Systems Vs Goals

So the first week of January has come and gone, and it feels like it’s probably not the best time to be making a blog post about goals and resolutions at this stage does it? However it might be the best time…

Statistics say that by February 80% of people will have failed at their New Years resolutions, and you may have already caught yourself defaulting on some of those resolutions you have set for yourself….

And if you are in that camp, don’t feel bad, you are not in the minority; however this should be a sign that the way you are approaching your goals may not be the best way to go about it…

So I’d like for us to talk about why most of us fail at accomplishing our goals and why we tend to default on them so easily. Next we will look at what we can do to create goals and systems in a much better way that will massively increase our chances of actually sticking to them.

So since we have established that the way we generally set goals like: exercise more, or loose weight, or save more and so on… are not really all that effective, lets look at some of the general problems with traditional goal setting…

Why Goals Don’t work for most of us:

#1 Goals are inflexible, and generally rigid.

Your goals essentially trap you in a fixed outcome that you try to pursue and accomplish, while life happens around you and situations and circumstances may change. Goals are based on the notion that if life were to go on exactly the same way as they are now, you can reasonably expect to accomplish your goal. Your goals may need to change as you change during the year. Many times I realise half way through the year, as things change for me and new opportunities come up; that I actually no longer want the goal I initially set for myself.

#2 A goal can breed unethical behaviour and misconduct

If your goals are not set and embedded in ethical standards and moral grounds from the get go your goal can breed unethical behaviour and misconduct.  Take a look at large companies which are considered legal entities. Some companies cheat their accounting books at the end of a financial year to show investors that they have grown from last year according to the goals set the previous year. We do the same too in our own lives. We can set a goal to loose 5kg, and decide to go on a fast and starve ourselves, or only eat broccoli for 5 weeks etc till we loose the weight. You will achieve your goal, but are you physically in a better shape because of it? I’d argue that you’re not, and odds are that if you haven’t changed your general health and fitness habits, you will very quickly gain back those 5kg. 

#3 Goals can cause stress and anxiety

You can feel anxious and stressed out when you think about your goals and how far you still have to go in order to get there. You may even feel like a failure till you reach your goal, as you are constantly focused on the finish line, therefore constantly reminding yourself that you are not there yet. 

#4 Progress is undervalued.

If you fail to accomplish your goals by the end of the year, you feel simply awful, like you let yourself down. Even though in the pursuit of that goal you may have become 5X better than you were; you most likely wouldn’t be satisfied with that, because you still didn’t reach that etheric goal you set yourself and you can’t shake that feeling of guilt.

#5 The enjoyment of goals are incredibly short lived.

You may be excited that you accomplished your goal and celebrate your win with a victory donut or something, but not soon after you finish that victory donut, you will already stop feeling that sense of excitement for accomplishing your goal… you may think… that’s it? All that struggle for a half an hour of joy?

#6 Winners and losers have the same goals.

Every single person who participates in a competitive tournament or championship etc, has the same goal of winning, so it’s not having a goal and being ambitious that differentiates the winners from the losers. 

#7 Goals are at odds with long-term progress.

Generally the momentum that a goal can create can be short lived. For example some people train for months to participate in, and hopefully win a race; but once the race is over many of them stop training altogether. The motivation of the goal is gone and therefore it can seem meaningless to train. 

#8 We are not good at gauging what is a good goal.

Another problem with goals is that we aren’t really good at gauging what is a reasonable goal to pursue, for example, if you make $42,000 a year, chances are you want make $1,000,000 in the next year unless you drastically do something different because a pay raise ain’t going to cut it. 

So now that we have taken a look at some of the problems with setting goals, it may be a good idea to think of where our goals come from and what influences us to set the goals we do…

Where do our goals come from:

Take some time and write down what you think influences the goals you make, it could be for example, your friends, family, social media, past beliefs, past experiences, fear of missing out, the list can go on for ages. 

Are they just things we feel like we aught to strive for because well that’s what everyone does; everyone want to have a better house, more cars, a six pack, time for a vacation and so on; but is that really and truly what we need? Do we need those things and are those things going to bring us any intrinsic value? Odds are the goals that we see on instagram are generally not ones we want to pursue, and thus, by perusing goals we really do not want we will end up not being that motivated to pursue them in the first place; yet we will still feel bad once we do not accomplish the goals that we didn’t even really want in the first place. 

We tend to mimic other peoples goals especially those in our closest circle that we look up too. It creates the phenomenon of wanting that which other people want because they want it, and we want to be like them. It is especially so with visible goals.

How we should actually use Goals:

So now that we have sufficiently provided enough reasons on why setting goals is not the best idea, you might think well, then if we don’t aim at anything we will get nowhere and accomplish nothing won’t we? And while we just covered all the things that goals get wrong, I am not saying we need to dismiss them entirely. As we just stated goals are great for giving us something to aim at so that we can improve, and that’s where it should end. 

Our goals need to be like a metaphorical lighthouse, giving us our end point and guiding us on our journey. Once we are set on the right course, we shift focus to manning the ship and doing all the tasks aboard it to make sure we get to our destination. 

A goal gives you vision, but a system is the day by day actionable steps you take to get there. Therefore it is far more important to focus on creating a system that works to get you to that goal, rather than focusing your energy on the goal.

The benefits of systems:

As James clear puts it in his book atomic habits, “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.” 

A system focuses on the journey and the process at hand, on the other hand a goal is solely focused on the end destination.

Some of the benefits to systems are essentially the opposites of the negative aspects of goals:

#1 greater potential for happiness

Systems allow you to enjoy every part of the process, not just the final destination, meaning that there is greater potential for happiness throughout the process if you focus on systems over goals. 

#2 better determiner of future success

Your system is a far better determiner of your future success than the goal you set. Having a goal is easy as we stated before, but how well your system is set up can be a much better indicator of your future success than just writing down a specific goal. 

#3 systems are more flexible

Your system is more flexible than a goal and can easily be changed and adapt when new information is brought to your attention. Changes can then be implemented immediately and the system improved. This helps you course correct where need be.

#4 less stress and anxiety experienced

If you change from goal focused to system mindset of day by day continuous improvement, you won’t feel as anxious or stressed out as you know that by following your system, you are choosing day by day to become the person you want to be. Whereas with a goal mindset you will generally only see the lack thereof until you reach the goal. This can be attributed to the backwards law affect; focusing on what you do not have, just congers up that you are in lack and you won’t see the progress you have made. 

#5 systems are focused on the long term

Systems are created with the long term in mind, where goals can be shortsighted as explained earlier. Therefore you will be less likely to do things that conflict with your ethical values or are harmful to your body as you are focused on long term success not short term wins.  

How to create great systems to achieve your goals (and enjoy the journey):

So then how do we go about creating good systems? Once you have identified the goal or habit you want to build or start, you then need to reverse engineer all the steps you know you need to take in order to get to that goal. Once you have taken the time to write down all the steps you’ll need to take; then you can start to plan how you are going to implement those steps into your daily routine. In order to create a good and easy to implement system, we need to make it as simple as possible to execute, reducing barriers and friction to do the work. Having a dedicated time, place and cues to trigger our remembrance of the habit we want to build will make it that much easier. 

That is a short guide on how to create systems, for more in-depth analysis and examples on how to create systems, check out James Clears book called Atomic habits. 

I hope this blog post has given you some ideas about how to set up effective systems that will help you accomplish what you set out to do. That by pursuing systems over goals, you are able to live a more happy fulfilled life… If this was helpful please share it with others so it hopefully helps them too.

Take care bye bye friends…