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I just finished reading "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams. In his book and also on his blog he talks about "goals vs systems" as if they're opponents. His views seems logical and I have some life experience that confirms his thoughts. I haven't had success with long-term goals. On the other hand, I haven't seen long-term objectives achieved by building systems.

I have 2 major long-term objectives in my life that draw my focus. First, that of physical wellness. This seems to be a no-brainer for systems, even though it is difficult in this society to focus beyond the goal number on the scale. My second objective, financial independence. Note to self, don't mention the 6 figures of schoo... well I guess that it goes to show how serious I am about straightening out some issues at a noticeable pace. This is where my systems break, or more correctly will have me living with extended family for way too many years to come. In the midst of working on my systems I have failed to achieve S.M.A.R.T. goals in quantities that are embarrassing.

It's important to add that I am a GTD practitioner. The help that I seek is defining the work required to bring the things that live above the 10,000 ft area of focus to the runway.

Do I work on better systems or is there something about the power of a goal that I'm missing?

Edit: It is apparent to me that I misrepresented my query. My failure was in using emotional frustration through personal examples that detracted from the broad question. In so doing I didn't share enough background information to show where along the path my question belongs.

Additional clarifying data:

  • I have successfully made a set of systems to improve my financial situation, and my health. I am succeeding albeit slowly. I have the energy to maintain these systems indefinitely. The next milestone is 10 years away.

  • I have had short term success planning and achieving SMART goals, yet it is difficult to make the changes stick. In my experience SMART goals take a great deal of energy. For the first of a series of goals, the energy feeds itself. As an example, I set a goal to lose 30 pounds over 3 months. I made sure the goal was SMART, met my goal, and then set additional SMART goals. I failed at the goals beyond the first. In retrospect, the first goal had enough hype to generate the energy to achieve the stretch that it required. There wasn't enough energy remaining for the following goals.

  • I am looking specific examples. I enjoy learning from the successes and failures of others.

  • My question is about planning beyond 1-2 months. I am working on gaining the perspective necessary to make better day to day decisions with the aim of accelerating progress on long term visions.

Rewritten Question: Time frame: beyond the next couple of months. What strategies exist that help define the milestones/work necessary to reach a distant objectives?

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Have you tried using a Gantt chart? –  Raystafarian Oct 13 '14 at 13:52

5 Answers 5

up vote 1 down vote

Goals and Systems are just constructs to help you identify what you want to aim for, and steps to take to get there.

Your question on whether you should work on systems or goals is a very personal one.

It sounds like you are having difficulty at breaking longer term goals down into bite size chunks. Financial Independence can be a very long term goal.

What are the key steps you require along the road to financial independence? They could include:

  • Promotion or move to better paid job
  • Move to cheaper accommodation
  • A change in lifestyle/spending habits
  • Monthly measurement of finances
  • etc

Part of SMART is Achievable. Ideally you want to set goals that are a slight stretch, but that you can make. Are you setting unrealistic goals?

Once you have set some straw man goals, build your systems to support meeting those goals. (I know, some folks do it the other way round, but I have no experience of the systems first - see what goals you end up with route)

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These things sound good written down, yet they are not actionable. What happens after the straw men are knocked down? For example I have done the things in your list with proficiency. –  jared Oct 11 '14 at 17:18
    
This just implies you need to be a bit more realistic about your goals. I just popped some simple, obvious ones in my post as examples. I make sure all my goals are actionable, and have a few layers of stretch to help push me beyond my comfort zone. –  Rory Alsop♦ Oct 11 '14 at 17:24
    
This is where I stuggle believing in goals, "I make sure all my goals are actionable, and a few layers of stretch to help push me beyond my comfort zone." To go a little meta, that statement doesn't work as a goal, it is a system. It's a system that isn't measurable, how can a 'few layers' be quantified? What resources move beyond the creation of goals and discuss the day to day work related to goals? –  jared Oct 11 '14 at 17:55
    
It doesn't matter to me. I focus on goals and do whatever activities take me to those goals. Some goals are activities. –  Rory Alsop♦ Oct 11 '14 at 18:03
1  
It matters to me, that is why I asked the question. –  jared Oct 11 '14 at 18:09
up vote 1 down vote

I don't think you know what your goals are - I don't say this with disrespect, but rather to help you. What are your goals. S.M.A.R.T. goals?

Objective: physical wellness
Goals: x minutes running, y calories taken

These goals and systems are just part of the physical wellness. Physical wellness can't be achieved, it's not like you say "I ran x minutes, I'm done with physical wellness." No, you say "I achieved my goal of running x minutes, now I will work until I can run x+10 minutes."

Your system is however you define your increments of success - x+10 minutes every quarter. These systems can't be achieved either.

The physical wellness is the result of the work you put toward your goals within your system. It's something that you work at your entire life. You don't finish it.

The same thing is true for financial independence, you must work at it your entire life.

Systems and goals become opponents when they are counterproductive. You focus too much on your system that you lose sight of your goals. You are too focused on the goal to stay within the system that you've created to ensure long-term gains. They must be harmonious.

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up vote 1 down vote

It looks like you answered part of the question yourself actually. You said yourself, "In retrospect, the first goal had enough hype to generate the energy to achieve the stretch that it required. There wasn't enough energy remaining for the following goals."

In doing so, you identified a weakness in your framework: it doesn't make room for motivation. Goal reaching in itself isn't the ultimate form of achievement; one must embrace the process, or modify it to be nearly automatic (i.e. subconscious).

From your post, I believe you're asking about how to keep up with the motivation of goals after the "hype" period is over. You used body composition as a specific one, so I'm going to talk about that.

So you set up a SMART goal - lose 30 pounds over 3 months - and were able to hit the goal. After hitting the goal, you set up another goal. That's when you seem to falter on progress.

Have you noted the reasons why you missed this weight loss goal? Was it stress in your life, food cravings, missing gym days? When you find them out, I encourage you to share them here. Then I'll tell you what I think will make you successful.

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That last paragraph nicely sums some parts I was going to put in an answer (but will now leave here): whenever you don't meet an (intermediate) goal, identify what was missing that made you miss that goal. And do this without emotions: the answers should be measurable facts. They could be guesses, that's fine (need to exercise 15 minutes more per day), then you can rule that out as a cause in the next iteration. And the fact that I'm talking about iterations here reinforces my earlier statement: without emotions. You won't get anywhere without failures, accept them, retry differently. –  Jan Doggen Oct 29 '14 at 11:17
up vote 1 down vote

What I'm missing in your long-time strategy is "planning from the future":

  • I want to achieve goal F on date Z
  • In order to reach Z I need to achieve goal E on date Y (< Z)
  • In order to reach Y I need to achieve goal D on date X (< Y)
    ........
  • I need to do A tomorrow.

This gives you waypoints to check (so you can't get away with not measuring) and if necessary, to adjust.

Take your time to design a plan like that. It's like any other endeavour: good design helps.

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up vote 0 down vote

I don't understand why Scott Adams differentiates between Goals and Systems. They are two sides of the same coin.

David Allen quotes a church in Sussex England, “A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world”. This is a great quote but it does leave out the system.

The system is the environment at which a dream converts to an action. The system is that function that converts the vision into a set of tasks that will fulfill a goal.

if your goal is health and vitality you can implement a number of systems. You can choose to run, join a gym or purchase the set of P90x exercise DVDs. The system is the exercise program, the task is actually exercising at a specific day and time. This is relatively straightforward.

Something like financial plan is not so straight forward. In a case like this there are a lot of unknowns, a lot of assumptions and a lot of emotional baggage. It means you don't know what your system should look like. You have to define exactly what the problem is and what can be done about it. This takes research support from friends and advice from trusted experts.

Defining the problem also means you have to be honest with yourself. You have to question your assumptions about what is possible. You can both delude yourself and believe you can boil an ocean (this is a metaphor, look it up) or you can deny that you are capable of achieving nothing. Both are wrong.

I can see Scott Adams point that people often voice platitudes about their goals and leave them at that, as a pure abstract thought. He does a disservice however by denying you the ability to define your problem in order to identify a goal, Defining the goal in context of the problem allows you to more easily identify and internalize the necessary system that can solve your problem. His method of system only promotes drudgery.

Having written this I now understand why he knew Dilbert's world so well.

Beware.

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