Chapter 4. The Power of Goals in a Random World
I slit open the envelope, a tiny ray of hope stirring, and then saw the standard phrases on the form. A rejection. Even though I had gotten them often enough, each one landed like a punch low in my stomach. Inside I sat down in front of the computer. I had spent three years writing that novel, and now my finger hovered over the Delete button, ready to do away with all that work of many long nights at the library researching, typing, editing, building characters and plot lines, and tying them together in interesting ways, I had finished the novel. I had achieved my great goal. Or so I thought. I wasn’t prepared for what came next. For several months, I attempted to get someone—anyone—in the publishing industry interested in the book I had written. Instead, I had a pile of rejection letters. My finger hovered over that Delete button—and in that instant, I made my decision.
It’s easy to be resistant to the idea of setting goals. It requires introspection, commitment, and facing your fears. Yet, without clear, written goals with discrete follow-ups, it is substantially harder to achieve significant gains in life. Without them, it’s likely nothing will change in your life.
A recent study by Dr. Gail Matthews of Dominican University of California compared the goal completion of individuals who did not set personal goals, individuals who wrote down their personal goals but did not follow up on them, and individuals who wrote down personal goals and coupled them with progress reports on a regular basis. Simply writing down the goals resulted in a 42% increase in achieved goals, and written progress reports resulted in a 78% increase in achieved goals.1 To put it simply, people who wrote down their goals and followed up on them achieved substantially more, leaving those without written goals behind.
1 http://www.dominican.edu/academics/artssciences/natbehealth/psych/faculty/fulltime/gailmatthews/researchsummary2.pdf retrieved on July 22, 2009.
Matthew Jabs, an IT manager in Lansing, Michigan, discovered the profound power of written goals in his life. “Historically I had always been a man of no specifically set goals. I was never sure exactly why or how I developed and maintained this aversion to [them]. I just couldn’t find the time, didn’t place enough value in achievement, or maybe just didn’t want to be bothered.”
He goes on: “Setting goals was not something I regularly purposed to avoid, but rather I had always been a “fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants” type of guy who just didn’t find it commonly necessary to assimilate goals into my life.”
So what happened? Simply put, Jabs was inspired by Lao-Tzu’s well-known quote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Jabs explains: “[T]he quote combines the wonder and excitement of travel and discovery with accomplishing established tasks in life. Since first reading that quote [...] I have been able to set up a working, living, family budget. I have been able to increase my ability to read and finish books. I have been able to lose nearly 40 pounds. I have been able to grow more and more self-reliant. I have been able to change my eating habits to include predominately healthy, local, organic foods. I am closer with my wife and I am closer with my God.”2
2 Personal interview.
The Changing Value of Long-Term Goals
In my hand, I held an offer letter. It detailed a job that would pay me $43,000 a year straight out of college, something almost beyond the dreams of someone who grew up poor and went to college without any real direction. My goal for the last several years had been to finish college with a degree, find a simple job where I wouldn’t have to focus on the work with my mental energy, and make myself become a successful writer.
The unexpected, though, sometimes happens. I found myself exploring other areas, digging into deep analysis of genetic data. It was an area I found to be exciting—I loved the chase of digging through a new problem, applying an unusual model, and burying myself in deep intellectual challenge. This offer letter held that promise. But it also promised responsibility and a lot of work, something that seemed to seal off the dreams of writing that I had held onto for years. Was this a trade I was willing to make? Undoubtedly, it was an opportunity that I needed to try. After some hesitation and a bit of reflection on writing dreams that seemed to be going nowhere, I closed my eyes and signed on the dotted line. And with that signature, my long-term vision for my life lurched in a new direction.
April 2002
It’s easy to be resistant to the idea of setting goals. It requires introspection, commitment, and facing your fears. Yet, without clear, written goals with discrete follow-ups, it is substantially harder to achieve significant gains in life. Without them, it’s likely nothing will change in your life.
There’s a big problem with such goal setting, though. As we discussed in Chapter 2, our lives are more chaotic than we realize. Events constantly happen in our lives, changing the terms of the game and often altering the goals we reach for.
To put it simply, the grand life-long plans that might have guided earlier generations no longer works. The world is changing so rapidly that in five years, your life will likely be substantially different than it is now due to events you cannot foresee.
So why set long-term goals at all? To put it simply, long-term goals put short-term goals in an appropriate context. A long-term goal is often just a sequence of short-term goals leading toward a greater good. Long-term goals add a powerful transformative sense to short-term goals—going on four runs in a week won’t change your life, but committing to going from being a couch potato to running a marathon in two years certainly can change your life. Short-term goals become the stepping stones to getting there.
A good long-term goal is audacious and life changing. It seems beyond your realistic grasp, but the thought of reaching it makes your heart soar. It matches perfectly with the things you hold most dear in your life. Are you ready to reach for it?
Timothy Ferriss puts long-term goals in excellent context in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. He writes, “Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you’ll throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is only mediocre or average, so is your effort.”3
3 Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek. Page 50. ISBN 978-0-307-35313-9.
An important note: Accumulation of money is not an audacious goal. A Scrooge McDuck-esque swimming pool filled with gold coins is the most ordinary of goals. That’s not to say money accumulation is not part of an audacious goal, but it’s the application of that money toward something in line with your personal values that makes it audacious. Becoming a millionaire may be a big goal, but the great things you’re able to do when you make it there are the truly exciting things, the ones that will keep you up at night working toward it.
The Power of Self-Reliance
Long-term goals push you in directions that can transform your life. You want something very different than what you have now, and a long-term goal simply states what you want to change. You’re a couch potato and you want to not be one, so you set a goal of running a marathon. You’re in poor financial shape but you want to be financially self-reliant, so you set a goal of being completely debt free and with a large emergency fund. Your career is going nowhere, so you set a goal of switching to a new career. The idea of starving children sickens you to your core, so you resolve to reach financial independence so you can spend your life’s energy doing something about it.
Short-term goals make those long-term goals possible. You want to run a marathon, but you’re woefully out of shape, so you set a goal of five one-hour walks this week. You want to be debt free, so you make it your goal to cut your unnecessary spending to $20 this week and funnel the rest into your largest debt. You want to start a new career, so you set a goal this week of talking to someone in that career path to see what it takes to get there. You want to tackle global hunger with all your might, so you throw that energy into getting yourself to a point where you can devote yourself to the problem.
Short-term goals often have another benefit: They make you more self-reliant and move you closer to success in other areas. Your marathon training causes you to start losing weight and get some color in your skin, making you look more presentable at work and in social situations and thus improving your confidence. Your debt reduction causes you to have fewer monthly bills, enabling you to broaden your horizons and look for opportunities elsewhere, as with Daniel Koontz and his two-year emergency fund. Your search for a new career pushes you to communicate with different people—improving your communication skills—and take classes that push your mind in new directions.
Communication skills, time management skills, information management skills, improved personal health, better appearance, leadership, and creativity are all things that you often pick up while working on short-term goals. These skills and attributes are the most valuable of all—they’re transferable, meaning they help you in your daily life and in any career path you choose.
Transferable skills can also be considered part of a personal emergency fund, a topic described in the previous chapter. If you have a strong set of transferable skills—the ability to communicate, the ability to lead, good health, leadership skills, and so on—these make it possible to maximize any opportunity that comes your way—and navigate any challenge that life gives you.
When I launched my website, TheSimpleDollar.com, in November 2006, my goal was to reach people who were interested in transforming their own lives and finances (a long-term goal). I knew that the best way to do this was to talk about my own experiences in detail—and frequently, so I set up a series of short-term goals that required me to write on a daily basis about my challenge to find happiness and financial stability. Writing a substantial amount every day certainly helped me achieve my goal—attracting people who are interested in talking about these things—but it had a secondary benefit of improving my communication skills and my time management skills. Regardless of where I go in life, I can take these learned skills with me.
The Key: Short-Term Goals
It was three in the morning, but the story in my mind was fighting to escape, keeping me awake and at the keyboard. My hands drummed over the keys, throwing words on the screen, giving birth to a tale about a corrupt security guard on a riverboat. The character was alive inside my mind, a desperate man trying to cover his tracks. When he met his climactic end, I rested my hands for a moment and let my weary eyes read through the five thousand words I had just typed. It was good—perhaps the best thing I had ever written. I had been pushing myself for months to spend time in the evenings writing a short story a week, and I could finally see it paying off. For the first time in a long time, I actually saw myself as a writer, not as someone who just dabbled in the written word. And it felt quite good.
It’s easy to be resistant to the idea of setting goals. It requires introspection, commitment, and facing your fears. Yet, without clear, written goals with discrete follow-ups, it is substantially harder to achieve significant gains in life. Without them, it’s likely nothing will change in your life.
The real power for changing your life comes from short-term goals set within a really big, audacious goal. A good short-term goal pushes you toward something amazing in your future while also contributing a useful transferable skill or attribute to your life, which will stick with you if the circumstances of your life change.
What makes a powerful short-term goal? First, it’s clear. There’s no ambiguity about whether you’ve achieved it or not. Usually, this means using a numerical metric, such as “I’ll take four thirty-minute walks this week” or “I’ll only spend $20 on unnecessary things this week.”
Second, it fits in the context of a big, audacious goal. If you achieve your short-term goal, it actually helps with a larger goal in your life. Your exercise moves you a bit closer to that marathon. Your reduction in spending moves you closer to financial freedom.
Third, it contributes to something transferable. If you achieve the goal, either your product or something gained along the way is helpful to you in a broader scale. Your exercise slightly improves your physical shape and appearance. Your reduction in spending teaches you self-discipline and gives you financial freedom no matter what you might do.
Five Steps Toward Your Dreams
How can you apply this to your own life? Here’s a simple five-step framework to make one of your dreams come true while improving your other opportunities along the way:
- Imagine what your life would be like if there were no obstacles. Where would you live? What would you do with your time? Who would you spend your time with? What would your home be like? Focus on what you want—what things would truly fulfill you the most?
- Select one specific element of that vision. Perhaps it’s your physical shape. Perhaps it’s your work. Maybe it’s your relationships with the people around you. Perhaps it’s a talent you have. It might be an experience you’ve enjoyed. Maybe it’s your home and the place you live. Look for the one thing that fills you with the deepest joy when you consider it. Describe it specifically, and write it down. That is your audacious long-term goal.
- Reflect on some of the steps you would have to take to accomplish that goal. What would you have to do to get there? It’s likely that many of these steps seem very difficult. If a step seems insurmountable to you, break it down some more. Keep breaking steps into pieces until the first step seems as though it’s reachable within a month or so if you really push yourself. That is your short-term goal.
- Keep that short-term goal front and center for the next month. Write it down every single day. Detail something you did every single day to make that short-term goal a reality. Put reminders of this goal all over the place—your bedside table, your computer monitor, your rearview mirror. Whenever you take an action of any type, ask yourself if that action is helping you reach your goal. Is buying this unnecessary thing really helping me reach my goal? Is sitting on the couch vegetating really helping me reach my goal?
- When you reach your goal, revel in the feeling of pure success. Then go back to your long-term goal and look at your new state in comparison to it. What’s the next step? Can it be broken down into another short-term goal that will really push you over the next month? Keep repeating this process, and you’ll walk, step-by-step, toward whatever your big dream is.