I really don’t like goal setting.

But here I am about to set a big one.

A few Friday nights ago, my husband and I were about four episodes deep into our Modern Family binge-watching marathon—an activity held on from our early pandemic days. He turned to me and asked in the most sincere and honest way possible, “what do you want to do with your life?”

I didn’t know what to say, honestly. My mind sort of turned blank. And then I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the weekend. This seemingly innocuous question pushed me into a black hole of anguish and torment only I could put myself through.

“What do I want?” 

Maybe I want to start a band, own a coffee shop, or be that poetry writer lower Manhattan who sits in Washington Square Park and cranks out sonnets on the spot for lucky tourists.

Apparently the question of starting a band at any age above 18 burns in enough of us to warrant a common search result.

All of these interests inspire me enough to daydream about them. But what does it take to become a musician or a barista or a poet? The simple answer is time and patience. The deeper, more insidious answer is—to become a musician or a barista or a poet, you need to set goals.

Why do goals feel terrible?

The word goal sits like a half-eaten bag of potato chips in the stomach—hard to digest and full of regret. It conjures up old memories of setting objectives to watch less TV or go to the gym five days a week or finish reading a book a week only to be left not accomplishing any of them.

For me, goal brings up the times that I actually accomplished what I set out to do, through sheer force of will or stubbornness, and in accomplishing the goal, I sat at the top of Goal Mountain looking out on the horizon with an empty feeling, questioning, “now what?”

Goal has that unique baked-in quality that forces the goal-maker to think only of the future, leaving the present to be felt only occasionally or not at all. It convinces the goal-maker that happiness can be achieved only when the goal is finally met: when the book is written, the business is started, millionaire achievement is unlocked, and the band books a gig at The Wiltern.

“Anxiety arises when the future becomes constantly contrasted with the present and we live our lives primarily aimed at a future that may never come to be,” says J.W. Traphagan in his article This is when goal-setting gets in the way of happiness published in Fast Company. 

And what about the goal-makers—like me—who have so many contrasting interests that it’s impossible to pick just one? I want to start a coffee company and create a work-from-home fashion line and write a book and start a podcast and be a contestant on the Great British Baking Show (I will sadly probably never be able to achieve that goal for reasons beyond my control). Do I try to get them all done? Or sit in decision paralysis? I see you, multipotentialites.

So I may have some slight anxiety around goals. Apparently, I’m not the only one.

Short-term goals vs. long-term goals

Why do I dislike setting goals so much? How did I get it so wrong?  

Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, the godfather of modern content creators, published this video at the beginning of 2020 (pre-pandemic, hence the huge crowd gathered without masks). In the video, he answers a question from a woman in the crowd who has high anxiety to match her high ambitions. 

Gary explains that setting big, audacious goals, but giving yourself enough time and space to achieve them, is his ultimate way to set goals. Small, short-term goals can lead to anxiety, burnout, a narrow vision for the future, and ultimately self-judgment when the goals aren’t met.

“I don’t make short-term goals,” he says.

Dorie Clark, a business professor at Duke and Columbia business schools and author of the book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World also supports the idea that long-term goals are the way to go.

In her newsletter on LinkedIn, Dorie says, “And while short-term thinking is necessary at times— we do need to pivot and adapt and change—it can't be how we live our entire lives. Because we have goals, and dreams, and things we're aspiring toward.”

Like being a coffee shop entrepreneur-writer-podcast host-music producer-fashionista.

She continues, “And if we're in reactive mode all the time, we'll never get there. We have to take action and put a stake in the ground. It's time to become long-term thinkers again.”

My original intention for this newsletter was to, I kid you not, publish an article every day. EVERY. DAY. To my small but mighty list of subscribers, I say thank you for continuing to read, but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. Between my full-time job and family dinners over video games and the semi-regular trip to the gym, my short-term, unattainable goal unsurprisingly went off the rails quickly.

The case of the unattainable goal

Why did I think writing a daily article was attainable in the first place?

According to the article Why We Set Unattainable Goals published in the Harvard Business Review, we often set unattainable goals because we don’t know our own strengths.

“When we set goals, we are not the best at measuring our own ability to achieve them. In fact, many of us sincerely believe that long shots are feasible,” say authors Haiyang Yang, Antonios Stamatogiannakis, Amitava Chattopadhyay, and Dipankar Chakravarti.

The article goes into the benefits and pitfalls of setting unattainable goals. The authors claim that setting unattainable goals could leave a trail of failed ambitions. Failure to reach a goal could have a negative impact on the well-being of the goal-maker.

But the authors also suggest that setting these goals could also in fact push us to go further than we realized, even if we don’t accomplish it to the level we anticipated. 

“As long as we know that unattainable goals are not really about the destination, but the journey, they can be quite healthy,” write the authors.

Reach for the stars and you’ll hit the moon, or something like that.

Hi goal, it’s me.

The original theme of this post was to discuss my latest short-term goal to participate in National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo encourages participants to complete a 50,000-word book, manuscript, or another piece of writing. That is equivalent to cranking out about 2,000 words a day for the entire month.

With three days into November and not a single word is written to contribute toward my project, I could easily relegate this goal to the pile of other incomplete objectives.

But I’ll take the wisdom from Dorie and Gary and my past goal-accomplishing self and continue down the NaNoWriMo path anyway. Because the bigger picture isn’t about completing a 50,000-word book. It’s about focusing my interest and skills on a project long enough that something comes out of it. It’s about the short-term projects that benefit the long-term goals.

I may not get to the 50,000-word target, but I’ll enjoy the ride as I try.

Here are some quick steps I’m taking to get into the right frame of mind to keep this goal:

1. I’m holding myself accountable by making my goal public. Dorie talks a lot about this in her LinkedIn Learning course on goal setting (which I highly recommend taking if you’re ever stuck on a goal or deciding between multiple goals to set next). By putting the goal out there in the open, the goal becomes more tangible when others can check in on my progress.

2. I’m not worried about the outcome. Yes, a finished first draft of a book at the end of the month would be nice to have, but I am making a concerted effort to enjoy the experience. I know that nothing but benefits can come from this experience, whether the outcome is actually producing a book or just forming a new writing habit. 

3. I’m going to make this project a priority. This is the hardest part of starting a new goal. Up until today, I didn’t write 2,000 words a day unless it was for creating content at work. So this new endeavor requires a total life shift to become someone who writes regularly for me. My dog may not like this new split in attention, and I may need to plan writing around dinner-video game evenings, but the change of perspective to get the work done is worth it.

I’m curious to know what goals you’re tackling. Are you facing a large, short-term project like NaNoWriMo, or do you have long-term goals on your horizon?

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What’s keeping me on track this week:

Career:

Kal Penn on having two careers - Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel podcast

LinkedIn News Live: Indra Nooyi - LinkedIn News

Cryptocurrency and NFTs:

How to Buy an NFT - And Other Crypto Things You Should Know About - by Allie K. Miller, Artificial Intelligence Leader

Creativity and Personal Development:

Brené with Brett Goldstein Live at ACL Fest on Comedy, Creativity, and Roy Kent - Unlocking Us with Brené Brown podcast