Two Types of People Fail Repeatedly in Achieving Goals

Goal setting doesn’t work for everybody. Here’s why and what to do about it.

I failed at many goals, but never did I fail living my values — once I had them clear.

People say your resolutions or goals should be SMART, otherwise, they will end up in the trash can come January 15th.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, but you already know that because you too have read tons of self-help content on how to achieve your goals, without achieving results once.

In fact, while I think SMART Goals advice is good for people who have already a clear idea of what they do and what they want to achieve further, they do not make so much sense for the majority of people who:

• are beginners;
• ‘don’t know exactly what to do in life’ and feel confused.

Most people set as goals things they are mostly beginners with:

Working out consistently, eating healthily, building a business. However, they don’t spend time researching what these actions actually entail.

When you are a beginner or don’t have a clear idea of what you want, it’s incredibly difficult to set a target simply because you don’t know very well what it might entail achieving it.

An example? When I first started writing on Medium, I set a goal to reach $500 per month in Medium partner program earnings within a few months.

The result?

I have never hit that target within that time.

I was writing once a week and was still a beginner writer — how could I have hoped for such an outcome? Hence, goals are often the way to make you feel even more depressed and frustrated.

Values drive your actions.

If, for most people, it’s hard to give themselves a measurable target, understanding what their values are in the new year gives a sense of direction that is way more pursuable.

“Values refer to abstract beliefs which serve as guidelines in peoples’ life and affect the way people and events are evaluated.” — says this scientific paper in psychology.

And guess what? Most of us go through life without knowing what our priorities are (which makes achieving our goal even more of a hole in the water).

Knowing our values in life, or more practically speaking, for the new year, is life-changing and will give you a clear idea of what matters to you (and what you can and should prioritize).

My 2023 experience setting values.

January 2023 was the first year where I tried out setting values as opposed to fixed goals, and it ended up being a success.

After much pondering, in January, I concluded that my chosen values for the year ahead would be freedom, health, and relationships.

Here’s how it went:

• Freedom-wise: I have traveled extensively, mostly to places I had already been, such as Portugal, South Korea, and the US. Spending months at a time, especially in the cases of Korea and the US, allowed me to develop an even deeper relationship with these countries. I also left my job after much thought, primarily because I felt the pressing need to experiment with living off freelancing, dedicating time to writing, and assessing what to do next. This need of mine had slowly made the conventional notion of a ‘career’ (the type where breaks between jobs are discouraged) feel suffocating, and I knew I needed to live a period ‘outside of conventional rules’ so much. I am incredibly grateful I experienced this period.
• Health-wise: I feel like I have had a year of valuable insights. Planning my week, including workouts, has been life-changing. I no longer had to guess when to go to the gym. On any given day, I knew whether I had that commitment in my agenda or not. The gym also had a ripple-effect on me, and I naturally transitioned to an even healthier diet. However, this year, like 2022, I got ill often, which for me seems like a symptom of frequent traveling, changes in local diet, and temperature. 2024 might be, at least in part, a year to catch my breath.
• Relationship-wise: I have been more mindful of the importance of staying in touch with friends and family. One example among all, I made and mostly stuck to the commitment of calling my parents once a week when I’m away. I also thought more carefully to the people I would like to be surrounded by moving forward and which social situations nourish me.

Come December 2023, I was satisfied with the choices I had made within my areas of value and the results I had achieved in terms of lifestyle, fitness, and relationships.

To summarize.

Goals are for expert folks.

When you are a beginner or if you don’t have a clear direction and purpose for your life, it’s much easier to set your values — the areas of direction you care about and should prioritize in your life.

I set many unrealistic goals in my life:

• Make $4000 in a year off freelancing. At the time, I had only one stable client, no free time besides that one outside of my job, and no real offer. Of course, I failed.
• Make $500 in a month on Medium — I had no idea what it took, nor did I have a system. I was barely managing to write one article a week.
• Being able to do a pull-up and chin-up — I had no idea that to do so, I had to work on my weak back muscles like a goddamn crazy.

When I opted for setting values, instead of goals, everything became more achievable:

• If you are unsure about your goals, values will guide you;
• For example, in 2023, fitness became one of my values, and I focused on working out consistently tackling all my muscles. A year later, I was able to do my first pull-up and chin-up.
• Values are a north star.
• Values are comforting; they make you, you. Follow them and be surprised by how good it will feel to finally do the things that matter to you.

How to Pick Your Values?

You can find a free-access, little exercise here, no need to subscribe.

What’s your experience with goal setting? Have you ever tried to switch from goals to value setting?