Goals Don't Work, Actions Do

Well apparently I got a few of you fired up yesterday when I said something crazy, which is that goals don't work. I'm not alone in this. James Clear says the same thing in the book atomic habits. He says, "I've found that goals are good for planning. Your progress and systems are good for actually making progress."

I've come to define goals this way. Goals are a temporary place holder for a thought experiment. You see, a goal is simply there to help you think backwards. The actions you need to take today.

Scott Adams goes even further on this. He says, goals are for losers because you see, if you look high performers and low performers both have goals, but higher performers have systems. They don't worry too much about the goals and they focus on the systems that actually get them there. He says, you don't need goals.


What you actually need are simple systems that improve your odds. So today as we're again, continuing on this path of revisiting our goals for 2019 we visited and our business plans for 2019 go back and don't look so closely at your goals and how you're doing against those. Look at your systems and how you're doing at executing against those. I've talked to many of you and you've got great systems for how you plan to achieve your goals, but maybe aren't executing on them. And so let's look at our systems and our execution strategies because this is the way to take our goals from just being silliness to being a great placeholder for a thought experiment and then becoming a reality.