Reading through Scott Adams latest book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” he has a statement that passion is overrated and goals are for losers. This article is only going to focus on the second part of that statement.

This statement I found controversial because I love goals, I used to have daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. I used Todoist to manage the daily, weekly, and monthly goals, and a spreadsheet for yearly goals. I would update my progress on the goals on a weekly basis. I did this for the last 3 years or so. My best year I hit 95% completion, but my worst was 45%. Also I would fail near regularly at completing weekly goals, unless I did a massive effort on Sunday to finish (new goal planning was done on Mondays, so due dates were Sunday nights or Fridays if I wanted to free up my weekend) I kept scaling back my goals trying to make them more attainable, but then they wouldn’t be interesting, so I wouldn’t work on them as much, or not at all.

And now changing to a systems approach my planning has dramatically changed. You can read the article I wrote to find out about my reasoning, it can be found here. Scott describes how you feel successful every time you apply a system, but you only feel good when you accomplish a goal. So having lots of goals you will eventually fail at them making you feel like a failure and subsequently like a loser. Also even if you accomplish your goals what is next? More goals? It’s never ending! But with systems you can find a set of systems that will work for you, yes they will change over time, but you could be more sustainably productive, but it won’t really be measurable…. This is definitely something I’m having a hard time letting go of.

I like having goals and knowing how far along I am. But for more complicated things like “Learn Swift” how do you really know when you are done? Are you ever? It’s those allusive targets that I am finding systems work best for and goals don’t work. Goals are great for things that are fixed, for example I have a running trail race on September 29th. My goal is to be in my best running shape of the year so I can do well at that race. I’m not setting a time, even though this is my third time doing the race so I have an idea about how well I will do. But I don’t want the pressure of saying I will beat my best time. I want to go out and enjoy myself, but at the same time run fast. It’s a contradiction I know, but it’s something I’m trying to balance.

So to sum up, goals are for losers because they make you feel like a loser because you won’t complete all your goals. Also you only feel good when you accomplish your goals so you will spend most of your time feeling like crap.