Pick up any book on success, personal development, or productivity.
Chances are, at some point the author will tell you about the importance of setting goals. Ideally, SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Reasonable
Time-bound
A good SMART goal tells you exactly what success looks like and when you will have achieved it.
There is an almost universal agreement that goals are critical for success.
And yet, I don't set goals anymore.
Believe me, I tried.
But try as I might, setting goals just never worked for me.
In fact, I seem to do worse when I set goals than when I don't.
For example, in 2022, I set a goal to read 35 books that year on my Kindle. I read 36. For comparison, here are the numbers for the years before and after that:
If you have trouble reading the screenshots, here’s what they say:
49 books in 2019
48 books in 2020
42 books in 2021
42 books in 2023
60 books in 2024
So I never read fewer books than in that one year when I set a goal!
How could this be?
It took me a while to figure it out:
I'm not motivated by goals. I'm motivated by adventure.
What’s the difference?
When you pursue a goal, you put the blinders on. You’re focused on your goal to the exclusion of everything else. It’s a very rigid process.
In contrast, when you go on an adventure, you venture into the unknown. A lot of the time, you don’t even know where you’re going or what you’re doing. To move beyond that stage, you’ll have to take your blinders off at some point. If you don’t, you’ll fail.
Why?
Because adventure transforms you.
It forces you out of your comfort zone. And the more you leave your comfort zone, the more you become somebody else.
You are what you repeatedly do. So when you change what you repeatedly do by repeatedly leaving your comfort zone, you become somebody else.
Adventure literally changes who you are—it changes your Self.
That new Self typically wants and values different things than your old Self. That’s why if you keep your blinders on and cling to your original goal, you’ll end up with something your new Self doesn’t even want anymore.
That’s why adventure cannot be goal-directed.
But if you’re not pursuing goals, how do you decide what to do?
Easy: You follow your curiosity!
When you go on an adventure, you’re following something that’s calling to you. You’re following your call to adventure.
Another way to say this is: When you follow your curiosity, you always follow something you care about.
What you care about will change because you will change over the course of your adventure. That’s why, if you live life as an adventure, like many multipotentialites and polymaths do, your interests will continue to change.
You need to take your blinders off because that’s the only way you can adjust where you're going, based on your shifting interests. And by adjusting where you’re going, you’re also course-correcting for your new Self that will keep transforming as you work through challenge after challenge, adventure after adventure.
Every adventure transforms you and what you want, and therefore the goals you’ll want to pursue.
The rigidity of SMART goals can’t accommodate this process.
And apart from that, I just love the process of figuring out where the heck I’m going and what I’m supposed to do as I go. I love doing interesting detours and discovering cool side-quests I didn’t expect.
That’s much more exciting to me than running straight towards a goal!
SMART goals are for problems that have been solved already, adventure is for new problems and creative endeavors.
SMART goals have their place, though.
Whenever it’s completely clear how to get from A to B, SMART goals make sense. You don’t want to explore every little side street each time you go shopping for groceries. That’s just inefficient (though your kids might appreciate such a mini-adventure).
But whenever you’re working on a problem for which the solution is unknown, and whenever you’re working on a creative project that can take different shapes, I believe adventure is the better option.
Adventure is also the only option for personal transformation.
No one ever became a new person by checking a bunch of goals off their To-Do list. They got there through trials, tribulations, and the constant challenge of adventure.
This also explains why I read so many more books when I didn’t have a goal
What you focus on is what you optimize for.
When you’re focused on reading a certain number of books, that’s what you’ll optimize for (for example, by reading a bunch of shorter books to reach your goal sooner).
And once you reach your goal, you stop.
In contrast, when you’re not focused on reading a certain number of books, and just follow your curiosity, you’re optimizing for satisfying that curiosity. And that might mean reading more or less books—the number just doesn’t matter.
But because curiosity energizes me so much more than goals do, I always read more books when I just follow my curiosity than when I pursue a goal of reading a set number of books.
And that’s how it always goes: When I’m going on an adventure to find the thing that’s calling to me, often not even knowing what it is I’m looking for and just following my curiosity, I’m so much more energized than when I’m just trying to reach a goal. And I get so much more done.
In conclusion…
If you’re like me, and goals do nothing for your motivation, just ditch them.
They are not the holy grail many self-help authors make them out to be. Follow your curiosity instead.
Follow your call to adventure, embrace your lust for learning and personal growth, and let adventure transform you.
Other ways I can help you: If you need help building a more meaningful life, I offer 1:1 coaching. I work with multipotentialites, artists, and basically all adventurers of life who want to create their own path through life. If you’re interested, I invite you to book a free 30-minute discovery call.