Are You Pursuing Your Goals to the Bitter End?

“We need to make a decision,” Paul said. “Are we going to get a taxi, or are we going to carry on walking?”

It should have become clear on the first day of our walk from the source of the River Thames to Oxford that we’d been overambitious with our route planning. I’d never walked while carrying a pack before, and Paul was used to a different pacing: faster walking, more breaks.

After a pub lunch on the second day, when we’d pushed ourselves hard in the morning to keep up the pace – all too aware of the miles still to go until we reached that night’s stop – we realised we needed to change our plans. The next section of our route was isolated, and there wouldn’t be any other chance to get transport. So, instead of slogging another eight miles, we phoned for a taxi.

I was surprised how difficult I found this, and how disappointed I felt. We’d planned to “walk the Thames Path”, so any deviation felt like failure. Not only had we made these plans, we’d told family and friends about them.

I have a stubborn streak. I hate giving in or giving up. I hate feeling that I’ve aimed for a target and not made it. But then I had to ask myself… what’s the point of this holiday? Does it really make any sense to exhaust myself, risk injury, and spend the next five or six hours miserably struggling onwards? Or should we just call it a day, and replan our route?

That evening, I thought about goals in general: how we can end up pursuing a goal “at all costs” – regardless of what the underlying aim is, and regardless of whether chasing our goal is actually making us unhappy.

What’s Your Real Aim?

Pick one of the goals you’re working towards at the moment. It’s probably something concrete: write a novel or finish my PhD or find a new job or get my inbox cleared.

But what’s your real aim? What values, needs or wants underlie that goal? Perhaps “write a novel” fulfils your need to be creative. “Find a new job is about having a career that meets your values. Getting your inbox cleared might be more to do with feeling in control and on top of things.

Don’t lose sight of your underlying aim. There’s no point chasing a goal for the sake of it, and if the goal stops meeting your real aim, stop. Perhaps your desperate attempts to reach “inbox zero” are making you feel more of a slave to your email. Perhaps you’re a hundred pages into your novel and you’re forcing yourself to sit down and write every day, with no sense of enjoyment.

There’s nothing wrong with quitting. If you’ve gotten to the point where you realize this just isn’t for you, and you’d be happier doing something else, then cut your losses and find something that you’re passionate enough about to achieve your goals in that area. There’s no point in doing something you think you “should” be doing if it’s making you completely miserable right now.

(Krista, On the Road to Success, Sometimes Quitting is OK, Morningstar Multimedia)

You’ll never have enough time to pursue every goal that tugs at your sleeve, so ditch goals that are draining your energy and making you miserable. By that, I don’t mean that you should give up as soon as you have to do a bit of slogging to progress with your goal – you inevitably won’t love every minute – but if all you can see ahead is more and more drudgery, and if you wish someone would just come and cancel the goal for you, then quit.

Avoiding Perfectionism

I have a tendency towards perfectionism. Sometime’s it’s been an asset – like when I worked in software testing and technical support – but sometimes perfectionism makes me stressed about tiny things which don’t matter.

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword: it can inspire greatness, but it can kill inspiration. A perfectionist’s greatest hope is that if they are never satisfied everything will get better. Unfortunately, they cannot see the flaw in this thinking. Perfectionism is mostly a self-attack that distorts perceptions and causes self-defeating behaviour.

(Robert Holden, Success Intelligence – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, p 76)

I think many of us have a perfectionist streak, and it can tip over into procrastination. There are very few things in life which need to be done perfectly in order to succeed – and there’s never a big gold star saying “Congratulations, You’re Perfect!” to herald your achievements.

The easiest way to beat perfectionism is to focus on “good enough”. Do you really need to get every single message out of your inbox – or do you just need to spend half an hour performing some email triage?

You can also ask yourself “what would make me happy?” Do you really want to spend another three hours adding and deleting commas in your article – or do you just want to get the darn thing sent off to the editor?

Set Your Own Success Criteria

Don’t stick with a goal just because you’re worried that if you quit, people will view you as a failure. We do this all the time: sticking with degree courses or career paths just because that’s what our parents wanted; buying flashy products because friends or colleagues have them; staying in failing relationships to present a good social front…

You are the one who has to work towards your goals. Don’t try to chase goals that someone else has dropped on you. However “worthy” those goals are, you’ll feel miserable and resentful … and you’re unlikely to manage to achieve them anyway.

Choose your own criteria for success. Think about your values. Does “success” really mean a big house and fast car? (Or to put it another way, does “joy” mean a new BMW?) Or would your vision of “success” involve lots of time to be creative and to travel?

Accountability is a powerful motivator. If I tell all my friends that I’m going to finish the second draft of my novel by January 31^st 2010, I know I’ll feel an extra drive towards doing that, and I may stay on-track even when I’m tempted to slack off or procrastinate. The danger of accountability, though, is that you can end up feeling trapped. Perhaps you’re keen to succeed with a particular goal or finish a project … but you quickly learn that it’s not for you.

Don’t waste time trying to meet other people’s expectations. Stop worrying about what they think of you: they may well not react how you’d expect. No-one criticised us for not managing the entire walk we’d planned … they were all impressed that we’d walked 40 miles in 3 days, and were glad that we’d enjoyed our holiday!

Do You Pursue Success at All Costs?

Vera Baird said she would let Teesside Cast Products (TCP) based in her east Cleveland constituency of Redcar close over her “dead body”.

(Stuart Arnold, MP pledges to fight to bitter end to save steel jobs, Northern Echo)

We can be prone to hyperbole when chasing a particular goal – especially if we’re fighting for a cause close to our hearts. Phrases like “over my dead body”, “at all costs”, and “to the bitter end” often come up.

While determination can be very powerful, it’s worth considering how far you’re really willing to go. What’s it worth compromising or sacrificing to meet your goal?

• Your health? (Stubbornly pursuing an over-challenging goal could make “over my dead body” literality…)
• Your relationship with your partner or kids?
• Your conscience?
• Your chance of success in a different area?

I’d love to be able to tell you that “you can do anything if you want it enough”, but that’s unrealistic. I know that in my own life, I’m often overconfident about my physical limitations and my mental energy levels. I tend to set over-ambitious targets. Does that mean I’ve failed when I don’t quite hit them? No – I’ve generally succeeded in making some great progress!

Sometimes, external circumstances are against you. Sometimes, you realise that the dogged pursuit of a goal is making you miserable or sick. If you have the attitude of following something through “to the bitter end”, you’re going to end up wasting time and energy on things that you don’t care about –or, alternatively, you’ll feel like a failure when you don’t make it.

Redefining Success

I’ve realised that “success” isn’t about hitting a series of targets or milestones. Success is deeper and richer than that. It’s about living a life where you get to spend as much time as possible doing things which meet your values and make you feel fulfilled. Of course you might hit some rough patches along the way – but the overall journey will feel like an adventure, not an uphill battle.

My whole life has been focused on achieving at all costs: getting the grades in school, winning in sports, getting results in business. When I’m faced with changing, doing things differently, growing … whatever you call it, I’m lost. I’m even beginning to wonder what’s really important to me anymore. My life has been invested in getting results. Now that’s not enough? What do I do?

(Bill, quoted by Kevin Cashman, Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk,  p28)

What’s truly important to you? What matters more than getting results, hitting a milestone or winning a promotion? What values, wants and needs lie behind your goals?

Extra: If, like most of us, you’d love to get back on top of your inbox – without spending days of your life setting up complicated filters, responding to messages that are months old, in the hopes of reaching the elusive “inbox zero” … then check out my review of the excellent new program “Email Triage” by Charlie Gilkey. With $10 and 30 minutes, you could cut out a lot of stress.