The subversive power of abandoning goals

-Kathryn Courtney, President, Mix Consulting

I have a disdain for goals. I think they are one of the mechanisms driving modern people to live inauthentic lives. So when the Saturday morning treat that is Kyle Westaway’s Substack Weekend Briefing (https://substack.com/@kylewestaway) hit my inbox with issue number 569, I salivated in the way only someone with newly validated unpopular views can.

Here’s what I found:

Systems Over Goals

Most assume they need ambitious goals to succeed, but the British Cycling team's remarkable transformation came from improving their systems by 1% each day, not from setting loftier targets. From Olympic teams to business leaders, evidence shows that focusing on carefully designed systems — like daily training habits or business processes — leads to better outcomes than fixating on goals alone. The true path to lasting improvement lies in falling in love with the process of continuous refinement rather than chasing specific endpoints, creating sustainable progress that doesn't end upon reaching a particular milestone. By shifting focus from goals (which can create yo-yo effects and restrict happiness) to systems (which provide ongoing satisfaction and multiple paths to success), we unlock the power of consistent, long-term progress. James Clear (8 minutes)

Eureka! That’s two, count ‘em, TWO smart people willing to entertain the idea that goals might not be sacred talons on the bald eagle of the American Dream of Achievement.

CAW!! See my sparkling Talons of Achievement!

James Clear already spelled out a cohesive and compelling case for systems over goals. I’m in, James. But I think there’s another, more philosophical case for moving goals to the back of your making-it-happen closet.

Disciplining yourself over time to drive toward a pre-determined goal is inherently the least interesting and least insightful way to carve a path.

1. The goal is decided by Day 1 You, who is the least informed You of the entire journey. Literally, the minute after you decide on the goal, you are already one minute smarter than when you chose it. This compounds over weeks, months, and years.

2. Fixing your focus on a point in the future partially blinds you to the continuous insights coming to you along the path. It takes you out of being fully in the present. What if that nagging “distraction” from your goal is guidance toward a much greater truth?

3. Goals create highs and lows, which are emotional and disruptive. Steady, in-the-moment, satisfying work and progress create stability.

4. There’s only one way to “win” at your goal. You achieve it, or you fail. And if the goals are interesting enough to bother with, they are probably challenging enough to give you infinite ways to fail at them. And while we can learn from failure, isn’t it less disruptive and traumatic to learn in easier ways?

5. Goals create internal conflict. A part of you becomes the coach, project manager, drill sergeant, and parent to the other parts of you that want to diverge from the path, whether to follow some genuine internal guidance or to just rebel and go eat cake for breakfast. That means now you are in a battle with yourself. Wouldn’t you rather use that energy to actually do stuff?

6. The destinations we choose for our goals are destinations we can imagine today, which likely means we’ve already seen them somewhere. Someone else appears to have it. Some past version of you has already achieved it. Or, worst of all, it’s a societal or personal myth of worthiness that we’ve bought into. What a goal can never be: a unique path that stretches beyond your imagination.

Our greatest good and highest manifestation is to be exactly who we can be—what no one else can precisely be—and to make and do what only we can. Setting goals restricts us to a path already trodden, which is, by definition, the only path guaranteed to be less than what we are capable of.

If you want to think a little deeper on this idea, explore the Buddhist concept of Shoshin, or “beginner’s mind,” and Joseph Campbell's thoughts on the Holy Grail and the Fisher King/Wasteland.

“The Waste Land, then, is the land of people living inauthentic lives, doing what they think they must do to live, not spontaneously in the affirmation of life, but dutifully, obediently, and even grudgingly, because that is the way people are living. That is what T. S. Eliot saw in the Waste Land of the twentieth century; and that is what Wolfram von Eschenbach—Eliot’s model—saw in the Waste Land of the thirteenth.” (The Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth 169-70)

Transform your rigidly-held goals into directional curiosity anchored in the present, believe in the unknown of the path, and become what only you can. It’s simpler, more fun, and it works.