Going Goalless
Table of Contents
Note: I’ve chosen to steer from “calls to action”. I don’t want to pile onto your list of things you “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing. These are practices I use in my recovery from perfectionism, which I do feel the need to note is very much a work-in-progress. Ironically, my only piece of advice is to take or leave advice. You do you, and do it proudly.
Context
September 12, 2023
As explained here, I struggle with perfectionism. This shows up a multitude of ways, but one of the recurring ways that has impacted my personal and professional lives the most is when
I set goals, I miss them, and instead of focusing on the process, what I did accomplish, or the circumstances that may have led to a pivot, I focus on missing the mark. This inevitably spirals me into a version of “giving up”, which looks different for each type of goal.
Another way it shows up is when
I set a goal, typically with an unreasonable “deadline”, burn myself out accomplishing it, and then rebel hard against anything having to do with the goal by abandoning any progress I made entirely.
Some examples of both might be things like:
Any health goal, if I don’t see immediate results, or results in my timeframe, I start to eat / drink whatever I want again, instead of sticking with the healthier habits I had developed.
The time I crushed my body prepping for a half marathon, ran the half marathon, and then didn’t run again for nearly a year.
Any time I try to set a goal around any habit, if I start to fall off the trend, I give up entirely, instead of just doing a little bit here and there where I can.
“Going goalless” isn’t a new idea of mine. In 2020, I had come to this realization that New Year’s Resolutions / Goals, and anything alike, were bad for my mental health, so I had decided to give them up. But I wasn’t successful (ironic… I know) because I had also decided to start my consulting business, and felt I needed goals to keep me on track. Up to this point I had worked in corporate America, so goals were a major part of my career, and it had been ingrained in me that for a business to be successful, goals were a must-have. So 2020-2021, I struggled with the “goalless” mentality. In 2021, I re-entered corporate America, forcing goals back into my day-to-day. Each company calls them something a little different, but each has the same guidelines. Making them SMART, measuring performance, basing raises on accomplishing them, and a “if it’s not on your Goals document, don’t do it” mentality. This also shows up in the infamous interview question:
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I played the game. I played it well, too, in my opinion (and based on my reviews). But it was a crock, really. I’d practice some answer to where I see myself in 5 years, because you have to have an answer. But in reality - no where. Not because I think I won’t be around in 5 years, but because what’s the point in thinking that far in advance? So much changes, so fast, and so uncontrollably in my life, that I lost patience in trying to plan that far ahead. It’s a waste of my energy, and when things don’t go to plan, I stress (<< perfectionism), so I stopped.
This quickly devolved into goals too - I have no idea how business is going to pivot, how the world is going to change, what is around the corner. And frankly, most leaders don’t either. We set these arbitrary goals, visit them 1 or 2 times a year, and then hold ourselves accountable to them in very real, tangible ways (think money / salary / promotion opportunities) and to what end? Because NEVER, in any job, have I ever actually been able to say:
Sorry, can’t do that because it’s not on my Goals document, per my leadership team.
In reality, I have to do my Goals AND whatever random other things that pop up in the ever-evolving-business. As a perfectionist, I need to do it all. I have a hard time letting things go and the paradigm set forth by the business world sets people like me up for failure. I need more room to pivot, react, and do so guilt-free.
Also, in my experience, I can’t wait for a company to give me permission to pay attention to my mental health. Even companies that tout this importance and suggest they have work-life balance figured out, it’s likely still a heavy burden on the individual to actually enact and practice this “self-care”. For me, I have a hard time stopping and taking breaks. Any sign of resistance from colleagues (in the form of calls being put on calendars or comments being made about my having taken time away) and I immediately concede. “They’re right - I ‘should’ be more available, I ‘should’ prioritize this silly internal call that is likely a jibber-jabber session, I ‘should’ have worked faster and it’s my fault this isn’t done, so I ‘should’ work late to get it done on my personal time.” Any small, seemingly-innocuous comment can trigger that story in my head, which then triggers guilt, which then triggers me crushing myself to meet some arbitrary goal, which then burns me out, and so the cycle continues.
Yet, I’m in charge of my mental schema—my shit, as I say. I can’t change what people say to me, but I can set boundaries. In the corporate world, Goals are supposed to be those boundaries. Sometimes they are. Often they are not, and instead they’re multiple to-do lists running in parallel with other to-do lists, and depending on the individual’s personal shit, potentially overwhelming them.
I don’t want SMART Goals. I want guiding principles that help me decide high-level what I want to do, what I need to do, and what I need to drop. From there, I can build my day. Then maybe my week. If I’m feeling extra frisky, my month. Always in pencil. And nothing more than that. Nothing. Because my world could be completely upside down in a month and I want the ability to react, guilt-free, agile, and embracing the one constant in our lives—change.
Going Goalless - Rebelling with a Cause
Define: Goalless
Goalless is the antithesis of “Goal Setting”.
Goal Setting is well explained in the Wikipedia link. I’m not going to regurgitate it, but I did find myself amused and also triggered by reading portions, specifically in the section for “In Business”. It touts goal-setting as the opposite of my very real experience. Now, the triggered-Jess would go on a rant. Instead, I’m going to note:
We are all different. We are all motivated* by different things, have different personalities, triggers, and habits. Because of this, one successful paradigm may work beautifully for some. I know this. I know of a lot of athletes and business leaders that depend and succeed on goal setting. But if you are someone who burns out, struggles with goals, and struggles in the world of business cliche’s and leadership advice, you are not alone.
*”motivated” is being loosely used here. I have my own issues with “motivation”, since it’s unreliable and as fickle as my cat. So if this word doesn’t land with you, replace it with something else that does.
I do, however, want to remind us all on what SMART means, because my antithesis goes directly against it.
SMART is the theory goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-related.
Goalless means everything I write down in my paper-planner is either a habit, an event / project requiring some longer term planning, or some thing that must be done to keep my body, household, or life running smoothly-ish. All habits, events / projects, and tasks must align to my high-level success criteria. Those success criteria are NOT time-related, specific, or measurable. They’re more like lower-level values and are relevant to helping me make day-to-day decisions. Examples forthcoming.
Success Criteria
When my former director asked me what I planned on doing after leaving tech, I couldn’t give a straight answer. Not because I was withholding information, but because I didn’t know. I did, however know, I had a few criteria (in no particular order) for my next venture:
Not at a desk / computer for the majority of the week
Incorporates movement, being outside, and engaging with hobbies more
Making something real and tangible with my hands
Enables a healthy, zen-like lifestyle, which in turn will help me be the type of person I want to be for my family and friends
And there you have my success criteria. I am an adult, and do realize things need to be done and not everything fits nicely into the box of things-Jess-wants-to-do-today. But generally, I am building the rest of my life around those success criteria. They’re not goals. I have no 5-year or 10-year plans. I want to build out a life, organically, following my instinct and the things that make me feel like the zen, calm, and relaxed adult I want to be. Everything else will work out, and if it doesn’t, I’ve been there before and will problem solve.
Things To Do
These are things, tasks, that must be done — things like cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, going to appointments, etc. I used to have a goal “of deep-cleaning my house every month.” I quickly realized, some months I’m just not going to do it. I’d move that task around on my calendar, stress about it, kick myself for not being as clean as I wanted in my initial goal-setting, and so on. Now I notice — “The bathrooms need to be cleaned. I will do that soon.”, add it to my list, and do it when I do it.
Certain tasks need to be done regularly because lives (plants, pets, etc) depend on it. Those tasks take priority over the ones that don’t. I ask for help when I feel I need it. I let go of the rest. Everything gets done eventually, sometimes in piecemeal when I have 5-10 minutes here and there. For example, one-of-three of my bathrooms got cleaned yesterday when I had a quick fifteen minutes. This might seem a failure to some. But to me, it means I only have to clean two now!
This new approach to my to-do list has been revolutionary to my mental health. It doesn’t work for everyone, but I do believe it’s helping me dissolve the perfectionist in me, one bathroom cleaning at a time.
Events / Projects
These are bigger things, bigger than tasks, but with a relatively short timeframe (i.e. not 5 years). This shows up in my life as: get the backyard ready for winter, host / prep the house for a family party, or knitting blankets. There are several smaller tasks which make up each of those projects, there may be a “deadline” (i.e. first snowfall, date of party, birthday), and tasks may need to be ordered (i.e. I can’t move my bushes to the other bed with more sun until that bed is cleared out).
There is coordination required, planning, and a task list which might be split up between things I can do alone, things I need help with, things my partner needs to do, etc. It might also be the case I need supplies and am reliant on those showing up timely, having the budget for them, and so on.
These might seem like goals, but they’re not, because they’re shorter term and ad hoc. They come up as they come up. The only strategy around these projects / events is “do they align with / are they relevant to the success criteria”? Some are required (i.e. doing taxes), some are optional. All are purposeful. None are goals.
Habits
These are things I want to do regularly but need a reminder. These are not SMART. I try not to put any pressure around them. I do, however, have an app that reminds me to complete them on a certain cadence, and I simply check off a “yes” or “no”. I stopped looking at how often I complete them. I turned off the “streaks” counters.
For me, habits are fundamental things I believe help me towards the success criteria. They’re things like: drinking a gallon of water a day, going outside of the house, moving / exercising, and reading for fun. I don’t have any measurable / timed goals around these things, but I do want to do them as often as I can because I feel better when I do. They align with my success criteria.
I have an app because I forget. I get in my head or into work, and I forget simple things like: “did I leave the house today?” It’s not about hitting “yes” or “no” for me. It’s about that notification (of which I have very, very few) that says, “no seriously, stop what you’re doing and go outside”. And if I reply back “nah, it’s raining, so I’m going to sit on the couch and watch TV instead”, that’s okay because I’m not actually measuring anything. What’s more likely is I say “shit, yeah, going for a walk now.”
Habits are simple and fundamental. Once I do them enough, I can take them off my app because they’re second nature, and I can maybe add something new that I’m struggling to remember or a life-hack I recently learned about. Either way, the key here is to not care so much about completing as I am caring about remembering I wanted to do something, and checking in with myself regularly throughout the day so I can mindfully opt in or out, instead of defaulting to out because it didn’t cross my mind until 10 pm and it’s too late.
I keep my habit list short, purposeful, and audit it regularly. If I find I am regularly not doing something, I delete it. Clearly it’s not actually important to me. I might add it back in a few months if it pops back up in my mind as something important. But this idea of letting go of something, moving on, and not berating myself over it, has revolutionized my habit-setting. Instead of wasting mental energy on something I don’t care about, I can delete it from the app, and focus my mental energy on the things I do care about. Things I have seen real healthy results from.
Unfocused by Design
My entire life I’ve been considered a hard-worker, successful, dependable, “high-potential”, and responsible. I have done well during review sessions, have received positive feedback, and have a network-for-life in a lot of close co-workers. I type these things not to brag, but to prove that by society’s standards, on paper, on the outside, I have accomplished things. I have plaques and awards to prove it.
Yet I have done all of this with minimal strategic planning.
I’ve been asked: “how did you get where you are?” I used to have some answer that made me sound smart, like I had this whole thing worked out from the beginning. Recently I’ve pivoted to admitting I didn’t have any sort of plan and try to articulate how I’ve let things organically fall into place.
In reality, I have no idea what’s ahead. I have analyzed carefully how I ended up in most situations I end up in, but it’s all a retrospect. The only successful plans I’ve laid are short term plans (1-3 months). Anything beyond that was a crap-shoot on whether or not I’d even remember I planned to do something. No career choice in my life was expected to last more than a year. If it did, great. If it didn’t, fine too. Five years ago, I did not expect to be here. 5 years before that I didn’t expect to be there. Things just happened, I followed my instincts and heart, made decisions, and kept living my life.
If someone asks me “what’s the plan” I can typically articulate the immediate next steps, again, short-term. Anything beyond that become nebulous fast, with a lot of “let’s see how Phase I goes and pivot from there.” Most of the time, I’ve found corporate projects end after Phase I. This is either because we lost our resources, we lost our champions, or we lost our interest as the business pivoted altogether. Could you imagine the frustration if I had spent countless hours meticulously planning Phases II +? Or if I had invested any sort of emotional well-being into those phases? If corporate America taught me one thing, it was to expect Phase I to be it. If Phase II kicked-off, it was a fun surprise. In all my years, I can count on 1 hand how many Phase II’s kicked off. I honestly can’t think of a single Phase II that completed. And there you have it. I stopped planning that far ahead.
This is showing up in my new business in real ways. I’m quite self-conscious about it, really. In my head, I feel the traditional business world is watching me and pointing at my lack of focus, my lack of goals, and tagging it for failure. In reality, most people probably don’t care. Those that do will likely find this to be an interesting experiment as I flip all of the business advice I have studied over the years on its head, rebelling entirely, and doing my own thing.
It’s unfocused, by design, purposefully, and mindfully.
It’s goalless because my mental health is my number one priority, and goals aren’t good for me, business or personal.
It’s unplanned, flexible, agile, and free.
It may not work, but I think it will.
