An essay by John Melonakos
Goals Are For Losers
Today I share my notes from reading Scott Adams’ article declaring that the secret to success is failure. Scott Adams is one of my favorite writers.
Here are my notes:
- Beware of advice about successful people. Example: Thomas Edison liked to take naps, which doesn’t mean you should too.
- Beware of following your passion. For instance, loan officers are taught to avoid giving loans to someone following a passion. Passion makes you blind and dumb. The best kind of passion is the kind that is generated from success. Success begets passion more than passion begets success.
- Goals are for losers. Be system-oriented rather than goal-oriented. Find ways to implement good systems and you will find more success than setting a target and striving for it. The system is more important than the target. “For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure.”
- With respect to entrepreneurship, the most useful thing you can do is stay in the game.
- There is a lot of good that can come from embracing and learning from failure.
What fantastic thoughts! This year I have implemented several systems in my business and personal life that have been great. Systems deliver more results and feel better than goals.
For another post inspired by Scott Adams, see the one I did earlier this year on the decline of management.
What are your thoughts on goals vs systems?
From the conversation
Comments preserved from the original post.
lance
The title of this post must be link bait. I can not imagine that an entrepreneur can successfully, run, for that matter start, a company. I can not for one moment imagine you starting AccellerEyes without some aim in mind. That aim might be to create a science project, doing something fun, or build a sustainable company surely you had some goal. You put systems in place to meet your goals and when they are no longer applicable to your goals you go and get new systems. Maybe it is just the ENTJ coming out in me but I can not imagine running a business, and my life, without goals.
melonakos
In reply to an earlier comment
Haha, yeah, the title is very much link bait. And you’re right about all that, especially in regards to long-term goals.
Adams’ emphasis on focusing on the system over the shorter-term targets is nice though. Also his description of how you’re always in a perpetual state of failure with goals in insightful.
Oftentimes, short-term goals are arbitrary and unactionable, especially in startups, because there is no track record from which to base a goal. I’m going to do an end of year post on systems that I’ve put in place that have worked well for me this year.