Ruin something good with a goal

Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp, doesn’t believe in goals. He claims he’s never had one.

Imagine being able to succeed by just wanting to make things — and make things better for everyone. Fried is proof that it is possible.

So often, we focus on an external timeline that we have to satisfy in order to be acceptable. We believe that if we fail to keep up with others (or with our own imagined future self), our efforts have no value — or even that we have no value.

It’s someone else’s timeline — or our own, driven by fear — we’re more likely to experience frustration and even hopelessness. Even if we reach the goal, we may not feel any pride in it.

Some people value such achievement for its own sake. They believe that the feelings of shame, inferiority, and anxiety are the price that must be paid.

I think there’s a better way. I believe that the growth required to reach a lofty goal does require discomfort, but not pain. And when we seek the growth itself, and not the achievement for its own sake, we actually enjoy the progress along the way. That, in turn, motivates us to keep going. The achievements that impress others become milestones, not the final destination.

For example, suppose you would like to become more fit. A goal like the ones Jason Fried is talking about would be something like, “I will run a 5K in under 30 minutes by September 1.” The timeline and outcome are actually pretty arbitrary, but you risk feeling like a failure even if you have significant success (for instance, running a 5K in 32 minutes, or running a sub-30 5K on November 24).

Instead, you might decide to block out an extra three hours of physical activity each week. Go ahead and keep track — you can start with 180 at the top of a piece of paper and subtract the number of additional minutes you do each day.

After a couple of weeks of this, you might find that you’re really enjoying running in particular, and that you want to do some interval training to increase your speed, or run for longer periods to increase your endurance. You might even run a race. This is what’s known as having fun. And when you’re having fun, you’re more motivated to push past your previous performance highs and hit new ones. But if it stops being fun, you’re allowed to do something else.

Now that you’ve considered the possibility of dropping goals in order to be more fulfilled, consider: How might these ideas apply to kids? Where can we create opportunities for kids to do the things they want to do, on their own timeline?