How Goals Can Make You Less Successful
As the story goes, legendary investor Warren Buffett was asked by his private pilot, Mike Flint, how to set better goals.
Flint was frustrated with the progress he was making toward his aspirations and sought Buffett’s wisdom on the matter.
Buffett responded by asking Flint to write down his top 25 goals in life. After he completed that task, Buffett then asked him to circle the top five goals on that list that he wanted to achieve more than anything else in the world.
It wasn’t easy to narrow the list, but after some reflection time, Flint arrived at his top five.
Buffett congratulated him on his effort and reaffirmed that he now had a guide to make more progress.
But he then warned Flint to avoid the other 20 goals at all costs.
Buffett explained that the spending of any meaningful time on the other 20 goals would prevent Flint from achieving his top five goals.
Goals compete for time, focus, and energy. Having too many of them creates distraction and diverts a leader’s attention from what is most important.
The same is true for priorities.
By definition, focus requires leaders to narrow their pursuits. Ignoring the less important is not a skill most leaders have mastered.
In Buffett’s view, the only way to achieve what really matters is to eliminate any attention paid to the less important goals on the list.
This is a powerful way of thinking about life and aspirational goals, but it also has practicality when examining more short-term goals and priorities. The narrower the list of short-term goals, the more productive most leaders become.
But it is equally important to learn to ignore at least temporarily the other short-term goals until the primary set is achieved.
This requires real discipline for many leaders, especially those used to juggling many tasks and priorities throughout the course of a day or week.
Buffett’s view to focus on a smaller set of goals and not to allow less important objectives to interfere with a dogged pursuit of what matters most is timeless wisdom.
Consider how it applies to your leadership. What are your top five goals?
There's an unforgettable passage in David Sidaris's great 2009 short story "Laugh, Kookaburra"
"Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove....not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/laugh-kookaburra
Read the whole thing. I've thought about this story maybe weekly ever since.
Nothing gives me PTSD about college more than seeing the word “goal.” The exercises we’d have to go through in High School and College, to Set Goals, triggered me before triggering was a word.
Goals?? Goals are for people with a singular focus, conviction, and passion. For most people (overwhelmingly most), it’s about the journey, not the goal. That, along the way, throughout life, I don’t have a goal (or even 5), I have art, adventure, hobbies, love, kids, a desire to start a business, a passion to fix a problem, and a need to make a difference.
Goals can absolutely make you less successful because they focus your attention on the few, making you feel empty along the way.
I just heard a wonderful interview with Chamath P and Tucker Carlson, in which Chamath pointed out that he made the mistake of wasting 10 years of his life as an investor because he had focused on achieving his goal of that financial success. He said something along the lines of, during the interview, “I didn’t accomplish anything.” He had that goal and while he achieved it, it wasn’t success.
Have a vision, know your values, and embrace your passions. Sure, have a direction, but don’t set your sight on a specific goal because odds are high that in the years to come, you’ll have changed your mind and the journey which took in a different direction leads to a better life than staying the path to achieve that goal.