I hate goals.
I hate the word. I hate the premise.
Maybe it comes from reading self-help books when I was younger. Every one of them said the same thing:
You NEED goals!
They need to be SMART!
Anyone without goals is LOST!
SET your goals!
WRITE them down!
LOOK at them every day!
If you don’t, you’ll FAIL!
And then congratulations—you’ve turned your life into a measured and miserable experience.
I have a secret.
I don’t have goals.
GASP!
I can hear the whispers now.
“Wait, what?”
“Everyone needs goals!”
“He must be lost.”
“Is he okay?”
I’m doing just fine.
As a matter of fact, my problem was never a lack of goals.
My problem was taking action.
And how did I goad myself into taking action?
I gave myself challenges.
Looking back, nearly every major change I’ve made started that way.
What would happen if I lifted, ate, and slept like a bodybuilder for a year?
Could I get lean enough to channel my inner Bruce Lee? Apparently yes—although I also learned that there is such a thing as too lean.
Could I get my substitute teaching license and somehow parlay that into a full-time role in education?
Could I get better at bartending and work my way into a restaurant bar?
Some challenges worked better than others. Some went too far. But they got me moving.
Now, is this mostly a semantic distinction?
Probably.
But one inspires me, and the other makes me want to take a nap.
Apparently, my brain cares deeply about what we call things.
Compare:
My goal is to run a 5K in under 25 minutes.
With:
Let’s see if I can break 25 minutes in a 5K.
The first sounds like something I should enter into a spreadsheet.
The second sounds like something I want to conquer.
Something to test.
Something to take a swing at.
Something I might pull off—or fail spectacularly while wheezing across the finish line.
Either result is more interesting than updating my goal tracker.
Here’s another one:
My goal is to go on one date every week until I find a woman compatible with what I’m looking for.
Snooze fest.
Now:
Let’s go on some dates, meet some interesting women, have fun, and see what happens.
That sounds exciting.
Goals arrive wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.
Plans. Deadlines. Milestones. Progress reports. Morning affirmations. Possibly a special notebook.
Yawn.
Challenges show up in well-fitting T-shirt and say:
Let’s do this and see what happens.
I know which one gets me fired up.
Challenges Hit Different
A challenge creates motion without requiring me to reorganize my identity around it.
It can be serious or completely pointless.
It can last six months or twenty minutes.
It can improve my life, mildly inconvenience me, or accomplish absolutely nothing beyond satisfying my curiosity.
That’s part of the appeal.
Apparently, I don’t need a goal.
I need to dare myself to do something and see what happens.
Maybe this is just a trick I play on myself.
Maybe I’m replacing one word with another because “goal” has been beaten into the ground by corporate meetings, fitness influencers, productivity gurus, and men yelling into cameras from the driver’s seats of rented Lamborghinis.
Fine.
The trick works.
“I need to hit my goal” does nothing for me.
“I need to conquer this challenge” makes me want to put on my shoes.
So I don’t have goals.
GASP!
I have challenges.
Current challenge:
Finish this article without turning it into self-help mush.
Done.