Jun
15
The Goals Trap
Our life is necessarily based on goals – they give us direction – almost any sort of activity that we do, for work or pleasure, has goals, from acheiving revenue goals in sales, to scoring points in tennis and soccer, to ascending ranks in Aikido.
We invest an incredible amount of time toward acheiving goals because we think that attaining them will make us happy. Yet, by and large, acheiving goals does not seem to make us happy. Have you ever bought something, and then forgotten about it or realized it wasn’t what you wanted? One of my friends is shopping for a BMW, investing a considerable amount of time and energy, and when he decides, money, over this decision. Yet, I’m fairly certain that after he buys it, he will not be significantly happier than he is now. This is confirmed by one of my friends, who is a Lexus car salesman – she says that people are most happy just before they buy the car, as well as by the research of psychologist Dan Gilbert.
The Aftermath of Achieving a Goal
Many of us have already experienced or can understand this predicament as it relates to material things, but it was my shock and surprise last year when I realized that it also applies to acheivements in general. One interesting comment some friends once made to me is that love is most fun and exciting during the pursuit phase. When people are officially “dating” things become mundane. You should think about this, too, because if you set a goal and have a plan for achieving it, sooner or later, it will happen, and then what will you do? When I graduated, I had set for myself the following goals:
Then, after my best year ever at the company, I found myself in a position where I had acheived all of these goals. Life was comfortable, I had friends at work, and had a good routine. But then, I was beset by a certain anxiety – is this as good as it gets? Because I could see that I would only continue to set more goals, achieve those, and set even more goals.
So are we doomed forever to pursue goals, but not be happy when we attain them? Is life a never-ending pursuit of receding fulfillment?
I thought long and hard about this, and thought – what’s the point? So, I transitioned my responsibilities, quit my job, and went on a one-year sabbatical. I resolved to have a good time – one of the original purposes of a sabbatical year in the old testament is to stop working and devote as much time to study and reflection as possible. Last summer, I went to the outdoor pool in my neighborhood four times a week, Aikido twice a week, then I went traveling with friends in Japan for a month, then started training Aikido more intensively in the winter, and now I train five or six days a week.
No More Excuses
Without any goals imposed upon me, suddenly I had no more excuses for things that I had always wanted to do – I started eating breakfast every day and keeping my apartment very clean. I learned to eat lunch very slowly – at first counting the number of times I chewed my food, but then doing it automatically, and I was really surprised when I met some working friends for lunch, and they finished before I’d eaten half. Realizing I wasn’t getting any closer to my goal of being a published author, I started writing more in this blog… I realized ways in which I’d made work an excuse not to do things.
Yet, enjoyable though all this was, I felt a lack. I distrusted goal setting, yet felt unfulfilled without having goals. The answer to this dilemma came to me through Aikido. Aikido has no competitions, and progress is gauged through passing tests to gain rank. The goal of ascending in rank gives direction to practice. Yet, the vast majority of people are not in Aikido to get rank. Rather, they like going to practice, and this is the way goals should be – they should direct our activities, thereby freeing us to enjoy our daily progress toward them. Goals should direct us, because without direction, we don’t know where we will end up, and we should not base our happiness on acheiving them, but rather the journey. I have rediscovered the principle that life is a journey, and not a destination.
Philosopher Alain de Botton wrote that one of the joys of work is to know how one’s actions that day fit into a larger plan of the week, of months, of quarterly, and annual goals, and that one of the joys of work is to relieve us of having to think of bigger questions, like “what is the meaning of life?” I have certainly benefitted from work in this way, and had fun. Yet, I saw people using it as a crutch – people who didn’t have satisfying personal lives, relying on work completely for their intellectual stimulation, sense of status, and socializing. We are encouraged to search for a “calling” that we can lose ourselves in. But this is very hard – we are complete human beings, able to access the entire range of human experience. Rare is the job that allows us to fully express all the aspects of our humanity.
I do not know the meaning of life, but having clarified my relationship to goals, and placed a few new ones on the horizon, I am ready to go back to working at a company again, in a more balanced and effective way.
