In the past 5 years, I’ve probably set hundreds of goals—big and small, long-term and short-term. I’ve set my sights on everything from changing my smartphone habits and exercising more, to being a more patient father and making better use of my time. Remarkably, with all that goal setting, progress in many areas of my life has stalled.
Instead of being a mechanism of force for my best efforts, my goal-setting became another form of procrastination and a distraction from the real problem that was brewing under the surface. There are no universal laws on the helpfulness of goals in a person’s life. So if goals have been helpful for you, keep doing what you’ve been doing.
However, if you’re like me, and you’ve invested a lot of time and mental energy into your goals with little to show for it, keep reading. Setting goals might be getting in the way of your progress—it didn’t work for me—and maybe it’s not working for you either. 3 Problems With Goal Setting in My Life Like many people, I find thinking about my goals and making plans for the future to be very satisfying and very easy work.
I can experience some of the pleasure of success by simply imagining a better future—without the hard work and hassle of doing it. This powerful combination of high reward and low effort makes it a seductive alternative to ever actually getting started. Goal setting pushes me to think about the future in a way that makes it feel like it’s already mine.
I can dream of .