If You Prefer Systems Over Goals, Then You Are Setting The Wrong Goals
“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.”
— Bill Copeland
So you might have heard it already. Systems are in, and goals are out. Forget about your goals, instead work on building your systems. That seems to be the new mantra for achieving success.
Yet, is this really the way to go? Should you forget about setting goals, and instead just concentrate on building systems?
First, let’s clarify what the two philosophies are:
- The goal-setting approach is about setting specific goals (for example, I want to gain 5 kg of muscle).
- The systems approach is about the process and habit formation (for example, I want to eat a fruit every day).
Opinions differ wildly on these two approaches. According to James Clear, systems are superior to goals.
He bases this on 4 main arguments: winners and losers have the same goals, achieving a goal is only a momentary change, goals restrict your happiness, goals are at odds with long-term progress.
I would argue that these arguments are not really about goals, as such, but instead against bad goals. For you see, not all types of goals are created equal.
If you don’t make this distinction, then you might be robbing yourself of the chance to really make a lasting change.
You need to have goals.
Goals give you a reference point and feedback
Josh Waitzkin, a former chess prodigy and the former World Champion in Tai Chi Push Hands has stated that people who prefer systems over goals are just making excuses for not putting themselves on the line,
“I have seen many people in diverse fields take some version of the process-first philosophy and transform it into an excuse for never putting themselves on the line or pretending not to care about results.”
In his book “The Art of Learning”, he comes out in favour of goals over systems, stating that systems people, “claim to be egoless, to care only about learning, but really this is an excuse to avoid confronting themselves. This issue of process vs. goal is very delicate.”
I know a lot of guys who have implemented the systems approach. They go to the gym regularly, they spend long hours there, yet years later they still haven’t made any visible progress.
The reason is that they don’t have any goals to guide their systems. If you focus only on implementing systems, without having goals there to guide you, you will be missing one crucial element for success: feedback.
Goals serve as a reference point that can give you feedback on whether the system you implemented is working or not.
That’s why they are crucial to your progress. So how do you set the right types of goals?
There are a few principles you need to keep in mind.
1) You need to set goals that are under your control
The problem with goal-setting is the fact that people often set bad goals as their targets.
In order to be able to reach a goal, you need to set a target which you have a large amount of control over.
However, people often set targets such as: “I will make X-amount of money over an X amount of months”, or “I will become famous”. These are bad goals since you have very little control over whether this comes true or not.
That’s why one of the first things that you need to do is to examine whether your goals are realistic or not.
If you are setting unrealistic goals, where you have very little control over the outcome, of course, you are not likely to reach them. In that case, you will feel disappointed.
Instead of saying “I will make X-amount of money”, your goal should be: “I will create a product”. That is something you have control over.
Whenever setting goals, always make a distinction between what is under your control, and what isn’t.
2) When setting goals, don’t look at other people
Stop thinking of goal-setting as having winners and losers. You should not orientate yourself on what other people are doing, but instead focus on yourself.
Don’t compete with others, but have you yourself as the only person you are competing against. In this way, you keep the control in your hands.
3) Don’t have too many goals at the same time
One important advice to keep in mind when setting goals is not to have too many goals at the same time. Instead work on only a few goals at a time.
Too many goals can distract your focus and prevent you from achieving them. This can be overcome with a mixed goal-setting and systems approach.
It can work like this: You should work on only a few very specific goals, while you slowly start introducing other goals by focusing on creating the habit first.
Having too many goals at the same time can be overwhelming, however you can introduce new goals into the rotation when you have advanced in your initial goals.
For example, you have the goals of getting stronger, and learning another language. However, there is another goal of running a faster mile that you want to accomplish.
The first two goals have priority, and that’s the ones you focus on first.
Once you are advanced on those two main goals, you might want to start introducing other goals that you want to accomplish.
For that mile-running goal, you might begin just by starting a habit of going out for longer runs periodically, without focusing on any specific times or techniques.
When you feel that you have accomplished, you're getting stronger and language learning goals, you should go full blast into your other goals and put the first two goals into maintenance mode.
So, here you reverse the way you were doing things.
Once in maintenance mode on the first two goals, you put in a system in place to maintain them, while you come up with a goal on the mile-running.
You set a specific goal on how fast you want to run the mile, and focus your training on that, engaging in deliberate practice to accomplish that goal.
A systems approach can be good for maintenance mode. You can adopt this type of approach once you accomplish a goal and don’t really need to improve.
4) Always have a long-term vision to guide you
Having a detailed long-term vision will also guide you to keep on performing even if you achieve some of your goals. This type of vision should also include a sane reflection on some of the barriers you will face on your journey.
You always need to be realistic. It is very probable that you will encounter challenges that might prevent you from achieving your goals. That’s not a reason to get rid of goals altogether.
It just means that you should change your goals for the moment. If you think of barriers as feedback mechanisms or learning opportunities, you will have a more healthy mindset on goals, and will not let things kill your mood.
5) Have fun and enjoy the process
Seriously, just make this fun. Don’t beat yourself up over things, but instead keep a positive mindset. Taking the journey should be as fun as reaching the destination.
When to adopt goal-setting and when is a systems approach better?
Having argued for goal-setting as the superior approach, there is some merit for a pure systems-approach as well. This has its time and place.
To determine when to adopt a goal-setting approach and when a systems approach depends on several factors.
You need to look at:
- Nature of the activity
- Purpose of why you are doing it
A lot depends on what type of activity you are doing.
For some activities, the goals approach is better, while for other activities the systems approach is better.
The first thing that you need to in order to see which approach is more relevant for you is to determine the purpose for which you are doing that activity.
If your purpose is to improve in a certain activity, then you need a goal.
On the other hand, if your purpose is to do an activity just because you like doing that activity and you don’t care if you improve in it or not, then the systems approach is sufficient.
For example, you don’t really want to get better at brushing your teeth, you just want to do it 2 times a day.
For this type of activity (which includes a lot of different habits), the systems-approach is enough.
However, if you want to transform your body, then a systems-approach alone doesn’t cut it.
Here is a small framework to help you decide whether you should use the goal-setting or systems approach:
Ask yourself these questions:
1) Are you a beginner?
2) Do you feel like you are a failure and the world is against you?
If you answered “yes” to both questions, then you should start off slow by adopting a systems approach.
Don’t focus on any specific goals, but instead on building up a few beneficial habits like going to the gym twice a week or eating healthy foods for breakfast.
If you answered “yes” to the second question, then you should also start off by building up a few beneficial habits first.
Once you are successful in establishing these, then you should follow up by setting a few easy short-term goals.
After you have these quick wins, you will start feeling better about yourself, which can start off a positive success loop. After all, success breeds success.
A systems approach is good for people feeling down and depressed. People at the bottom of the success spiral have a negative mindset and feel bad about themselves.
They often quit at the first opportunity and usually think of themselves as failures. Some of them also blame the world for their failures.
For these types of people, the systems approach is a much better approach. They need to start at the bottom, by forming basic habits and building on top of them.
This will reinforce positive behaviour and build their success loop, which will slowly make them adopt a more positive mindset.
After a while, they can adopt the goal-setting approach.
If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second one, then either approach can be good, but you can probably already start off with setting some basic goals that you want to accomplish.
3) Do you want to accomplish something special in the activity you want to engage in?
If you answered “yes” to this question, then you will need to do deliberate practice and you will need to set specific goals and have a very good system to help you accomplish these goals. So here goal-setting is a must.
However, if you want to engage in an activity just for the pleasure of engaging in the activity, then a systems approach is enough.
This also applies for activities which you just want to try out, for example like blogging.
With some activities it is hard to establish a clear goal (because they are dependent on so many factors) and so starting off by testing it out and establishing a system is the best way to go about things.
4) How much control do you have over the outcome?
Now, this is a crucial question. The reason why many people fail at achieving their goals is that they set bad goals in the first place.
If your goal is to become famous or make an X-amount of money, you have to realize that you have very little control over the outcome of this.
If you have goals where you have very little control over the outcome, then you should set up a system.
For example, you say that you want to make a thousand dollars off your blog every month. Well, this is a goal that is not always up to you.
Here, having a system in place where you crank out a set amount of articles a month is the way to go.
However, even here, having goals is beneficial. You just need to set up a different type of goal.
For example, your overall goal is to win the championship. That is largely outside your control. Instead of a goal, it is more of a dream.
That is why you need to figure out which goals that are inside your control can potentially help you achieve that dream.
Maybe that goal could be running the 100-meter sprint in a set time, or having the ability to make 80% of your free throws.
These are the skills that you need to have if you want to have a chance of winning the championship.
While even here, you can’t completely control all the factors, you can at least figure out which things you need to do to be able to reach that goal.
So then, once you have this goal, you set up a system (usually involving practice) to help you reach that goal.
5) Have you already achieved what you want to achieve in this activity and are in maintenance mode?
If “yes”, then the systems approach is enough in maintenance mode. However, if you still want to improve, then you need to set further goals and engage in deliberate practice.
Now you have no excuses, so get to work.
Note: This article reuses elements from a previous article on systems vs. goals that was published on my blog.
