Achieving goals may be not as hard as it seems
We all desire to achieve something. You may dream about improving your physical shape, making a career in professional writing at some custom essay writing service, start a successful business. And what do we usually start with? We set a specific goal. But in fact, there are a few reasons why well-thought-out system of actions is more important for achieving success than setting goals.
So what is the difference between a goal and a system of actions?
Imagine this:
- If you are a coach, your goal is to win a championship, and your system of actions is everyday physical drill for your team.
- If you are a writer, your goal is to write a book and your system of actions is everyday writing and improving writing skills.
- If you are a businessperson, your goal is to build a successful company and your system of actions is sales and marketing.
So what if we just forget about the goals and focus on the right system of actions? Will we still receive the result we want? Yes, we will.
Here are three reasons to think less about setting goals:
- goals don’t let us feel happy
As you gradually advance towards your goal, you basically tell yourself that you are not good enough now, but you can become better after you reach your goal.
This way you learn to put your own happiness into cold storage, until that glorious moment you bring your goal to life. “I’ll be happy when I reach that goal. I’ll be successful when I reach that goal”.
Solution: focus on the process and not on the result. It’s quite often that our goals are like rocks tied to our necks weighing us down. But we still expose ourselves to unnecessary stress by setting all kinds of goals – lose weight, get better at essay writing, write a bestselling book. Pap
Instead of feeling increasingly nervous about our major goals that just have to change our livers in this way or another, just focus on everyday work and try not to be behind the schedule.
By paying more attention to the process itself and not the result, you can enjoy every moment of the process and improve at the same time.
- goals prevent long-term success
It would seem that long-term goals must really motivate us. Unfortunately, it’s far from being true – not always, at any rate.
For an instance, imagine that you are training and preparing yourself for a marathon. Majority of people will spend months for preparation and physical drills, but it’s quite likely they will give up on running after the marathon is over. The goal was to run a marathon, right? So now, after your goal is achieved you can just stop training; you don’t feel motivated any longer.
When all your thoughts and all your efforts are set on one specific goal, what will motivate and inspire you after you achieve it?
In cases like this you experience a so-called yo-yo effect: you diligently work on achieving your goals – and when you achieve them, you stop and that makes you go back to where you’ve been before you achieved it. Needless to say, this prevents long-term success. If you want to learn to write better, would you stop after your writing is published and becomes popular?
Solution: stop hoping for immediate results.
Goal-based thinking pushes us towards achieving our goals and completing tasks we’ve chosen for ourselves. After all, if we set a goal and don’t achieve it, we fail.
System thinking helps us forget about the specific set of actions we need to do to get what we really want. The main thing is just to follow a chosen schedule.
- goals suggest we can control what we can’t control
You can’t foresee your future. But every time we set a specific goal that’s exactly what we try to do. We try to predict how fast we will achieve success without thinking all the unforeseeable circumstances that may arise on the way there. If you set a goal to write a book within a year, there may be dozens of circumstances that will impede your progress. Wouldn’t it be better to form a schedule and focus on better writing instead?
Solution: feedback.
Feedback is an important part of well-organized system. It allows to monitor your progress at all stages of your work and indicates when you need to do certain adjustments and introduce changes for better performance. At the same time, it doesn’t make us predict the future.
conclusion
All of the above doesn’t mean that goals are pointless. It’s ok for planning your success. Goals help outlining methods for your actions and inspires us in a short-term perspective. But a well-though-through system of actions is what really helps us achieve what we want.
