Okay, your goals don’t really suck. I’m actually a big fan of goals. In fact, the bigger the goal, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I have all of my clients prepare 180-day goals for me immediately when we start working together. The idea being that if they have something to focus on and to work toward, thenat they will have a better chance of achieving it – or getting closer than they would have without a defined goal (??) . But are goals really the reason that we succeed? After all, we all have the same 168 hours in the week, and in those hours some people manage extraordinary feats, while others barely manage to get by each day. Are goals the difference? What about intelligence? Drive? Opportunity? Something else?

Over the years, I’ve studied and implemented many goal setting systems, from the tried and true S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals system to the sexier sounding “B.H.A.G” (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) system, and even the more practical “12 Week Year” system from acclaimed author Brian Moran.

…And I’ve written some KICK ASS GOALS – ; works of art, really. 😉

They’ve been perfectly crafted, ticking off all of the boxes and motivating me in all sorts of ways. But eventually, I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I had set, and nearly everything to do with the processes I created and followed.

You see, what I’ve found is that simply SETTING a goal isn’t enough. We have to implement and execute a solid process over time to achieve it. There is a psychological reason for this. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between setting goals and achieving them. This is why you feel so accomplished when you’ve set “good” goals. Setting goals changes our self-identity in very real and concrete ways because our brains can’t tell the difference between what we want and what we already have. That means our brains incorporate our goals into our current self-image, as if we’ve already achieved them.

Goals are great for setting direction. If I were to simply say to you, “Go there.”, the first question you would likely ask is, “Ggo where?”. Then aAfter you make the decision on the destination, it would be’s time to put the plans into action:. TIt’s time to actually MOVE. Here are a handful of problems that arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems:

Problem # 1: Survivorship Bias – Winners and Losers Have The Same Goals

In his book Atomic Habits, author James Clear tells us. “winners and losers have the same goals.”. Such a simple statement, and that’s what makes it so beautiful. When viewing performance, we tend to set our focus on those who end up winning – the survivors – and we assume that lofty and ambitious goals led to their success. But didn’t the losing party have the same goals? Doesn’t every “team” want to win? What differentiates the winners from the losers? Certainly not the goal itself.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge Alabama football fan. Most people assume that I am such a big fan because Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide (Roll Tide!) has managed to win 6 National Championships, but that’s only part of the story. While it’s super exciting to back a team that wins, it’s even more interesting to me to dig into WHY they win:. They win because of a thing that Coach Saban calls “The Process.” Instead of focusing on the end result, Saban gives intense, nearly maniacal focus on the process. Here’s what he says:

“Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the National Championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

Don’t get me wrong; do I think that Coach Saban’s goal is to win the National Championship each year? Yes, I do! But after the direction is set, he focuses on the process.

Problem #2: Goals Are Temporary

Unfortunately, achieving a goal only changes our lives for a moment. In 2014, I completed the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race and finished in the top half of all racers. An amazing feat FOR ME, and I basked in the moment. However, at the awards ceremony, just 24 hours later, they were handing out awards to people who had done this same feat 10 times, and even a few who had done it TWENTY times. My single completion seemed insignificant to me at that pointnow. Just 24 hours after the event, my major goal seemed insignificant. On top of that, after completing this race (that some consider to be one of the hardest in the world), I heard of many other more significant races that are thought to be even harder…even more significant goals that lie lie ahead.

That’s the thing about improvement:. We keep chasing results, when results are actually not really the problem. Results are temporary. What we really need to change, or adopt, are the processes that that cause great results. In order to make change last in the long-term, we must solve problems at the systems level.

Problem #3: Achieving Goals Doesn’t Make Us Happy

In 2012, when I was 39, I went to a friend of mine who is a coach and fitness trainer and told him that I’d like to be in the best shape of my lifve by the time that I was 40. He laughed at me and said, “Chad, it’s going to take us 2-3 YEARS just to see what your body can do. It makes no sense to focus on getting in the best shape of your life, that’s not what’s going to make you happy. What’s going to make you happy is changing your lifestyle once and for all.” He was so right. I eventually did get into the best shape of my life and, while it felt great to look and feel so good, the new lifestyle that I had adopted was so much more fulfilling than the result. That lifestyle was nothing more than a set of consistent behaviors that I integrated into my daily life.

We assume that once we achieve a goal that we will then be “happy.”. The problem with this is that we’re constantly equating happiness with achievement. We are putting off happiness until we hit our next milestone. Once we hit the milestone we fall back into the trap of needing the next goal in order to “be happy.”. This is no way to live. Also, what happens if, for some reason, we don’t achieve our goal? We become miserable and disappointed and feel like failures.

When we fall in love with the process instead of the product, we don’t have to defer happiness. We can be happy anytime during the process, knowing that we are putting in the work that will eventually result in achievements that were previously beyond our imagination.

Problem #4: Goals Can Create A Yo-Yo Effect.

Many people are able to lose weight by working hard for months, exercising daily and drastically changing their diets, but as soon as they lose the weight, they cut back on the exercising, cheat a little bit on the diet, and then most eventually gain much or all of the weight back. The goal is no longer there to motivate them, and the habits themselves weren’t sustainable. When all of our hard work is focused on a singular goal, the motivation to continue the work after we achieve it is gone. So we go through a back and forth process of setting goals, achieving them, and then falling back into old habits.

Focusing on building and honoring processes, regardless of the goals that we’ve set, allow us to continue making progress over time. This longer-term thinking allows us to no longer get stuck in the yo-yo cycle, and but to move into a more productive cycle of continuous refinement and improvement. With this type of thinking, goals can now exist simply to punctuate our improvements over time.

Learning To Love The Process

I don’t believe that goals are useless. I simply believe that too much focus on goals doesn’t allow us to achieve true progress. We focus on goals, believing that their achievement will somehow make us happy, when in reality a strong focus on changing our processes -, our habits -, is what will lead to true fulfillment. By learning to love the process as much as we believe that we will love the achievement of the goal, we can find happiness and fulfillment in the journey and not just the destination.

I know it sounds so boring to just focus on the process. Processes just aren’t as sexy as goals. There a several tricks that I’ve been able to successfully use over time to keep my focus on the process rather than the goal:.

Make the Process Simple – Too often, when we are striving to make change, we over -complicate the process. We think that there must be MORE to solving a problem than meets the eye, when, in fact, most of the time the simple solution is the best solution. Processes shouldn’t need a flow chart to be understood and adopted.

Find Joy in The Journey – Making the goal our singular focus means that we aren’t able to find joy until we’ve accomplished it. By learning to enjoy the process -, enjoy the STRUGGLE -, we can find happiness in the everyday actions. Finding joy in the journey allows us to praise ourselves for small victories and truly settle in to the process.

Make Patience Your Friend – We often set goals for the sole purpose of expediting our success. We think, “Iif I can just get THIS done, then I will be happy.” The pursuit of happiness is. in itself, a negative experience because it assumes that we don’t currently have something that we want. Accepting the present and becoming patient in our journey allows us to see only what is real right now. Patience allows us to suspend judgment long enough to make informed decisions.

Celebrate Small Wins – Focusing on the process doesn’t have to mean deferring gratification until the larger milestone is achieved. Quite the contrary:, a focus on the process allows us to see small changes along the way and to have an opportunity to celebrate these changes. By celebrating the small wins, we create momentum and energy to keep moving forward.

Goals are a useful tool in creating our lives, but we mustn’t put so much emphasis on belief in their ability to move us toward our best lives. Goals can provide direction and even push us forward in the short-term, but over time, a well-designed, well-executed process will always create our desired results. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.