Systems vs Goals

❔ Reasons why you should focus on systems instead of just goals:

Goals reduce your current happiness

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal” The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved.“Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful”

🌟 SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal

Goals are strangely at odds with long term progress

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true. Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it? This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

🌟 SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results

Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

🌟 SOLUTION: Build feedback loops

In fact, the primary benefit of having a goal is that it tells you what sort of system you need to put in place. However, the system itself is what actually achieved the results. The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh,“The score takes care of itself” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. What do I mean by this? Are goals completely useless? Of course not.
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.

✨ SYSTEMS vs GOALS ✨

Focus on the progress to create long term habits