Self-Help

How to Choose Goals Wisely

Get the right goals before you try to achieve them.

There’s lots of advice out there for achieveing your goals, but not so much advice about how to choose goals wisely.

Choosing good goals is critical. Your goals will take weeks, months, or years to achieve. Poorly chosen goals will never be achieved. So, you should choose your goals carefully. Here's how:

Try everything

You’ll want your goals to flow out of your life purpose; whatever is most fulfilling to you. But if you’ve only experienced 0.1% of the variety that life offers, you probably don’t know what will fulfill you. The solution is to try everything you can, as cheaply and quickly as possible.

Try sports. Join a school play. Learn a musical instrument. Join clubs. Take martial arts. Work briefly in many different industries. Do internships. Job shadow. Try Toastmasters. Volunteer for social work. Hitchhike around the country. If you can afford it, travel the world cheaply. Try self-employment. Become a hermit or a hobo.

You won’t have time to try everything first-hand. The next best thing is to talk to people with a particular lifestyle or career and ask them what it’s like. Do the same with people who left that career to get a balanced view. Sometimes you’ll know people to ask. Otherwise, check the yellow pages and make phone calls, or check the web and send emails.

You should also research lifestyles and careers on the web and in good books.

It’s also important to try other worldviews. I spent 21 years of my life in the wrong worldview, and choosing lifetime goals from that worldview would have been disasterous.

Once you’ve exposed yourself to as many lifestyles and careers and worldviews as possible, you are ready to find your life purpose.

Find your life purpose

There are many ways to do this. Try several:

Take a personality inventory.
A popular one is Now, Discover Your Strengths (you have to buy it new to get a code for the online test). This will tell you what you naturally do well, and give you tips for choosing a matching career.

Or visit Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness site and click “VIA Signature Strengths” under “Questionnaires” (free registration required).

A good career quiz is at the Princeton review.
Take an online test.
This quick online test might help some. But you should try other methods, too.
Consider your values.
Know your values. Know what matters most to you. See How to Choose Your Values.
Write until you cry.
Steve Pavlina’s method is to write “What is my true purpose in life?” and then write answers until you write one that makes you cry. That’s your life purpose. That sounds cheesy, but I must admit Pavlina came up with a good answer for himself: “to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace.”
Write down everything, then throw it away.
Write down everything you enjoy doing, every person you admire, and everything you do well. List the lifestyles and work environments that interest you. Write down your morals, your desires, your passions. Write down all your thoughts on your life purpose. Review all your notes. Then throw them all away and do what your gut tells you.
Try Leo Babauta’s “secrets.”
Read Leo Babauta’s 22 Secrets to Discovering Your Dream and Living It.

Think long term

Young people often want money, status, fame, fun, and an attractive spouse. Old people want good health, companionship, happy children, and independence. When you finally achieve what you’ve spent decades striving for, will your future self appreciate it?

Consider your long term goals. Often, your youthful goals will inhibit goals you may have later in life. Certain types of fun may not protect your long-term health. Chasing fame and money are selfish goals, and which may turn away strong companionship. Maintaining a life of high status is very expensive, and may result in a lack of financial independence later in life. Don’t make your future self regret you.

Beware of high achievement

Most of us set goals we aren’t willing to work for or live with. We want to be a lawyer but slack off in high school. And even if we make it, we find out that the stress and hours aren’t worth the paycheck.

You might enjoy a life of wealth and fame, but it’s not everything you might think. You will not be able to enjoy simple pleasures like walking through a park or visiting a restaurant without being mobbed by fans and enemies. You may need to hire bodyguards for your children. You’ll need to distrust everyone—they could be after your money. You will be publicly criticized. Often.

You will need to put more time and energy towards success than most people do. You will also have to take huge financial risks. And in many fields—business, politics, even sports—it’s nearly impossible to get to the top without cheating or stepping on “little” people.

You may still want a life of high achievement, but for me these drawbacks are not steps toward greater happiness.

Aim high, but not too high

People say, “what the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” That is bullshit. I cannot be a quantum physicist or an Olympic athlete or a powerful billionaire. I just don’t have what it takes. However, it is true that “what the mind can’t concieve, the body can’t achieve.”

Choose achievable goals. Sometimes you just don’t measure up. If you can’t throw a curve ball, you can’t be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. If your IQ is average, you can’t be a neuroscientist or theoretical physicist.

Flippant inspirational books (usually marketed as scientific manuals of success and self-help) will always point to exceptions. Yes, Muggsy Bogues—at 5′3″—was a great NBA player for 14 years. Once, he even blocked a shot by 7′ center Patrick Ewing. But consider how many 5′3″ NBA-wannabees worked their butts off for years and never made it.

There’s always a chance you’ll be that one-in-a-million person. But almost certainly not. Don’t try to squeeze a square peg in a round hole. Find a square hole for your square peg. Another metaphor: If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Not oil.

All they can say is no

Self-esteem may be over-hyped, but it is necessary. Put a gag on “Little Old Me” and remind yourself that “all they can say is no.”

Getting a “no” (from a potential mate, from a business, from a publisher) is not a stop sign. It’s a “try over here instead” sign. In fact, it doesn’t have to be about rejection at all. See Conquer Rejection by Not Eating the Moon.

Summing Up

Success is a good match between your goals and your passions, personality, experience, talents, and skills. It’s worth a lot of research to find that good match. If you choose goals wisely, it’ll be easier and funner to achieve them.

(Much of this article is inspired by John T. Reed’s Succeeding, an excellent book.)