Goals and Systems

Scott Adams, who is way richer and smarter than me, has a saying: goals are for losers, systems are for winners. It's been taken up by a few folk recently. It sounds plausible, especially when Adams explains it, but there's another half to the story.

Goals and systems go together. The goal gives the system a purpose, the system makes the goal achievable. Goals without systems are fantasies; systems without goals are futile. Olympic competitors have a goal (“do my best in the race on the day”) which is carefully not about winning medals, and a system of training, dieting, sleeping, and for all anyone knows, motivational movies, to help them achieve that goal. Oh. The medal thing? Well, if their best gets them one, with the accompanying sponsorship and advertising deals, that’s a bonus. It’s not what they are doing it for.

At the very top levels, as I’ve written before, it’s all about the process, not about the prizes.

Someone who says they have a goal, but doesn’t work a system to get there, doesn’t have a goal. They have an idle dream. Someone who says “My goal is to run the London Marathon in under three hours next year” when they can barely run for the bus now, is not “setting themselves a goal”. They are fantasising. Or just being silly. We nod along with it because we’re polite. We don’t really think they have a goal.

There are three kinds of goals: goals that bring prizes, like winning an award, getting a promotion or a raise, or bedding the blonde; goals that don't have prizes, like benching 100kg, visiting Paris, or bedding the blonde; and states, like being fit and healthy, being informed about the arts, or writing for a living. And let’s distinguish these from tasks which are closed-end activities with a well-defined result that you wouldn't do unless you had to.

Being an author is a state-goal; writing a best-seller is a prize-goal, and cleaning the shed to write in, is a task.

A state-goal needs maintenance: after a while the maintenance becomes the goal. I “go to the gym”, I don’t “aim to get muscled-up”.

We can win prizes by sheer dumb luck alone, as in a Lottery, but mostly prizes are won by talent and effort, and the sheer dumb luck of someone deciding to award you a prize. You’re not in control of whether you win a prize. You are, mostly, in control of whether you can work at something every day. At this exact moment of post-modern capitalism, winning any prize takes a lot of work, and hence requires the temperament, wider life-style and sacrifices to do that work. You want that promotion to the grade above the crab-basket? Put in the hours, put in the work, learn the self-management, self-presentation and social skills. As for what you have to do to win an Olympic Gold… Prizes worth having require a lot of work.

A handful of Prizes put one into a Pantheon: Nobel Prize winners, Fields Medallists, Wimbledon and Formula One champions, all have the same relaxed confidence that musicians who had played with Miles Davis had or have. The glow of the unquestionable elite.

At the other end are the non-prize goals: whether these are rewarding depends on your state of mind. One man might be thrilled with his trip up to the observation deck of the Shard, while another, in the middle of a potentially nasty re-organisation at work, might wonder what he is doing there. One man may bench 100kg and glow inwardly at having proved something to himself: another might add another 5kgs the next time.

Therapists and psychologists see a lot of people who don't get a feeling of satisfaction from whatever they do. Those therapists conclude that everyone feels that way, and pronounce goals of any kind to be inherently unsatisfying and meaningless. As opposed to True Love, and Family, and Intimacy, and Being Accepted, and all that stuff.

Someone who thinks that getting some gee-gaw, attaining some goal or winning some prize will change them are, of course, being silly. It’s not the prize that changes them: it’s the process of getting the prize. It’s the changes in character, confidence and emotional state needed to be at the prize-winning level, that are the real benefit of the prize. Not the money, celebrity and appearance in the Honours List. Although the money, celebrity and gong are worth having.

Regular people are puzzled by those of us who have state-goals. Why do I want to be fit and in shape? As if it must be for another purpose, such as impressing girls or playing a sport, the purpose of which is, of course, to win a prize. Regular people understand prizes, but not states. Unless that state is "happiness". Whatever that means to them.

Successful people, by contrast, have systems and goals, the goals are states of which the system is an important part, and the state offers a chance of winning prizes (promotions, investment returns, sex with pretty girls, money) as well. Elite athletics is an endless stream of competitions: competing is a state, and every now and then, they get to stand on the rostrum and bag some sponsorship or advertising. Writing is a state, and if the writer is lucky, he gets a best-seller.

The really unfortunate people are those who work systems that don't put them in a desired state and don't offer the chance of winning prizes.

They’re called “employees”.

Yep. That would be me.