3 Huge Benefits You Can Get By Not Writing Your Monthly Goals Down

Stop being so obsessed.

I need to stop doing this.

I’ve written so many articles denouncing the ways of the productivity gurus that I’m surprised they haven’t fined me yet for it. Oh well, might as well add another one to my list: Writing your monthly goals is kind of pointless.

I’m not trying to say that you’re wasting your time doing it..but you are.

I’ve actually found that not writing my monthly goals is more beneficial than ever. So here are three benefits that came from letting go of my goal-setting habit.

You feel an unbelievable amount of pressure on yourself to accomplish a million goals a month.

I still have my goals for the month of October written on my bulletin board in front of me.

I tried being ambitious for that month by setting seven goals. Ha. That was a hard fail. Not even close to what I wanted to accomplish.

Let me get the bullshit out of the way by telling you that nine times out of ten, you will not accomplish even half of the goals you want. It’s common for people to set high standards for themselves that are out of their wheelhouse. I thought I’d be some sort of golden child who didn’t succumb to that curse, but I did. And you will too, so stop trying to be a superhero.

All that did was bring me constant disappointment.

I wanted to get good grades on my exams — I got a B on one, so fail. I wanted to eat more salads — I ate a burger today, so fail. I wanted to drop an email list freebee — I did that a month later, so triple fail.

Not writing your monthly goals will encourage you to stop setting such high standards for yourself.

You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. The less you see the goal, the less you care if you reach it or not.

I’ve found that memorizing my goals is a lot better because I can adjust them whenever I want. But when I write them down on paper, that goal is almost set in stone to the point where anything less is a failure.

Set mental goals and adjust them over time with your mind.

You won’t lose sight of why you do your passion.

It’s so easy to lose sight of why you do things — really easy.

Even I tooted my horn, thinking I had the mental capacity to stay grounded and not get obsessed with stats. But the most successful people in the world do it. That’s because these people are a little too productive with their goals.

I mean, I love LeBron, but what makes you think he doesn’t want more accolades than he already has?

More is never enough. It’s that goal-oriented/focused mindset that crushes the love we have for the people around us. Sure it helps us get to the finish line, but what good is that finish line if no one’s there to cheer you on?

That’s not a world I ever want to live in, and I hope you don’t either.

When you write your monthly goals, you get so caught up in the next big move that you push everyone around you away.

If you don’t write your monthly goals, you’ll focus more on the journey than the destination. You won’t feel a constant need to work so hard. You’ll make time to call your mom instead of slaving over a project.

Always call your family people.

You’ll stop associating goal-setting with productivity.

I used to think goal-setting was the key to productivity, but the gurus messed up on this one.

I have a pretty good memory. I use this mostly when it comes to goal-setting, and it’s been a huge productivity enhancer. What’s the point of writing your goals if you don’t even know the tasks you should do to get there?

Now I’m more of a free spirit.

I don’t schedule my day in 5-minute intervals like Elon Musk. I just see what I can get done in a certain amount of time. The only things I have scheduled in my day are my meals and any other miscellaneous activities like doctor’s appointments. I couldn't care less about the rest.

Pro tip: It usually takes me about 1–2 hours to get any task I have done. Tasks could include working on a school assignment, working out, editing a blog post, etc. Figure out how much time most of your tasks will take and figure out the best time to do them.

As I always say, productivity isn’t about working the hardest, it’s about being smarter with how you allocate your time.

So depending on what I want to get done, I just spend an hour or two at the most on each task I want to accomplish and call it quits. Nothing special.

Goal-setting really isn’t that important because you can just memorize what you want to get done at the end of the month and set two-hour blocks and accomplish them.

Final Thoughts

I’m not religiously against goal-setting, I just hate how it’s often associated with productivity.

There are significant benefits from not writing your goals like relieving pressure on yourself, keeping your loved one's close to you, and not having this false notion that you have to set goals in order to be productive.

If the goal is really that crucial, you have it memorized already.

All you have to do is start.

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