Some people need goals, though
Posted: January 8th, 2009 | Author: Ron Bronson | Filed under: Ideas, Life, workplace 2.0 | Tags: goals, Seth Godin, taxes, working | 1 Comment »According to Seth Godin:
Not having a goal lets you make a ruckus, or have more fun, or spend time doing what matters right now, which is, after all, the moment in which you are living.
That sounds delightful. Delightfully wrong, that is.
You can say something like that when you’ve made a ton of money convincing folks to buy your books or swilling VCs on your companies, but for ordinary people, this remains a foreign concept. To some the Four-Hour Work Week is a destination worth pursuing. It’s just not on the radar of most people, because their lives aren’t wired that way.
Our goals are based on our wants and our experiences. It’s all about where we’ve come from, what we value and what we’ve deemed important as a result of those experiences. It’s no surprise that millionaire athletes often go bankrupt trying to support their entire families, because they feel a strong obligation to “give back.”
Someone who grew up in a family where entrepreneurship and reaching “for the stars” is a valued and understood thing, are more likely to be supported in such endeavors than the kid who reaches a similar place without the same support system in place for one reason or another.
In this case, passion and drive have nothing to do with it. We lie to kids and tell them their dreams and goals matter. That they can truly do whatever they want, if they just work hard enough. When they get into their 20s, they realize that it’s just not true. Their place at the table was set long before they arrived to claim it. Sometimes they arrive to realize a place hasn’t been set for them and they have two options — pull up an empty seat and create a table setting and act like they belong or go away to a smaller table where they feel more welcomed and comfortable.
There is no wrong way to live life. Only the way you want to. Maybe that’s what he’s saying, but I’m not convinced of it. The people who need to hear this message are too busy working third shift to listen to it. I recall working years ago with a guy who used to work 80 hours a week. He’d work 55 hours at one place and the rest at another job where he could sleep. (He said that was the only reason he did it.) He had no kids, no wife and no house. He made about $40,000 a year between the two.
He’d never considered investing before beyond his 401 (k) and talked a lot about how the tax implications of what he was doing were far from good.
This old coworker didn’t have any goals. He wasn’t considering his happiness. Instead, he was working because that’s what our society values. We tell people to work hard and someday, we might let them relax and play golf a bit before they die.
Too many people these are dispensing advice who have no idea how regular people live their lives from day to day. I suppose they’d say their audiences are different or these folks could find this wisdom if they wanted to. But their lives don’t align in that direction, because they have different goals.
They might not see them as goals, they might just see their choices as “living their lives” and “taking things in stride.”
No matter though.
Some folks need goals to wake up and feel like they’re going anywhere. Goals, unlike stone tablets, can be changed at any time. I’m all in favor of being nimble, because adaptability can save you a lot of wasted time. But we don’t live in a society — at least in the US — where knowing when to quit is valued, meaning the social pressure to understand your place and to do things because they make you happy, simply doesn’t register for a lot of folks.
Reading, Writing and Big Ideas is a blog by Ron Bronson. He is the author of Workplace 2.0: Managing and Motivating Millennials.
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