I always enjoyed writings coming out from the Basecamp folks, especially Jason Fried and DHH. Recently Jason talked about how he doesn’t have goals. As a goal-setting junkie, I was intrigued. Can anyone with his level of success not plan goals at all? This is what he said:

I do things, I try things, I build things, I want to make progress……But I’ve never set a goal. It’s just not how I approach things. A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Once you’ve reached it, it’s gone. You could always set another one, but I just don’t function in steps like that……I approach things continuously, not in stops. I just want to keep going — whatever happens along the way is just what happens.

OK so he does expect progress, just not in terms of the step-by-step starts and stops that goals bring. It sounds like he’s in it for the process, the journey, not the destination, the goal. I like his analogy of a continuous line of progress. It reminds me of the Buddhist teaching on aimlessness, and mindfulness of the present moment, where “by taking good care of the present moment, we take good care of the future.”

But what really struck me was a quote at the end of the article:

“The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them, but we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.” ~ Jim Coudal

That’s a curious insight, because we do that so often we don’t even realise. I set goals based on the person I am currently - my beliefs, desires, narratives of success and failure. I never once imagined how I would have grown and changed by then, and whether those goals still makes sense to that future self. 

But is that even possible to do? If I never had the goal to start with, would I have even had the opportunity to grow into the person who would not enjoy reaching that goal? It’s kind of a catch22, don’t you think? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.?

I guess the limits of any specific goal is that just that–it’s specific. Without it being part of a larger picture of what we aspire to be in life, as a person, as someone part of a family, society and the universe, that goal will always feel constrained, limited and specific to a moment in that continuous timeline that is your life. That life that contains multitudes.   

So, semantics aside, my take-away from this little amusing musing: have goals, but don’t be limited by it, or worse, over-identify in it. Conversely, you can not have any goals if you like, and you’ll still do well. You contain multitudes.