The Journey
This article details an alternative and much easier approach to achieving great things other than through pinnacle goal-setting. This article is 1000 words long and will take about 5-minutes to read.
The Journey
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Old Taoist proverb
I have often seen this neat little epithet on self-development sites, books and even videos but it doesn’t get to the heart of the real problem. This proverb encapsulates two popular themes within the realm of self-development:
- Having major goals
- Getting started
However and like most self-development, this proverb doesn’t tackle the most difficult thing, which is doing all of the stuff in between getting started and arriving. The problem solving and the processes required to do all of the things between starting and arriving generally get little more attention than “Hang on in there, Tiger” and yet it is this part of journey that requires the most effort.
Because so little focus is put on the journey a lot of people set a goal and take the first step and then don’t know what comes next. The journey has begun but they have no idea of how to complete it. So they stop and wonder if perhaps they should take a step in another direction and the same thing happens. Instead of making great progress these people go around in circles close to their departure point or else meander in great spirals getting nowhere in a hurry and losing all sight of what direction to go in. Well, that certainly describes my early life!
A single step is about a yard long and there are 1,760 yards in a mile. That means that a journey of a thousand miles is 1 million 760 thousand steps long. That’s a pretty daunting prospect and unfortunately most of us have a tendency to assess ourselves relative to what we haven’t got and where we are not (a natural result of measuring our real world results against our sought after desires). Most people on the journey will be thinking after the first step, “One million seven hundred and fifty nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine steps to go” and after the next step “ One million seven hundred and fifty nine thousand nine hundred and ninety eight steps to go.” I’m exaggerating a little bit here but I want to emphasise how pinnacle goals defeat us by the perceived enormity of the task in the moment of assessing what remains to be done. Because the deficit between our real world results and our sought after desires is so great we feel a lot of negative emotion on a consistent basis and so we either suffer and struggle for almost all of the way or else we quit.
The Process Takes You There
The actual process of walking is easy. It is simple and the results are accumulative. If each of us adopted the attitude of focusing on our walking, i.e. whatever process that takes us from here to there, then we would all make a lot of progress regardless of whether we reached the end goal or not.
In order to do that I find it best not to set far-reaching pinnacle goals. I set myself relatively vague directions to go in, or even better, I just get fascinated by an interesting process and just like to see what I can learn and how far I can go with it. In this way I focus on what I can do and I feel good by whatever progress that I make. Tallying up that progress makes me feel great and it encourages me to keep going. It’s the difference between saying (or groaning), “Only one million seven hundred and fifty nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine steps to go” or saying “Great! I’ve done one step!” In reality exactly the same action has been taken and exactly the same result has occurred but the interpretations and the emotions derived are entirely opposite.
By having no desires or expectations related to an end point it becomes so much easier to make progress an to enjoy it. At any point along the journey you can stop for a moment and enjoy the view or explore the surrounding environment. Whereas the sloggers struggling for the end point won’t do that. They would get behind schedule or lose their discipline or give up as soon as they found some beautiful spot for a little relief along the way.
Set Laughably Easy Momentary Goals
Things don’t come much easier than putting one foot in front of the other. Even on the rare occasions when taking a step does feel difficult, because of inclement weather, harsh terrain or physical fatigue, a focus on taking that next step to the best of your abilities during a difficult time is still the only thing that makes you progress on the journey. Wishing and hoping, praying and believing for a better result won’t do that for you.
These days I never set pinnacle goals of a far-reaching nature with precise constraints of time scale and result. Achieving such things to such exacting specifications is so highly improbable that I have almost totally discounted the concept. It’s just too hard and better ways to accomplish great things in life exist so long as you are willing to give up on the notion that only if you hit your goals bang on target can you call yourself a success.
Instead I set directions to head off in and I put almost my entire focus on developing necessary processes and then routinely implementing them day after day. These are the steps that complete the journey. In fact you will most likely walk straight on by the thousand mile mark without even noticing and just keep on going simply through enjoying and focusing upon the process of walking.
A journey of a thousand miles is completed by taking one step after another - New and Improved Taoist proverb!
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#1 - Permalink Pinnacle Goal Setting Doesn\'t Work January 5th, 2008 at 6:29 am[…] can read about the only way to make goal-setting work in the follow-up article. The Journey Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and […]
#2 - Permalink Chris January 5th, 2008 at 6:56 pmGreat article.
How would break down a huge task? For example, you have a project for work or school that would take like 4 months to complete. What would be the best way to approach it?
#3 - Permalink Nick Pagan January 6th, 2008 at 4:31 amUltimately every large task gets done by doing all of the small tasks that accumulate into completing the larger one. So, yes, you need to break your 4-month task down into smaller and smaller pieces.
However, not all pieces require the same amount of focus. Roughly speaking about 20% of those tasks will give you 80% of your headaches and will likely take up about 80% of your time. Identify those difficult parts as soon as you can and accept that difficulties lie ahead for you here.
Resolve yourself to getting through those difficulties as soon as possible, either through better understanding, better problem solving, or through developing whatever skills or resources that you lack but need to get the thing done.
Face up to those difficulties and get on with them. Once you have conquered them the rest often falls into place relatively easily.
#4 - Permalink will anderson January 6th, 2008 at 4:16 pmone should take a look at jonathan coulton’s approach to songwriting, he had as a project called “thing a week” which entailed weekly songwriting…..
he called it a “forced march approach” to creativity.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/faq#Thing
it was neither a laughably easy goal (”one song a month”) nor a pinnacle goal (”an album”) but a well-defined journey into reaching his creative zone on a routine basis, sorta like writing 2-sides of a4 a day:-)
#5 - Permalink admin January 6th, 2008 at 6:37 pmHi Will,
Nice to hear from you at long last!
I make the distinction of laughably easy MOMENTARY goals, by which I mean the steps taken each moment along the way. Creating a song a week is of course difficult but it is still built up by small steps and ways to make those steps easy are possible if enough thought is given to a process for making that easy.
Even creativity can submit to this. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame says that the process of coming up with good ideas is to come up with as many ideas as possible, both good and bad, and then filter out the bad ideas as quickly as possible.
Jonathan Coulton took a classic “I must achieve item x by every time y” highly disciplined approach to goal-setting. Whilst possible it is very hard to do and creates a lot of anguish. I advocate an easier alternative that I find to be more productive in the long-run. It focuses on identifying barriers to progress and removing them succinctly, which normally removes the need for hard discipline. This focus naturally releases high productivity and creativity
#6 - Permalink Blogging - The Journey January 8th, 2008 at 12:17 pm[…] article gives another example of The Journey only this time about a journey that has not yet finished and for which I have no idea of the […]
#7 - Permalink Amit January 10th, 2008 at 11:48 pmgreat article. i really like the mentioned attitude compared to the traditional attitudes in self-help books based on discipline and “hard work”!
#8 - Permalink admin January 11th, 2008 at 2:24 amAmit,
It took me a long time to realise and accept this approach. For years I tried goal-setting, discipline and hard work but got terrible results. I assumed that I was ‘just no good’ but I had a few cherished things that I excelled at - the guitar in particular - where I never applied the traditional self-help techniques.
It was a bit of a “D’oh!” moment when it clicked but now I have cheerfulness, high-productivity and progress!
#9 - Permalink Amit January 11th, 2008 at 3:55 amyes, and i think u have hit the nail on the head! now i am going to try to make such attitude changes and see what happens. will share my experience here.
#10 - Permalink Irrevenant January 19th, 2008 at 8:08 amInterestingly, I just recently came up with this idea independently. Obviously, I totally agree.
However, you haven’t invented a new Taoist proverb - you’ve just explained the existing one.
Taken in the context of Taoism (which has a strong emphasis on living in the present), the proverb essentially says “To walk a thousand miles, just walk”. Once you’ve taken your first step, the proverb still applies to the remainder of the journey, after all.
In fact, the original wording is still better. The new version has you already thinking about the next step (”one step after another”), while the original wording rightly focuses on the current single step.
Mind you, the Taoist wouldn’t even set laughably easy momentary goals - they would simply do what was appropriate in the moment. In this case, step.
#11 - Permalink Nick Pagan January 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pmThe process of walking takes us to wherever we want to go and I reworded the proverb to focus on that process. That works much better as a concept for me. I just keep on walking and don’t even think or care whether I do a thousand miles or not.
On a practical level this small but precise point allows me to live my life much, much better. I just wanted to share that distinction in the hope that it will benefit others as much as I have benefited.
#12 - Permalink Proof of my Theories! (After recently messing up a lot…) February 2nd, 2008 at 7:47 am[…] The Journey […]
#13 - Permalink From Zero to Hero March 28th, 2008 at 6:36 am[…] The Journey […]
#14 - Permalink Lise June 6th, 2008 at 7:35 pmI think this ties in well with Steve Pavlina’s idea of only setting goals that are slightly beyond what you can already do. I’ve found these types of goals to be the most effective for me.
I participate in Leo’s monthly challenges (as you know), but some months those are even too much. I’ve been making gradual progress in the past three months on exercising more frequently, and for me the easiest thing to do is just try to break my last record. “I exercised for 10 days consecutively last month; let’s go for 11!” It sounds stupid, but it seems to work. By work, I mean, I don’t always *achieve* the goal precisely, but I do have a sense of forward progress, always.
I do still have some “pinnacle goals” on my 101 goals list… we’ll see how those turn out. Some of them I’ve made so specific that they’re now meaningless to me. Obsolescence is a another risk you face in making very specific pinnacle goals.
#15 - Permalink admin June 8th, 2008 at 2:00 amYou make an interesting comment about have making something very specific can make it meaningless. That suggests to me that either the goal was improbable in the first place (making it very hard to fulfill), or that through clearly identifying the desire at the heart of the goal, you then realize that fulfilling that desire no longer has much meaning to you (in which case you can give it up and remove a resource sapping distraction). I see these as two positive things. Spending time attempting the impossible (or highly improbable) and doing things that don’t actually give you what you want are two things where a lot of people go wrong and end up frustrated and disappointed.