Goals - good, bad, or greyscale?

I used to think that goals were everything, and that everything you do should be oriented around how to achieve certain goals in your life. I read a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that talked about being hyper-focused on the moment and the necessity of purpose in attaining that level of focus. Recently, I’ve started to step away from a totally goal-oriented state of mind, but I’ve still retained the habit of setting goals and trying to figure out how to achieve them.

Then, I read an insightful post on Zen Habits about the importance of having no goals. The main idea was that people shouldn't be limited by their goals and to discover unexpected things by following your passions and picking up on sidenotes.

I think one danger of this mentality of doing whatever pleases you at the time is that it can also be limiting, in a sense. For example, one of the hobbies I’m trying to pick up right now is to learn to play the harmonica. I really don’t know how to play it very well and I’m trying to learn a lot of the basics. A lot of times, I don’t really want to go through the drudgery or learning the basics, but if I never put in the time to learn them, I’ll never really learn how to play the harmonica to its fullest. Now you might think that the harmonica might not be one of my passions. Which could be true, so I’ll use another example.

One of my favorite hobbies is running. I’ve been running for about 8 years now, so I can safely say it is something I enjoy. One of the hardest parts of running is coming back after an injury or some time off and working your way back into shape. It feels terrible trying to get back in shape. You run a fraction of what you used to and end up feeling completely destroyed. However, I know that in order to get to a point where I can just go out for a run and enjoy it, I need to work through the tough time of getting back in shape. So is it wrong to have the goal of getting back into shape so I can enjoy running? Like most things, it’s confusing. I think part of following your passions and taking sidenotes is dabbling in things you might not like initially to see if they’ll grow on you.

I do think some goals are appropriate, including ones that are long-term like I want to get ____ job or I want to run ____ marathon. It feels great to be working towards some distant, possibly unachievable, goal. It's also a helpful trick to motivate yourself to do something that you know you'll enjoy, but isn't always on the top of your to do list. Of course, it’s also easy to hate your life because the goal you chose isn’t for you. You just have to establish a good system of picking the goals, and be willing to abandon the goals if they aren’t working for you. Like all things, I guess you just have to pick the right shade of grey.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com