it until I reached that humorous line about laying on the couch eating Ho-Ho’s all day.)
Something that struck me from that article: He asks us to “walk in a random direction, and feel free to change directions randomly. After 20 minutes … you’ll be somewhere!”
This is precisely how I’ve lived my life.
When I traveled, I bought a one-way ticket to a country that I’d never visited before. I had no plans. I had no idea what countries I was going to visit. I didn’t know when I was coming home. I just bought a one-way ticket … and went.
I remember reading that post and it was the one that drove me AWAY from Zen Habits. IMHO it’s a load of…
It’s one thing to choose the wrong goal and having to change direction but it’s a whole other thing living whimsically and “spur of the moment” like he talks about in that post. I just thought the biggest irony of it all was that he is a person that has become very successful because he had goals and achieved them and now is saying to have no goals!!
It’s better to call off a goal than to do it halfway when your heart isn’t there. I’m sure you will use the time in more productive and fulfulling ways.
That’s too bad, I enjoyed your reviews, but it’s always OK to change your mind!
@Sandra – Thank you for saying that! I’m glad you enjoyed the reviews. I got the impression that although the majority of readers weren’t into the reviews (based on site traffic), the people who did read them connected with them. I’ll still write the occasional review every now and again …
Congrats that you managed to read so many book. Great ! I like your review.
Some of our goals are changing on daily , monthly and yearly basis because our life is changing and we are making new progress.