Death to Goal Setting!
Or how to spend seven years underemployed and end up in a good place
Goals.
I grew to hate that word as a kid, but the public school fixation on goading us into writing down goals and a distinct path for getting to them was ever-present. The goals obsession did not go away once I got out of school; it pervaded every work seminar, self-help book and motivational podcast of the adult world. This goal writing always felt false, and I thought there was something wrong with me.
I was, for a brief time, part of an MLM in which the training involved setting specific goals with numbers and concrete points at which we would feel successful. I was led to believe that my resistance to goal setting was a lack of some kind — of confidence, focus or work ethic.
Goals are all over social media. New Year’s fucking resolutions. The very idea makes me cringe. For three weeks in January, people posted motivational memes about going to the gym regularly, quitting drinking or finally writing that book. But by the beginning of February, the treadmills were empty, wine sales were the same and no one was typing feverishly at their keyboards. It seems I’m not the only person that has a problem with goals.
Around 2017…
…I said, “Screw goals and resolutions; I’m not gonna do it anymore. I’ve been trying to set goals since I was in third grade, and it has never worked out for me, never given me anything but guilt.” Instead, I began navigating my life in a way that felt more intuitive.
Side Note: Since that revelation, I’ve written three different posts on resolutions. Apparently, it’s an enduring personal theme:
From then until recently, I felt lost a lot, with respect to career. I had ten year’s experience as an educator, but I wanted to write. I didn’t have a degree in journalism or an MFA, so I started a blog. For years, only a handful of close friends read it, but I enjoyed honing my skills, so I kept on.
Eventually, I decided to turn that blog into a career, so I told everyone I knew I was looking for a job, and a friend with connections set me up with one. It was part-time, and the money wasn’t good, but I was getting paid to write. People read what I wrote for that small community magazine and liked it. From there, I started freelancing, and writing white papers and social media posts for local businesses.
I had always wanted to write a book…
…so I started typing one day and didn’t stop until I’d plunked down “THE END.” I didn’t have a plan beyond getting the story in my head down on paper. I let that messy first draft sit there for over a year. Then, I rewrote it. Then, I decided to hire a professional developmental editor (GREAT decision and worth the money). Then, when getting it published with an indie publisher fell through, I decided to stop waiting for someone else to get it out in the world where I wanted it. I took matters into my own hands and self-published.
This is not traditional goal-setting.
I felt my way through it, with a vague sense about what the logical next step was and what fit with my tendencies. It was organic and self-generated without someone else’s metrics imposed upon it. Since I’d thrown goal setting in the trash, I didn’t have that narrow framework to confine me.
I started with, I want to write for a living. Then, I bumbled around exploring how to do that for SEVEN YEARS. During that time, I asked myself, What the fuck are you doing? almost every day. I was stressed about money because I wasn’t making any to speak of. I wandered down several dead-end side roads in response to my financial panic (fitness instructor? sales?? lol.)
My marriage strained under this exploration. When we argued about my not having a real job I couldn’t even say, “But I have a plan.” I didn’t. I just kept doing the next thing that seemed like it might help get me there and occasionally spent time digging myself out of distractions.
My path was not straight and narrow. It was a drunken wandering that doubled back on itself and sometimes paused for a nap.
It’s like I knew I wanted to go west, and everyone kept asking me how I was going to get there, what towns I would stop at along the way, and my answer was, “I dunno. I’m just gonna, you know, walk that way.” (wavy hand gesture that probably doesn’t even point west because I have no sense of direction.)
The other day, I was walking my neighborhood and listening to an episode of Work Appropriate in which a woman asked for advice getting back into the workforce after staying home with children. She did not want to go back to school, because she was still paying the student loans from the advanced degree she already had. The advice the guest host gave her?
Connect with people in your field who can give you advice or maybe even a line on a job. (Wait, I did that!)
Go to conferences and workshops to brush up on your skills. (Oh shit, I did that, too!)
Make yourself a website and portfolio of personal projects that show what you can do. (Check!)
It reframed the past seven years of my life.
Instead of seeing it as an inefficient mess full of mistakes, fears and insecurity (which it very much was), I saw it as a difficult but necessary path to where I am now. I wandered, but I made measured choices along the way that made sense for where I wanted to end up. And, I kept going, kept plodding along, despite difficulties and misgivings.
I needed the path to be wide and unspecified, so I could explore how to get here, even if I didn’t know exactly what this point would look like. I now have a full-time job in which I use my writing skills. I have side projects, like my novel and this newsletter, that I love. I would be thrilled if it went viral and celebrities started sharing it on Twitter or X or whatever, but that’s not why I do it.
I feel like I should have figured this out sooner, because this is also THE WAY I WRITE. Try as I may, I can’t adhere to a plot outline; the story always takes on a life of it’s own, and I am compelled to follow it. My brain puts things together in real time and does not like to be confined to something I planned out last week.
Side Note: I am a total hypocrite, though. I don’t want to adhere to plans, but woe to the soccer coach who reschedules my kid’s game or the spouse who won’t commit to family dinner. If you want to cancel a coffee date with me, though, seriously, don’t feel bad. As much as I want to see you, I am thrilled to get to spend the time at home snuggling on the couch.
Maybe the linear way of approaching goals works for you. Great. If it doesn’t, though, try throwing off the mantle of the planned, narrow path and go with your gut for a while. See what happens. If that goal-setting crap has never worked for you anyway, what do you have to lose? I mean, besides seven years of full-time employment wages and benefits.