Still No Goals & Loving It
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.
Table of Contents
Context & Reminders
March 15, 2023
Over the summer I wrote this post around going goalless. I get the sense few people seem bought into this idea. The rebuttal I most commonly hear is “Oh… I need goals.”
Why, though?
I’m not saying no one needs goals. Or that everyone should throw their goals out the window. I am suggesting, however, the questioning of this paradigm. The “I need goals” statement feels much akin to “We’ve always done it this way” mentality. I get that for some goals, and the whole process of which to plan goals, is absolutely necessary. In a lot of situations (i.e. running a 10K employee business), they’re paramount to moving a large ship in the same direction. But I would also like to plant this seed: goals are NOT REQUIRED in every aspect of our lives. And if you quit your job (like I did…) then they’re even less required.
Experiments
Out, in catching up around my current adventure, I was asked what a day-in-the-life for me was. I get this a lot… “what do you work on the most?” “what are you working on now?” “what do you do all day?” etc. Varying levels of curiosity, so I work hard at trying to answer the questions concisely, but also accurately.
Most concise answer I’ve found yet: “whatever I want.”
But really, if I don’t have goals driving my day-to-day, and I don’t have a manager or meetings driving my day-to-day, what consumes my day? How do I decide what to do / when? I have two main facets to my day that I’ve been experimenting with - my health and ramping a business.
Business
I have no business goals. At all. Period.
Why
The recovering perfectionist in me cannot handle missed milestones, and any milestone I set is relatively arbitrary. I’m at a point in life and in business where it’s more important for me to try a bunch of things, fail fast, and pivot based on whatever opportunities might arise. This might mean spending endless days testing and producing a new product. This might mean realizing I can’t physically be ready for something in time for some event, and adjusting timelines and expectations appropriately. My mental health is my highest priority, and maintaining space in my business for that will prevent burn-out and overall dissatisfaction.
How
I follow my “going goalless” approach. I only set dates when dates are set. Everything else stays fluid and flexible. This allows me to have buffers and make mistakes. This lets things “take longer than expected”. EVERYTHING is negotiable in terms of timeframes. It has to be.
I say “no” to things I don’t want to do, especially if other people are already doing it, and better. A great example: someone asked me if I have the ability to print business cards. Yes, I do, but it costs $13 to get 250 of them from Staples, so my recommendation would be to use them as they’re the ones that make anything business-card shaped for me. In most cases, I absolutely want the business. But I’m just me, and for large orders that require significant hands-on work, it will likely make more sense and be more economical for everyone if the right tools and company are used. Same for projects and products that do not bring me joy or are not aligned with my expertise. It’s my job as the owner to help my customers differentiate that. I love to be asked, but if I steer you in a different direction, it’s me protecting my headspace and your wallet.
I regroup on minimal-viable-products as soon as I sense a problem. For my first in-person show I was determined to have more inventory than I could possibly need. I had also just figured out how to print two-sided postcards. On my initial list of inventory I wanted to have hundreds printed out. In reality, I literally, physically, didn’t have the time to print that many. I gave myself the space to reevaluate the arbitrary initial number I wrote down, come up with a new minimum number, and a word-track for if I ran out at the show. Turns out people are pretty forgiving, if they even notice, of my flaws. This type of regrouping would have drowned me in a “failed milestone” thinking as part of a goal-setting paradigm. Instead it was a sound, strategic business decision reset based on the reality of how long it takes to print a postcard.
I rest, eat, and take breaks. Since I don’t have any goals, I don’t have as many overly ambitious to-do lists. With my to-do lists minimized to tasks that must be done by set dates set by someone else, and everything else flexible, I am actually, truly, really empowered to walk away. Walk away from my sewing machine. Put down my knitting. Lock up my computer. Whatever. Just go do something else. I’ve never had this. Ever. Not really. And I really believe this is because I have no goals. I just do what I need to do in that moment. A lot of times Pat pops his head in and says he’s taking a break, and I stop what I’m doing and I take a break with him. Because I can. And that’s what I wanted my life to be about. This new refreshing way of doing things means I can work harder and longer. I’ll knit until 11p at night watching TV with Pat. I’ll jot down funny ideas for designs out for a walk when all my funniest ideas come to me. I’ll handle my receipts and log my miles while I’m standing in line at Michaels. I’m more energized and my mind less blocked because I do what I want… when I want…
Health
My weight has been a struggle FOREVER. Before continuing, I want to say this is the longest (~5 months) I have ever maintained a regular habit of running / lifting, with no real end in sight.
There was a period of time when I lost a bunch of weight (my best guess is somewhere between 50-65 pounds over a year, maybe 18 months, but I didn’t have a dependable scale… so it’s a guess). Over the last 10 or so years I’ve been slowly gaining it all back, hitting my peak in June 2022 as I was leaving my data job. I attribute this to many, many unhealthy habits: stress drinking, stress eating, stress-sugar-binges, lack of sleep, and lack of movement. There were days I’d have 150-300 steps (nope… not a typo) at the end of my work day. I’d then head to the couch for mind-numbing activities with a box (nope… not a typo) of candy. I figure (again… my data is iffy) I gained 15-20 pounds in the year I was working for tech. Now… I’m over 30… by a lot. Losing that weight hasn’t been as mindless as it was in my wild-and-breezy-20’s.
I’m surrounded by diet talk and workout fads. I’m a female (as Meta likes to point out, “over 30 in the United States”) on Social Media. I’m a female who gets together with her like-aged friends. This is what we talk about. And OF COURSE I’m familiar with all the apps and things with their varying ideas for managing weight and unhealthy habits. I found in previous lives the most effective strategy was calorie counting and goal setting based on basic math. Want to lose 40 pounds, at 2 pounds a week, that’ll take you 20 weeks, and here’s how you do it. Math. Problem with this is multi-fold.
I’m a recovering perfectionist - and perfectionism + calorie counting = depression, in my experience.
I was always hungry. Probably because I don’t like vegetables much.
I found myself not eating… so I could “bank” my calories for a treat.
I never found this sustainable, and would binge eat my feelings at the first mistake.
Weight loss is NOT LINEAR. Maybe the law-of-averages will lead to an overall weight loss of 2 pounds per week if you let the math work itself out for a long enough period, but I’ve yet to be successful at finding that period… so alas.
I left my job in June 2022. June, July, August, and September I was doing random things. I was kayaking, walking, occasionally going to the gym, riding my bike, really just embracing the “I can do whatever I want” mentality and being outside as much as I could. October, November, December, January, February, and now March, I consistently strength trained 90 minutes a week and ran at least 3x a week, sometimes 4. In between those structured, habitual workouts, I walked.
Some key notes -
Unconsciously, I increased my daily average active calories from 575 (Jun 2021-Jun 2022) to 769 (post Jun 2022). This is a 34% increase.
Unconsciously, I increased my daily step average from 6,775 (Jun 2021-Jun 2022 during which “10,000 a day” was an active, tracked, conscious goal) to 8,349 (no, kayaking does NOT count as steps on an Apple Watch). This is a 23% increase.
I have been eating primarily vegetarian and much-more (while there’s much to be improved upon still) plant-based.
I can lift / load / unload / get in-and-out of the water by myself in a kayak.
I have 2 pink stripes in the Gracie Jiu Jitsu Women Empowered program.
I have shaved 6 minutes off my two mile run when comparing times from October 2022 to present.
This all with no goals. I am not interested in health goals here because that immediately creates a “project” mindset, with milestones and check-ins that can be missed and categorized as “failures”. I’m notorious for waiting for a “clean start” (i.e. a Monday or the first of the month). When I miss a milestone or “goal” then I binge-off-the-wagon. I give up running entirely. I eat a bunch of garbage. I tell myself “it’s okay, I’ll reset on Monday, on the first of the month, or at the New Year.” What I’ve been doing these last several months instead is very consciously shifting my mentality to - this isn’t a project… this is a habit. My reset timeframe is much faster, often times daily. Here’s an analogy that dawned on me in a very profound way….
If I forget to brush my teeth one morning I don’t shrug and say, “eh, January 1st is around the corner. I’ll start again then.” That would be absurd and my dental hygienist would be mortified. I either move on and make an effort to brush them when I can later in the day, or I stop what I’m doing and go brush them in that moment. Why should it be any different for an exercise habit?
Go ahead. Ask.
“How much weight, though, Jess…??”
Well… let’s go back to the data.
I left my job in June. This was also my max weight in so, so many years. Let’s call this 0. Remember - June, July, August, September were all months of “doing whatever I wanted”. Still substantial increases in activity as noted above in my averages, but not a consistent habit of recurring activity. At the end of September I logged a -6 pounds from June. In something like 14 weeks, I lost 6 pounds. That’s ~0.4 pounds a week or 1.5 pounds a month.
In October I started my running / gymming habit more consistently. So let’s look at November’s weight, but before Thanksgiving, of course. I gained back 2 pounds! So now, from June to November (before the holidays!) I’m -4. There are stories we tell ourselves (water weight, muscle weighs more than fat, etc). Let’s keep going. Give the data more time to play out.
It’s March 15th today and I weighed in at my lowest in many, many months. I’m -9 from June. So in 9 months, I’ve lost 9 pounds with all that increased activity and those positive metrics I’ve listed above.
By all factors I’m using (being able to kayak by myself confidently, being able to choke someone if they attack me, and being able to sit without massive amounts of back pain) I feel great. Way better than I’ve felt in years. BUT by the “weight-loss-goal-project-mindset” I’m an epic failure! If I had set out in June or in October with this idea that I would lose the 35ish pounds (a number that would get me to a healthier, albeit still BMI-overweight version of myself) in the 18 (2 lbs/wk)-35 (1 lb/wk) weeks, I’d have given up a LONG time ago. It’s been about 39 weeks since I left my job, and I’ve lost 9 pounds, which is a whopping, 0.23 pounds a week. And that number ebbed and flowed every time I weighed myself. There are days when I lose 2 pounds overnight. And days I gain 3 back.
It’s not linear, is my point.
It’s play it out for a moment as if it is. Let’s say I expected to lose just 1 pound a week for the first 5 weeks. I was burning 3K (roughly) calories a day my first 5 weeks out of work. Should have been easy-ish for me to find the necessary deficit to reach the goal of 1 pound per week. Yet, I have done this before, and failed. The math might add up logically, but rarely does it actually play out this way in my body. The first week I don’t lose the 1 pound I think, “there’s still time. I just need to lose 1.25 for 4 weeks to stay on track. There’s still hope.” If / when I miss the second week, I think, “that’s okay, there’s still time to catch up.” By week three though, I start to panic… this is it. Losing more than 2 pounds a week, that math, it never works for me in a way that doesn’t leave me unbearably hangry. Maybe by week three I’ve lost 1 pound, but what’s more likely with hormones, water, and all the other things, I’ve watched the scale go up and down by 1 or 2 pounds each morning, causing more anxiety. I’m supposed to know our weight fluctuates, but I’m also holding myself accountable to the slightest shifts, celebrating “losing” 0.5 pounds, but dreading gaining back 1. This is a paradox. So now it’s the end of week three, I’m pretend-down 1 pound, which leaves 4 more in 2 weeks. Now I’m at that tipping point where I’m losing grip on my goal. End of week 4, still only down 1 pound, or maybe 2, but that leaves 3 in week 5 at best. And now I know I’m going to miss it. This means, after 4 pretend-weeks of carefully tracking calories, ensuring a deficit, busting my butt in apps and at the gym, I miss my goal. So the natural next thought: “f’ it. If it doesn’t matter what I eat or how hard I work out, then why bother?” and I do whatever I want again, wait until the next “clean start” and start over. (I can’t believe I’m the only one who has this struggle / story.)
Holding myself accountable to linear milestones and goals sets me up for failure, depression, and binge-eating. Instead, persisting through it, showing up despite the scale, and reframing what is important to me, I feel better. The weight will come off faster as my habits are more consistent. I know this because I’ve seen it happening over the last few months. This idea of instant gratification and reward in a linear process for a non-linear thing really had to be set aside in order for me to feel successful. Feeling successful is what has me showing up. Showing up is what will change the underlying habits / conditions that have led me to where I am.
Removing the project / goal label to my health has me feeling better. I’m less stressed out, so I crave less sugar, drink less alcohol, and make better eating decisions. I take more breaks which means I naturally, without thinking about it or tracking it, get more steps in throughout the day. If I don’t feel well, miss my run for a day, I don’t think much of it. I say: “I’ll do it tomorrow” because I know I mean it. I have a proven track record of keeping that habit for myself. It’s much easier to pick back up “tomorrow” than it is in a week or a month. Simplifying this process, reducing / minimizing the “project” behind it, makes less daunting. Kind of like how I think of brushing my teeth. Has to get done, will get done, and if I don’t, I won’t guilt-trip myself.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
At the beginning of 2023 I brainstormed some things I wanted to try and learn. Not as goals, but as a list of things to pick up next when I finish whatever I’m working on that day. It dawned on me that the old adage: “Not all who wander are lost” can apply to people who’s souls wander, even if physically they’re in their same place. This realization brought me a lot of comfort. I was very stressed about not having a singular passion, medium for my creations, and product offering. I talk about this in my about - about how I want to try, enjoy, and sell a variety of things.
This is how I’ve always preferred to work, but in a lot of jobs, it’s not accepted. I hate doing the same thing over and over again. The number of freak-outs I’ve had because I’ve had to do the dishes more than once in a 24-hour period, which puts me in a full-on existential crisis, is appalling for most adults. I also don’t like projects that take longer than <enter some arbitrary time period that changes depending on hunger levels and who I’m working with>. I once worked on a work project for 6 months and told my boss if it didn’t wrap up soon I was going to lose my mind. Of course, in corporate America, projects often last years (that same project launched multiple years after we started it). You can imagine the stress levels I managed to have when working in a culture with long projects and recurring tasks that had be repeated daily, weekly, or monthly!
When I started my business, I found myself actively fighting the normal business-planning paradigm of goals, milestones, recurring tasks, and whatnot. Because of this, I work on whatever project I feel like. Not inspired by. Inspiration is fickle. Not motivated by. Motivation is fleeting. Just a vague “feel”. I didn’t know, for example, that today was the day I was going to finally put all these thoughts into a blog. I found myself making a social media post with a link to this blog, which then meant I needed to write it. In most of my previous lives this is such a backwards process it stresses me out to tell you the truth. I accidentally put myself in a position where I set a date by scheduling a post, and my options were to come up with a new post (ugh, I hate social so much this wasn’t going to happen), or write the damn blog I’ve been drafting in my mind for months. And now, here we are.
Wandering in my mind. Wandering in my soul. And slowly building out products and content that maybe someday will multiply into a bazillion dollars, or might not. And regardless, it’ll all be okay. Because I don’t have any goals, and without goals, I can’t fail.
