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If you don’t have goals, how do you measure or even define success? - John Faulds via Twitter

John asked me this question as part of a conversation taking place on Twitter - and while his question was specifically around the use of Twitter (and part of a related conversation) it caused me to back up and look at my life and work in general. 

I’m not a goal setter.  I can’t find the time or the interest to create goals and then track progress to them.

Don’t get me wrong - I have things I want to do.  I have another ExpressionEngine book to complete.  I want to increase the availability of classroom training for EE.  I want to get Boyink.com redesigned.

But I see those as just projects - work and professional versions of things like: finish the quadcycle I’m building with my son, build a shed-office in the backyard, install fuel injection on my Jeep, or take a family vacation on a houseboat.

I don’t keep a master list of those projects.  I don’t have Gantt charts for them.  I don’t have a projects calendar.  I choose projects to work on in a mostly spontaneous manner - factoring in the weather, my available time, my interest at any given moment, interest/availability of family members, or if getting one project done will help another (new book == more sales == houseboat vacation? Hmm…). 

When people talk about goals - especially in a business setting - my impression is that I’m expected to set goals that can be measured.  Something with a number attached: Income. Sales targets.  Number of retweets.  Referrers from a forum.  Butts in seats.  Page views. If you can measure it, you can track it, and then you know when you’ve achieved success.

And why would I set those goals?  Articles like this abound - saying that setting goals:

• “Gives Clarity On Your Desired End Point”
• “Keeps You Motivated”
• “Gives You Laser Focus”
• “Makes You Accountable”
• “Be The Best You Can Be”
• “Live Your Best Possible Life”

Notice the common element in all those reasons? 

It’s you baby.  It’s all about you.  Your desires, your focus, your best.

This is where I part ways with the worldy wisdom around goal setting because it conflicts with my faith.  Did you ever see the movie Evan Almighty?  Love it or hate it (and theological issues aside) there is one scene that constantly sticks with me.  The Rotten Tomatoes review describes the scene:

Early in “Evan Almighty” newly elected Congressman Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell) complains that the task God has given him interferes with his plans.

While Evan continues to rant, God (in the person of Morgan Freeman) begins to crack up. Pausing to catch his breath, God incredulously says, “Your plans?” And then he laughs harder.

For me, the “best possible life” and being the “best I can be” aren’t my goals to make - they are Gods. And I don’t try to see them as an endpoint (and then just substitute His goal for my own and then implement the same process to get there), it’s a daily thing.  It’s sitting down, in this chair, this morning, and asking and discerning what do I need to do today?  I don’t need to worry about the long term stuff - that’s God’s territory.  I wrote a story a couple of years ago now about how this intersection of my goals and God’s Plan came up one day.

But the idea of “Goal Free Living” isn’t just a spiritual one. 

Author and Speaker Stephen Shapiro has a book by that very name.  I’ve yet to read the it (I had forgotten about it, and am now seeing if the local library has it).  But read this overview from Steven’s site:

We are taught from a young age that in order to achieve great success we must set and achieve our goals. However in doing so, we become focused on where we are going rather than enjoying where we are right now. We sacrifice today in the hope that a better future will emerge, only to discover that achievement rarely leads to true joy. Goal-Free Living presents an alternative philosophy - that we can have an extraordinary life now, all without goals and detailed plans. By living for each moment, it’s possible to have a successful life and follow your passions at the same time.

Here’s a clip from one of Stephen’s presentations around the book - with some interesting content around goal setting, and general happiness as it relates to achieving goals:

 

Stephen Shapiro’s Goal-Free Living from Stephen Shapiro on Vimeo.

Our Western culture fuels this goal-setting flame with it’s competitive and consumerist nature - always telling us we’re worth more, need more, and should be actively seeking more.  We pride ourselves on our busyness, Getting Things Done, and feel guilty when we spend a sunny Sunday afternoon just reading a book.

The folks over at 37Signals (a tech company that is generally seen as successful) also have a “no goals” philosophy.  Check out President Jason Fried’s presentation at at BIG Omaha 2009 - where (starting at about the 4:00 mark) he posits that “plans are really guesses” and says:

“I don’t know what we’re doing….We have a rough idea of sorta what we’re working on…but we don’t have a 30 day plan or a 90 day plan…people ask we’re going to be in 10 years and I don’t know and I don’t care because it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you are doing right now, what you are working on today. And then tomorrow you will have more information and you should use that information to decide what’s important tomorrow…We figure things out as we go, and that terrifies people in the business world.” 

Jason Fried @ Big Omaha 2009 from Big Omaha on Vimeo.

So to answer John’s question?

I don’t set formal business goals.  I don’t try to measure success.  I’m just not wired that way.  I can’t get interested in writing down formal numbers-based goals and then come up with a way to track those things (that would probably involve spreadsheets, to which I’m allergic).

Instead - I try to find ways feel successful.  That feeling may be invoked by just looking around and realizing how good I have it with fresh coffee, a good chair, and Blues playing at high volume.  It may be invoked by getting a really nice email.  It may be invoked by selling a few things on Train-ee, or getting invited to speak at a conference.  It’s usually different one day to the next.

Goals and metrics are a merry-go-round, and like the Grandmother in the movie Parenthood I’d rather ride the rollercoaster:

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

14 people have started a comment party - join it!

1. nikki may on September 16, 2009

   not setting goals is my goal!

2. Phil Meissner on September 16, 2009

   Like all things—it seems that there is a balance. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” - Zig Ziglar

3. Mike Boyink (Author) on September 16, 2009

   Ugh. We’ve all heard quotes like that.  Pithy, sure, but to me almost meaningless upon further inspection.

   What’s it mean to “aim” - is that setting a goal and trying to map the route to it?  Or—in Shapiro’s language - is it using a compass instead?

   One of the points both Fried and Shapiro make that resonate with me is how “laser focus” on a goal can also be seen as “blinders” - making you miss other opportunities along the way.

   Creating a training business was never an aim of mine, never even on the radar.  Train-ee was born as a series of blog posts and grew into a business - one I would have missed if I was solely focused on building Boyink Interactive.

4. Jeremy Latham on September 16, 2009

   Me, I like to pick a general direction and run with it. I’m not a big goal setter either.

   I expect I’d be a richer (in the financial sense) fella if I was a big goal setter, but I think the work might feel a lot more like WORK if I was always working off a list and counting minutes.

   Thanks for your post - made me smile this morning.

5. Phil Meissner on September 16, 2009

   The question that I always hated in job interviews/performance reviews is “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Because I didn’t have a solid answer, I always thought that I probably wasn’t ambitious enough. Of course 5 years ago I never imagined myself as an Art Director at work and a father of 4 at home.

   Would you say that living with a “compass” is similar to Rick Warren’s “intentional living” or Stephen Covey’s “proactive living” without a specific destination in mind?

6. Mike Boyink (Author) on September 16, 2009

   Gah - I hate that question too Phil.  I would respond with something along the lines of

   “At any point in your life have you been where you thought you would be 5 years previous?  I didn’t think so..neither have I.  And I wouldn’t want to know even if I could.  I don’t fast forward to see how movies end and I wouldn’t do the same with my own life”.

   I haven’t read the Warren or Covey books - I’ve never really had an interest in self-help/self-improvement materials like that. Especially if everyone else was reading them (always been that way..;)

7. Mike Boyink (Author) on September 16, 2009

   Jeremy -

   The Shapiro book would disagree with you - what he found was that happy/successful people weren’t as goal-driven as you’d expect.  They were actually unhappier.

8. salguod on September 16, 2009

   Excellent stuff, thanks.  I tend to think in terms of getting this or that done.  I feel as though I’m always working toward tomorrow instead of enjoying today.

   Last Sunday I said to my wife that I felt unmotivated and lazy, but guilty ‘cause I ought to get something done.  She said “What needs to be done?  It’s Sunday.”

9. John Faulds on September 16, 2009

   As has been demonstrated in the past, it’s sometimes hard to get your point across properly on Twitter. ;) Because in truth Mike, I’m like you in terms of my approach to goals - I don’t really set them. I’ve always been more of a meanderer than someone who aims to hit targets.

   But my comment on Twitter was sparked because when I read yours about number of followers equalling success, I thought to myself “but what if you have no concept of ‘success’ when using Twitter” which you emphasised yourself when you said you use it to interact, laugh, cry etc.

   It probably came off sounding like was more interested in quantifying Twitter usage when I started talking about metrics but what I really was trying to get across was that (like you, I believe), I don’t use Twitter to succeed, I use it to gather information and keep up to date, so in my terms, my Twitter experience could be a success for the most part if I had no followers because it’s the info I get from the people I follow that makes it a success for me. (Although if I had no followers, then the asking questions part and getting answers back wouldn’t work out so well ;)

   You followed up by saying you need a certain amount of followers to be authoritative enough to write an article, but people were writing articles before Twitter - back then their followers were RSS subscribers or just people who bookmarked your site and regularly stopped by. And even if you didn’t have very many regular visitors, I’d argue that it doesn’t necessarily make you any less of an authority in your particular area, unless of course it’s marketing or social media. ;)

10. Mike Boyink (Author) on September 17, 2009

    Hey John -

    Thanks for the comment, and yea - I moved the discussion in a different direction than where it was on Twitter.  Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and can’t move on until I blog them out and the whole goals thing has bugged me for awhile.

    Re: the twitter thing: The article in question was one on social media.  The audience was other business people.  My issue is that to (for me) to accept the author as someone who can articulate the full value of using social media and outline all the possible benefits to my business I just need to see more than 27 followers. 

    Yea - I know follower counts aren’t a great yardstick for authority.  Too many and I lose confidence as well.  But it’s along the same lines as writing an article about the benefits of business blogging and only having 6 posts on your blog…I just have a hard time believing you’ve fully explored the topic.

11. John Faulds on September 17, 2009

    Right, it makes more sense when you realise that your comment was in response to something else rather than just a general comment about Twitter.

12. John Knotts on September 19, 2009

    As someone who spent a large portion of my life driving towards goals at the expense of just about everything, I really appreciate your point about enjoying where you are now.  It’s good and important and healthy to take a step back, enjoy where you are right now and be thankful… “Give thanks in everything” right ;-)

13. Paul Burton on September 19, 2009

    The whole concept of goal setting boils down to a very simple fact of life.  People are, in general, lazy.

    I approach my life and business in much the same way as you do Mike. I look at my lengthy project list and determine what I want to work on, then I simply start working until I finish the project.  I do, however, ustilize project management tools to help keep me on track for the simple reason that I don’t like to have to remember a step or phase or idea that is critical to the end result/product.  I also find it hard to balance my business projects and personal projects simultaneously - I can always create “distance” with client work, but my personal work tends to swallow me whole. That said, I do have projects that I have been “working on” for the past ten years that never seem to get done. 

    How does this relate to setting “goals”? For most people, setting goals provides motivation to do something they wouldn’t have the gumption to do on their own.  A list of goals is an external motivator.  I believe the real reason so many people rely on setting goals is to help prevent them from looking back on their life and regretting not having done something.

    Even so, goals and motivation are two very different, yet interdependent things.

14. Marcus Neto on September 27, 2009

    I agree but I disagree. Perhaps it is the Sales Experience that I have and the mentors that I have had in life. One of the most influential men I have had cross my path was John Woodall who used to be a pastor at the church we attended in Washington DC. That man was a goal setting machine! but you know? he had a sales background as well. But I find it interesting that you equate not having goals with somehow being able to move or be more fluid with God’s plan for your life. And I know your intention but I see it differently. If God has provided you with a vision then having external motivators to get to that vision is an important thing. So setting the goal of reading to your children every night or reading the Bible everyday or getting involved at church take on important meaning.

    In regards to work though (cause we are both in the same boat) I see goals in the sense of things I would like to accomplish and not just numbers. And perhaps that is where we diverge? When I set a goal to time myself in every task I do or Expand the business in a certain area those are important external drivers that motivate me to do activities that will make those goals come true.

    Anyway, I do think that the overarching theme of your entry here is way true though. Stay fluid. Stay attentive. And enjoy the day. Without fluidity and attention I would never have started in web design. I would never have started in ExpressionEngine and I certainly would never have started EETemplates. But I also have memories of our life in DC where long commutes and long hours meant I missed out on memories with the kids. Never again.

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