Why focusing on goals can actually decrease your odds of achieving them. Instead of focusing on goals, focus on creating systems.
Video by Better Than Yesterday
Key Takeaways
When you focus on your goals too much, you can actually decrease your chances of achieving them. In this video Better Than Yesterday explains why that happens and why instead of focusing on your goals, you should focus on creating a system.
What's the difference, between a goal and a system?
Goals are one time events. You reach them and you’re done. Goals are one time events. You reach them and you’re done. A goal is the destination.
Systems on the other hand, are what get you to your objective. They are the process you follow on a regular basis, and they lead you in a general direction of your goal. A system is the journey.
- For example: Losing 20 pounds is a goal. Eating healthy and exercising regularly, that’s a system. Getting an A on your next exam is a goal.
- Studying and reviewing your notes every day, is a system.
- Making 1 million dollars is a goal. Hiring employees, creating the best possible product and marketing it, that’s a system.
Once you have a good system in place, goals aren’t really necessary anymore. This doesn’t mean that goals are useless. I still believe that having goals is essential, otherwise you don’t know what kind of a system you even need to create.
But once you know what your goals are, focusing on them becomes counter-productive. That’s because when you’re chasing a certain goal, you’re operating from a constant state of failure.
- Let’s say you want to lose 30 pounds. So far you’ve only lost 10. Which means you’re failing at meeting your expectations. And even when you’ve lost 20 pounds, you’re still unsuccessful at reaching your goal.
- This can cause subconscious feelings of frustration and misery, because you’re not yet at the stage you want to be at. And the more long-term your goal is, the more you prolong these feelings, which often make you give up on your goal.
It’s no wonder that those who focus on the process tend to perform better in the long run.
Many people believe that once you reach a certain goal, there is going to be this amazing life changing moment. But what actually happens when you achieve it? Usually you feel good about yourself for a little while, but it doesn’t take you very long to start pursing a new and more difficult goal.
- For example if your goal is to have $100,000 in your bank account, and you achieve that, you feel great. But soon, you’re going to be like “Meh, my life hasn’t really changed that much.” That’s because it’s not much different than when you had $90,000.
- Shortly after you achieve that $100,000 mark, you’re going to want $200,000 in your bank account. And if you reach that, you’re soon going to want $300,000. And this goes on and on.
Whenever you achieve that goal, you feel good. But that excitement passes very quickly, and you want to feel the high of success again, so you set a bigger goal. You think this new goal is finally going to make you feel accomplished indefinitely, but in the end, it never does.
So if you ignored the goal completely and just focused on the system, would you still get results?
If you have a good moneymaking system, you’re going to get to those $100,000 either way. Whether you have that specific goal or not.
Now you might be wondering how does someone create a good system for themselves. Since everyone has a different set of circumstances, each person has to make their own unique system.
There are three steps everyone should follow:
1. Firstly, you want to pick which direction you want to go in.
2. Secondly, you want to find out how to get there by asking good questions.
3. Thirdly, you need to experiment with the answers and re-adjust.
Mike system to write a book.
This is Mike. He wants to write his own book. Ok, so that’s the direction he wants to go in. Now he needs to find out how to get there. So he asks himself this question: How does someone write a book? He comes up with this simple answer: They write every day. This is going to be Mike’s new system. Writing.
So, Mike tried integrating the new system in his day, but within a week, he identified a few problems. Sometimes he had neither the motivation nor the inspiration to even begin writing. Other times he had no energy to write, since he was too tired from his day job.
What did Mike do? He asked himself more questions and experimented with the answers. To solve his energy problem, Mike decided to try writing at different times of the day. He was always writing in the afternoon after his day job, but as it turned out, mornings worked much better for him. It allowed him to get his writing done before he had the chance to be exhausted from his job.
Mike didn’t know how to solve his motivation problem on his own though. So he looked for a solution on the web. He found that he should have a dedicated writing space, where he does nothing but write. This creates a subconscious connection with the dedicated space, and the activity becomes easier to start.
So he tried applying that knowledge. However while the advice was good and helpful, he still faced some motivation problems. So Mike searched for more answers and he found out about the 2 minute rule. This technique worked wonders for him. Whenever he didn’t have any motivation to write, he sat down at his dedicated writing desk and used the 2 minute rule to get him going.
And just like that, Mike’s system slowly started evolving and it was becoming better and better. While his goal was to write a book, he didn’t burden himself with that. Rather, he was focused on following the system. And Mike knew that if he did, he would eventually get to his desired destination. Just without the feelings of frustration.
So instead of burdening himself with: “Oh, I have to write this book”, he focused on his daily objective which was: to start writing at 7am every morning, at his writing desk, for a minimum of 2 minutes. If Mike managed to do that, he successfully followed his system for the day.
Also once a week, he would review the progress he had made, or didn’t make, if that was the case. What was working, he kept in the system. What wasn’t working, he threw out and looked for a new solution.
The more difficulties Mike faced, the more his system was improving, because it allowed him to upgrade it and fix its flaws. And the system was unique to him, because what worked for others, sometimes didn’t work for Mike and vice versa. In the end, he created a complete system that allowed him to eventually reach his desired destination.
You can create your very own system for pretty much anything. Set a destination, ask questions on how to get there, apply the answer and re-adjust as needed.
If you want to reach your destination fast, you need to have a good system set up, as soon as possible.