Well detected! Yes, I do have an financial interest in this semantic battle. I haven't read Scott Adams' whole book but I found myself called to respond to his take when people were rejecting my app or my other writing and just citing "goals are for losers". So yeah, I'm critiquing a straw man here—Adams' thinking is deeper than that, but the people quoting him seemed to just have a naive anti-goals slogan.
Even prior to starting the app though, goal-setting had changed my life in a really meaningful way, and I would still have taken issue with "goals are for losers" as a blanket statement. Most people don't realize that it's possible to just decide to do something and work towards it, and goal-setting can be a really powerful frame for that.
I would say that I'm not the one calling the other Olympic athletes losers—Scott Adams does that in his book and I'm responding to him. Goals are for everybody.
Anyway, Adams is making some good points (goals and systems are different, and presuccess failure is a real issue) but he's also overgeneralizing—it is, in fact, possible to have goals without having presuccess failure. Goals can feel good at every turn. Which I won't go into further here because I made my case in the post already.
These are all interesting points but I still think "systems over goals" is better advice for people in general.
Looking at your ideas, I think it's clear why that's the case. Goals need to be treated in a very specific way in order to avoid pitfalls. Is it really worth recommending goals when you need so many guard rails to prevent bad outcomes? Guard rails that you are willing to provide, for a fee $.
This lines up with my experience too. I've seen people self-sabotage because they're not on track to make X amount of money in 5 years. I just don't think goals naturally lead to better outcomes than systems.
I think this is true for companies too. It's better to create systems and culture that better serve the customer than to fixate on stock price, profit, or beating quarterly earnings.
Well detected! Yes, I do have an financial interest in this semantic battle. I haven't read Scott Adams' whole book but I found myself called to respond to his take when people were rejecting my app or my other writing and just citing "goals are for losers". So yeah, I'm critiquing a straw man here—Adams' thinking is deeper than that, but the people quoting him seemed to just have a naive anti-goals slogan.
Even prior to starting the app though, goal-setting had changed my life in a really meaningful way, and I would still have taken issue with "goals are for losers" as a blanket statement. Most people don't realize that it's possible to just decide to do something and work towards it, and goal-setting can be a really powerful frame for that.
I would say that I'm not the one calling the other Olympic athletes losers—Scott Adams does that in his book and I'm responding to him. Goals are for everybody.
Anyway, Adams is making some good points (goals and systems are different, and presuccess failure is a real issue) but he's also overgeneralizing—it is, in fact, possible to have goals without having presuccess failure. Goals can feel good at every turn. Which I won't go into further here because I made my case in the post already.