Prevailing wisdom believes that the easiest way to do what we want in life is to set concrete, actionable targets, to get in better shape, to create a profitable career, to relax more and to think less, to spend more time with friends and family.
This was how I treated my habits for many years too. Each was a goal that had to be accomplished. For the weights I wanted to lift in the gym, for the money I wanted to make in business, I set targets for the grades I wanted to get in school. I've been good at a few, but I have struggled at a lot of them. Eventually , I started to understand that the targets I set and almost everything relevant to the structures I pursued had very little to do with my findings.
Your goal could be to win a championship if you're a coach. The way you hire players, handle your assistant coaches, and execute practice is your method.
Your aim could be to create a million-dollar company if you are an entrepreneur. How you test product ideas, recruit staff, and run publicity campaigns is your method.
Your target may be to play a new piece if you're a musician. How much you train, how you break down and approach challenging steps, and your way of receiving input from your teacher is your mechanism.
Now for the fascinating question: will you always excel if you totally neglected your targets and concentrated solely on your system? If you were a basketball coach, for instance, and you overlooked your aim of winning a title and concentrated instead on what your squad does every day at work, will you still get results?
I guess you will.
In any sport, the goal is to finish with the highest result, but wasting the entire game looking at the scoreboard will be ridiculous. The best way to really win is each day to get stronger. The score takes care of itself, "in the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh," The same is true for other aspects of life. Then forget about setting targets if you want better outcomes. Focus instead on the method.
What does I say by that? Are targets absolutely useless? Not of course. Goals are useful for setting a course, but structures are better for progression. When you spend so much time dreaming about your priorities and not enough time developing your processes, a handful of concerns emerge.
Issue # 1: There are the same objectives for winners and losers.
A severe case of survivorship prejudice suffers from the setting of targets. We focus on the individuals who end up succeeding, the winners, and falsely believe that optimistic objectives have contributed to their achievement, thus forgetting all the individuals that have the same aim but have not achieved.
There's a gold medal every Olympian needs to win. Any applicant wishes to get the position. And if successful and unsuccessful individuals have the same goals, then what separates the winners from the losers is not the goal. The aim of winning the Tour de France was not what pushed the British Cyclists to the pinnacle of the competition. Presumably, much like any other sports team, they tried to win the race the year before. The goal was still there. It was only after a system of incremental minor changes was introduced that they reached a different result.
Issue # 2: It's just a momentary adjustment to reach a goal.
Imagine that you've got a dirty room and set a target to tidy it up. When you send in the electricity to clean up, you're going to get a clean space right now. But if you continue the same sloppy, pack-rat patterns that, in the first place, lead to a messy bed, you will soon be staring at a fresh pile of clutter and waiting for another burst of inspiration. Since you never changed the mechanism underlying it, you're stuck chasing the same result. Without discussing the cause, you were handling a symptom.
For the moment, hitting an objective just alters your life. That's the counterintuitive enhancement issue. We agree we need to improve our efficiency, but the outcomes are not the issue. The processes that cause certain outcomes are what we really need to alter. When you solve problems at the stage of the results, you just briefly solve them. You ought to tackle issues at the level of processes in order to progress for good. Fix the inputs and they will fix the outputs themselves.
Issue # 3: Your satisfaction is limited by goals.
The tacit presumption behind any purpose is this: "I'll be satisfied until I hit my target, then I'll be satisfied." The trouble with a goals-first mindset is that before the next achievement, you're constantly putting satisfaction off. I have fallen so many times into this vortex that I've lost count. For years, happiness was only something to be enjoyed by my future selves. I told myself that I could finally relax after I added twenty pounds of muscle or after my company was featured in the New York Times.
In addition, targets cause a conflict of "either-or": either you accomplish your goal and are good or you fail and you are a failure. You are boxing yourself psychologically into a small version of pleasure. It's misguided. Your real path through life is unlikely to match the exact trip that you had in mind before you set out. When there are multiple pathways to success, it makes no sense to limit your happiness to one example.
The cure is given by a systems-first mindset. You don't have to wait to give yourself permission to be satisfied when you feel in love with the process rather than with the result. Anytime the machine is running, you will be happy. And a method, not just the one you first imagine, can be effective in several different ways.
Issue # 4: Priorities are at odds with success in the long run.
A goal-oriented mind-set will eventually produce a "yo-yo" effect. Most runners practice tirelessly for months, but they avoid running as soon as they reach the finish line. The race is no longer there to keep them excited. If all of the hard work is based on a single target, what is left after you accomplish it to propel you forward? This is so many persons, despite completing an aim, find themselves reverting to their old habits.
Winning the game is the aim of setting goals. Building mechanisms are planned to continue playing the game. Goal-less thought is real long-term thought. It isn't just any particular achievement. It is about the constant refining and quality development period. In the end, it is your contribution to the process that will dictate your success.
Fall In Love With Structures,
None of which is to argue that targets are pointless. I have noticed, though, that targets are good for preparing your development, and structures are good for making development in practice.
Goals will provide guidance and even drive you ahead in the short term, but a well-designed structure can still prevail ultimately. What counts is getting a method. What makes the difference is sticking to the process.