Many months ago I wrote a message for my email list subscribers about the benefits of goal setting that is no longer available. I have wanted to publish it here on Leaving Work Behind for a long time but have held back on the basis that it is a frank expression of my disagreement with a very popular blogger — Leo Babauta.
Leo is someone that I have a great deal of respect for. Based upon the interviews I have seen and the conversations I have had with people who know him, he appears to be a very nice guy. However, I completely disagree with his position on goal setting. In fact, I would go as far to say that he has got the concept of setting goals all wrong.
I am sure that Leo won’t even notice this post. Even if he does, I am not disrespectful in my arguments and I am sure he can handle someone disagreeing with him (I doubt he would give this post a second thought). As such, there is little point in holding back any longer, so here goes.
“The Best Goal is No Goal”
For those of you who don’t know, Leo Babauta is the author of the astonishingly successful Zen Habits blog, which at the time of writing has over 250,000 readers. He wrote a post back in 2010 entitled “The Best Goal Is No Goal“.
I couldn’t disagree any more with Leo regarding his opinion on the subject of goal setting. And there is no better way for me to explain exactly why goal setting is so important than rebutting each of the points he makes in the above-mentioned article.
Let’s take a look at what Leo has to say.
Why You Should Live with Goals
[Living without goals is] absolutely liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it absolutely doesn’t mean you stop achieving things.
It means you stop letting yourself be limited by goals.
Consider this common belief: “You’ll never get anywhere unless you know where you’re going.” This seems so common sensical, and yet it’s obviously not true if you stop to think about it. Conduct a simple experiment: go outside and walk in a random direction, and feel free to change directions randomly. After 20 minutes, an hour … you’ll be somewhere! It’s just that you didn’t know you were going to end up there.
First of all, living with goals may well be liberating, in a sense that you are not consciously setting yourself up to achieve anything. But that’s not the kind of liberation I want to experience.
As for Leo’s random walking experiment, let me adjust it a bit to expose the falsity of his argument. Say you want to walk to your friend’s house, but you decide to do so by heading out of your house and walking in a completely random direction. Whenever you reach a fork in the road, you head in yet another random direction. What are the chances of you reaching your friend’s house?
Wandering aimlessly is all well and good, but if you actually want to achieve something in life, you must have direction (tweet this).
Goals Can Broaden Your Horizons
If you live without goals, you’ll explore new territory. You’ll learn some unexpected things. You’ll end up in surprising places.
The implication here is that living with goals means you will not explore new territory, will not learn unexpected things, and will not end up in surprising places. Nothing could be further from the truth — one of the benefits of goal setting is that it can push you to places that you would not have otherwise experienced. In my opinion you have a far greater chance of achieving new and fulfilling things in life by pushing yourself to achieve more.
I’ll tell you a brief story — a couple of weeks ago I was in Cozumel, Mexico:
It is a truly beautiful place. Golden sands, warm climate, friendly locals…I would happily spend a lot more time there. When we were leaving my brother turned to me and said, “You could just come live here for a while, couldn’t you?” I answered in the affirmative, and he said, “Well — why don’t you then?”
In reality I have a few things keeping me in the UK at the moment (my band for instance), but the very fact that I could grab my laptop and work from an island paradise if I wanted to is enormously liberating and exciting.
The moral of the story? I know that I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for conscious goal setting.
Goals Can Galvanize You
Now let’s get down to the meat of why Leo doesn’t like goal setting:
You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off.
And so your weekly goals and monthly goals get pushed back or side-tracked, and you get discouraged because you have no discipline. And goals are too hard to achieve. So now what? Well, you review your goals and reset them. You create a new set of sub-goals and action plans. You know where you’re going, because you have goals!
Of course, you don’t actually end up getting there. Sometimes you achieve the goal and then you feel amazing. But most of the time you don’t achieve them and you blame it on yourself.
Here’s the secret: the problem isn’t you, it’s the system! Goals as a system are set up for failure.
I consider this to be extremely damaging advice. In that above scenario, the problem most definitely is you — or more specifically, your way of thinking. Leo in fact says it himself: “you get discouraged because you have no discipline”. He is absolutely right — if you have no discipline then goal setting will not work for you. But if you have no discipline, working for yourself isn’t an option. You need to go get yourself a job at McDonalds so someone can tell you what to do.
Setting goals that are so difficult as to be unachievable is definitely a bad thing to do. But setting no goals at all because you don’t like the idea of pushing yourself to achieve something demonstrates nothing to me but a complete lack of drive.
Goals Are a Requirement of Success
…nothing is as flexible as having no goals.
Quite right. It’s like saying no one has as much free time as the person who never does anything. But do you want to be that person? I would like to think that your answer is no.
So, what is Leo’s alternative strategy? What does he recommend as a superior alternative to goal setting?
…you simply do. You find something you’re passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.
That is very romantic, but I’m sorry to burst your bubble — it’s not likely to get you as far as conscious goal setting would. In fact, I challenge you to find me many people who have been successful in chasing their passion with nothing more than reckless abandon.
There are people who make a living out of their passions — professional athletes, actors, musicians, and so on. But not one of those people did so without making enormous sacrifices and pushing themselves hard. A NFL wide receiver doesn’t get drafted by just catching footballs all day. No — he spends hours in the weight room, learning plays, eating right, and generally living a life of enormous discipline.
Success always requires sacrifice (tweet this). That, in part, is what makes it worthwhile.
So What Now?
I hope that you are convinced of the benefits of goal setting. If you are not setting goals for yourself yet, there is no time like the present.
First of all, don’t be afraid of success. Far too many people demonize success and consider it something that is reserved for only certain people. I know this, because I used to have that attitude before I understood that success is simply a process.
Once you are no longer afraid of success you need to figure out what you truly want from life. Not too long ago I wrote a comprehensive post on setting achievable goals — I would recommend that you start there.
Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly what you want from life yet — I certainly don’t. You can achieve a great many things before you get to where you want to be, and that’s fine. It is not a race — it’s a journey.
Plan For Success
I am not claiming to have set the world alight (far from it), but I am extremely happy with where I am in life, and incredibly excited about where I am heading. Furthermore, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am without goal setting. I doubt Leaving Work Behind would have even got off the ground.
At the end of the day, the benefits of goal setting are numerous. Your ability to set goals is one of the most powerful tools in your armory. Please do not neglect it.
Creative Commons images courtesy of lululemon athletica, aaronisnotcool and eschipul
Quinn says
100% agree with you – I read Leo’s post and concluded he was is out to lunch on that one. Goal setting is not only important but it is pretty fun. Cozumel is amazing isn’t? I stayed for a few weeks once – diving – partying – ended up sleeping on the beach for a couple of nights. I often recommend it to friends who end up loving it.
Tom Ewer says
Loved it! Been twice now and I’m sure I will go back again someday. 🙂
Liz says
Huh. This supports my theory that you shouldn’t take advice from a man who won’t eat bacon.
Just kidding, people!
Anyway, the notion that you should live your life without goals is a dangerous one that can be taken too far. Walking in a random direction can get you hit by a bus.
Tom Ewer says
Hey Liz,
Bacon lovers are welcome here 🙂 I did the Primal Blueprint for a couple of months — a lot of bacon was consumed.
Cheers,
Tom
Jamie Alexander says
I don’t really agree with the concept of goals, but at the same time I don’t agree with what Leo says. This is not based on what everyone should do, but just as it relates to me.
I prefer to-do-lists. So you can think about where you’d like to be, but it’s the things you actually do that will allow you to get there. Not the actual goal.
So for instance, one of my goals is to live in Bali and surf every day.
But that doesn’t really mean anything. What would mean something would be to find out what I needed to do to make X per month and set tasks that would allow me to get there.
Then I’d reach my goal.
Tom Ewer says
You’ve confused me Jamie 🙂 You start by saying you don’t really agree with the concept of goals, then you reveal that you have a goal and have laid out the steps that you need to get there. Sounds like you believe in goals to me!
You say that the goal doesn’t really mean anything, but I would argue that without the goals, you don’t have the process. The goal is what drives the process.
Jamie Alexander says
Have you ever played RPG games where you would click somewhere on the other side of the screen and the character would walk there?
That’s a bit like what I do, whether you want to call that a goal or a dream. I just choose a direction I want to head in and break it down into small tasks.
I wouldn’t say I want x visitors or subscribers in a certain amount of time ( I actually did do this a few months ago because someone asked me, but I realized it didn’t mean anything)
But if we’re calling the both of them goals then I definitely do the first one.
I just think “goals” is an arbitrary term, but if you count the process leading up to the goals then I’m good with that 🙂
Tom Ewer says
I guess for me goals are pointless without having a conscious idea of how to get there, and I encompass that whole process under the umbrella of “goal setting”. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way, but perhaps consider the word/phrase differently. So basically we’re wasting our time over semantics 😉
Jamie Alexander says
Haha, probably.
The idea of not progressing seems pretty strange for an entrepreneur.
I’m not really sure what the audience of zenhabits is, but I can’t imagine it’s people building businesses going by what Leo said.
It sounds more aimed towards people who get stressed to easily.
Paul says
I like Leo’s philosophy. I don’t think he truly meant to encourage anyone to stop setting goals all together. To me, his post was more about shedding light on another way of thinking in world where we create lists upon lists. He is admittedly an extremist, so he takes a philosophy and applies it 100%. The message I got was that setting goals is just part of the journey, so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we don’t reach what we put on paper. It’s a go with the flow, be flexible type of mentality.
I stopped setting goals in some aspects of my life because of Leo’s post and it helped tremendously. But in other areas, I find that I need them to accomplish anything. Leo’s entire blog is kind of a “here’s what I do, try it if you want” type of thing.
I love your site and read every post. You’re both inspirational and instructive. Thanks!
Paul says
I guess what I’m saying is a subscribe to both philosophies for different reasons. I’m Sort of an Aristotle golden mean type of person.
Tom Ewer says
Hey Paul,
Interesting thoughts and it sounds like you’ve taken good value from Leo’s post. However, if he didn’t mean to encourage people to not set goals I think he went about it in entirely the wrong way:
“[Living without goals is] absolutely liberating”
“Here’s the secret: the problem isn’t you, it’s the system! Goals as a system are set up for failure.”
“…nothing is as flexible as having no goals.”
To me those are the words of someone who is 100% against the concept of goals.
Cheers,
Tom
Susanna Perkins says
When it comes to certain goal-setting traditions — like grandiose “I’m going to lose 70 zillion pounds in 2013” on New Year’s Eve — I’m totally with Leo. Those are self defeating and I refuse to engage with such nonsense.
But I know I get a heck of a lot more done if I create a to-do list for the day and for the week, and what is that if not goal setting? I guess it’s all in the definition.
Whether I call them markers, steps, to-dos or goals doesn’t matter. But I need them. I bet you do, too.
Tom Ewer says
I’m with you on “seasonal” goals — I actually made that point myself in my goal setting post. Good point Susanna!
Michelle Dale says
I totally think it all depends on the individual. Goals are what keep me moving, and to be honest, I am one of those no-compromise people who pretty much loves everything I do, or I don’t do it, that’s my choice, so there is very little procrastination going on here. I’m also highly self-disciplined as a natural tendency.
Without my goals, I don’t think I would get very far, they tend to provide the adrenalin I need to give myself that extra push and keep the business and life wheel turning.
I could totally see how goals can be a pain in the backside if you don’t like what you need to do on the in-between to get there…
Tom Ewer says
Or goals are a pain in the backside if you don’t want to achieve anything 😉
…or is that too controversial?
Pinar Tarhan says
Hi Tom,
There are two typical attitudes when it comes to goal setting: ones is Leo’s (though he is the first really successful person that I’ve heard it from) and the second one is the too-focused one where it is it all about the plan. I don’t agree with either.
I’m all for goal-setting, but I don’t follow each goal according to a certain plan. This makes room for surprises and some interesting life twists. For instance, 8 years ago I had no intention of going to Norway. 7 years ago I did my Erasmus year there, which turned out to be one of the best times I’ve ever had.
I am a romantic rationalist, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it isn’t really. I double-majored at university and then pursued writing. Getting the (non-writing) degrees was a goal, so was pursuing a writing career. What I hadn’t planned was writing non-fiction too, but now I can’t get enough of it.
There’s no way I can accept a “no goals” mantra, just like I don’t panic when my goals get a little delayed because some of them changed a bit, or more goals were added to the list. I do know what I want from life, but when something new comes along and enriches the vision I have, I go along with it.
Goals are only limiting if you let them. Otherwise they just help you make your life rock.
🙂
Tom Ewer says
Sounds very similar to me Pinar. If you take a look at my goal setting post at the very end of last year and compare it with now, I’ve pretty much gone in an opposite direction and yet I’m really happy with my progress. Goals are there to be hit, or adjusted to suit 🙂
Pinar Tarhan says
I dug up the 31st December post, and I have to say you’ve definitely realized the epic-shit-writing goal. 🙂
And while arranging my goals around S.M.A.R.T is doable, I do have the problem of having too many goals. But then again, they are related one way or the other, and I am happy taking the slow (yet varied) route, so…
But maybe publishing goals (and how many of them were achieved) on your blog is a good idea. Even if you tended to procrastinate, your mentors and readers would help you get back on track. Maybe I should do that too.
Tom Ewer says
You can’t beat public accountability Pinar — it’s one of the reasons I love writing for this blog so much!
Willi Morris says
I think “everything in moderation” works best in the situation. I agree with the commenters who say that not everything requires rigid planning. As a perfectionist, I can tell you that rigid planning and goal setting leads to failure and disappointment.
For example: I had several goals: by 25, I’d meet my husband and be on my way to starting a family. I’d have been on my own a few years, have an established career, etc. None of tha happened.
Why?
The man I was destined to marry was only 19 at the time. I’m 33 years old and have only been married for a month. But I’ve spent the past decade lamenting why I never achieved certain goals. Sometimes you have to allow life to take you where you need to go.
Tom Ewer says
Totally agree — as I just said in another comment, goals are there to be met or adjusted as necessary!
Vicky says
Having no goals is like having no dreams..
Bojan Petrović says
+1
Bojan Petrović says
Hey Tom,
I must say you gave some really good points in this post and I would like to add some thoughts as well so we can expand this topic. Seems that Leo’s philosophy says that if you don’t have any goals you won’t be able to lose. Which is basically true, but, that is not so brave I think, seems like a fear of failure to me. And, to my opinion, we don’t want to let our fears overcome our wishes.
So, yes, some of the goals we may never achieve, but still it’s not the reason of not trying to achieve things. To my opinion, you lose only if you don’t try. What I really believe is the quote which can be found in several Paulo Coelho’s books. It says that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, until you fight the “good battle”. Not achieving some goals is NOT a failure. That’s because I think also that the goal itself is not the most valuable. What is the most valuable is the time and efforts you spend, and experience you get while you are trying to reach the goal. In other words, this is called the journey. So, in order to have a great journey, we still have the set a great goal. Like your suggested story of going to visit a friend. Imagine for example that we don’t know where our friend lives. But, we would still want to find him/her and we would still have the goal.
Cheers mate!
Tom Ewer says
Hey Bojan,
Good to hear (or read, at least) from you! I’m all for fighting the good battle — like you allude to, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
Cheers!
Tom
Justin says
Very thoughtful piece here, Tom!
In practice and in business, I’m heavily in the “goal setting” camp. It gives me a (sometimes false?) sense of control in my business that I need. I think it’s beneficial to chase down goals and to define your own reality. Otherwise, your business/work might be left up to others that don’t have the same goals/mindset that you do.
That being said…there’s REAL VALUE in allowing yourself off the hook at times and taking a more “go with the flow” approach. This seems to be a cultural influence in the Philippines without a doubt…and I have to say there’s something liberating about it. I have trouble describing the actual value…but letting yourself float like a leaf on the breeze can lead to some amazing situations and circumstances that you might not otherwise have.
If you’re a very structured, goal-oriented person I would suggest you try letting go every once in a while and just seeing where life takes you. Take a day to people watch and observe. Take a walk around downtown and get involved in conversations just to see what happens. The results might surprise you!
Tom Ewer says
Hey Justin,
I’m all for that, although perhaps not in the way that you mean. For instance, I have set myself no goals with my authority site project beyond simply producing great content. I don’t stress about visitors or anything along those lines — I trust that if I produce something of quality, good will eventually come of it. It is certainly very freeing, and I hope will lead to a beneficial outcome.
So I suppose my “goal” in that instance is to have no goal and see how it goes 😉
Cheers,
Tom
Aleshia Green says
Great article Tom. I think you were talking about me weren’t you?! In fact, I think Leo and I might have a little of the same mindset. Setting goals, for me, is like torture. It is really hard to see the future and know you can get there if your current situation doest prevail. Yes, I spend hours checking emails and messing around on Facebook, but at least half of what I do is networking and connecting to like minded individuals. I have never had a strong circle of supporters offline, so finding them online has been fun and exciting for me. I feel this is just a stepping stone to my online journey of building a successful business.
Yes I know we need goals. I just like to know they are accomplishable in the prestate before I set them..Maybe that is how Leo feels.
Aleshia
Tom Ewer says
Hmm…I don’t know about that Aleshia. When I set my goal to quit my job it seemed utterly absurd and completely unachievable. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do it and there was a voice in my head saying it simply wasn’t possible.
I feel strongly that if I hadn’t set that goal and held myself publicly accountable to it, I wouldn’t be where I am now.
Bojan Petrović says
When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed 😉
Morgan says
Any advice can be taken the wrong way – goals or not. There are no guarantees of success.
I think the point Leo is making is about living in the moment. “The journey is all. The destination is beside the point.”
If you are miserable with how long it is taking to get somewhere, or with how you are going nowhere, you are still miserable. I think it’s entirely acceptable to decide to walk to your friend’s house. The problem is that most of us want more than to go somewhere. We want to be happy. If, on the way, you meet a new friend and end up going some place else entirely, that’s okay too, as long as you are doing what you love.
Isabelle says
I’m afraid I agree with Leo. He is saying that instead of setting rigid and arbitrary goals, we should follow our passions. Luckily our passions know how to get things done if we let them guide us.
Tom Ewer says
It’s okay to agree with Leo — I’ll just discount your comment 😉 only kidding — I can see where you’re coming from but I do think that Leo goes way over what you’re saying. And I disagree that if we are passionate about something it will come together without us making any conscious planning…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Isabelle 🙂
Jessica says
Interesting take on goal setting. Both your points, and Leo’s, make a lot of sense. I personally, can’t make up my mind about it. I rarely set goals and often struggle with feelings of guilt because I’m not as productive as I’d like to be. I’m not quite convinced, though, that goal setting would actually increase my motivation.
Tom Ewer says
There’s only one way to find out…
Dani says
That was a good one… actually I’m a big fan of Leo, I read every single post he writes. He is an amazing blogger but that one I think he went too far At least maybe you can neglect the small daily/monthly goals but there should be some big goals …it’s achieving goals what it’s all about, and in our journey to that destination lies our life even if we fail.
Sande says
I like this quote, “I would challenge you to find me many people who have been successful in chasing their passion with nothing more than reckless abandon.”
Here you go, Tom: Martin Luther King, Jr, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstien, The Beatles (collecively), Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Buddha, Florence Nightengale, Clara Burton, PT Barnum, Luwig Von Beethoven, Carl Jung, Suze Orman, Cleopatra VII, Queen Isabella, Queen Victoria, Marie Curie, Margeret Mead.
Perhaps you recognise a few of these names?
Tom Ewer says
Hey Sande,
I recognize almost all of them. If you think that they chased their passion with nothing more than reckless abandon, I would have to disagree wholeheartedly.
Take Abraham Lincoln for instance and consider the meaning of the word reckless: “Heedless of danger or the consequences of one’s actions; rash or impetuous.” Do you think one of the greatest Presidents of the USA behaved in such a way throughout his life? Absolutely not — he was an intelligent man who acted in a very calculated manner in order to change the course of America’s evolution as a country. In fact, to argue that any politician became President through a lack of goal setting is, with all due respect, laughable. In my opinion, the same goes for the rest of them.
Cheers,
Tom
Julian says
Really like this article, Tom, and agree with you that goal-setting is important. The concept of goal-setting is something we’ve explored and I think a lot of people perhaps get put off by work place jargon like SMART goals, which with their sometimes rigid framework for achievement can sometimes leave one deflated if you haven’t achieved within a predefined timeframe.
Of course, Leo does perhaps also have a point, that the journey is also important and you have to ‘live in the now’ rather than always striving for a future end point.
Our ultimate conclusion, was that when goal-setting
– Set a goal that has meaning and purpose to you;
– Goals with ‘meaning and purpose’ are more likely to be achieved;
– Goals in keeping with the sense of who you are as a person, your beliefs and values, are more likely to succeed because you are more willing to put in self-sustaining effort when the going gets tough.
In other words, self-concordant goals: one’s that are well integrated into the self-concept of who you are as a person.
Hope this helps further discussion.
Keep up the good work.
Tom Ewer says
Hey Julian,
I totally agree that one should live for the now and that goals shouldn’t get in the way of that.
I think you’ve nailed the whole argument though — goals are a wonderful thing if they are set and pursued in the right fashion. They’re as useful and as fulfilling as you choose to make them by your approach.
Cheers,
Tom
Asher Cathey says
Mr. Babauta makes some valid points and offers an interesting perspective, but his argument’s foundation is shaky at best, as your “friend’s house” analogy simply points out. His perspective would perhaps have born fruit in an article titled, “Living Beyond Your Goals,” and written accordingly. Such an article might have articulated a philosophy by which one doesn’t confine oneself to using the same route every time one visits one’s friend. As is, Mr. Babauta is offering many readers who are trying to get somewhere, the advice that anywhere is somewhere, the metaphorical equivalent of which is telling someone who is adrift that they should enjoy the view. This is potentially and very counterproductive thinking that you consistently, specifically, correctly, and importantly repudiate.