Which is more important, destination or direction?
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The tile floor was hard and cold on my feet.
I tried not to walk on it unless I really had to. At night, I had to. My bed and my bookshelf were on opposite sides of my college dorm room. I would read in bed, hop out to place it back on the shelf, then climb back under the covers to catch some sleep.
Sophomore year was when I began to read books.
Mostly self-development books, to start. Throughout the year, I moved into books about entrepreneurship and business. One book after another. Every dollar I had went to buy books.
I’d devour them as soon as they arrived at my door.
That knowledge and those stories opened up an entirely new world to me.
I had never been exposed to that type of literature, and there was one message in particular that stood out to me: set goals.
Goals are a big deal in the world of self-development and business advice.
Authors and gurus spend a lot of time encouraging others to set long-term goals, mid-term goals, interim-goals, short-term goals, and all other types of goals.
And so I did!
I bought journals and notebooks and whiteboards so I could write my goals down. I still have one journal where I wrote my goals down every single day. For two years. That process took almost 45 minutes to do every day. And if I skipped a day, I doubled up the next.
Writing those goals down felt good…at first.
Eventually, I reasoned that spending an hour a day physically re-writing my goals wasn’t as effective as spending that hour to actually make those goals a reality. So I scaled back to writing them once a week and reading them for 10 minutes each day after.
That worked for awhile. But eventually, I stopped writing those long-term goals down altogether.
Something had changed for me.
See, I realized that I had been forcing myself to have long-term goals. That may sound like a good thing, but it isn’t.
I was forcing myself to have long-term goals just so I could say that I had long-term goals. It turned from a healthy way to think about my future to something that only existed to feed my ego. It felt good to come up with those goals. It felt good to write them down. It felt good that I was doing something others weren’t.
But those feelings didn’t lead to results.
Why I stopped creating long-term goals.
My long-term goal when I was 18 was to become a General Manager of a Major League Baseball Team.
My long-term goal when I was 19 was to become an content influencer and write lots of books and give lots of advice.
For most people, the reality is that their long-term goals will change. That’s good.
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My long-term goal when I was 20 was to build a company that runs events.
My long-term goal when I was 21 was to become an investor.
My long-term goal when I was 22 was to sell my company.
I stopped creating long-term goals because my goals kept changing. Sure, that might sound like a cop out. It’s not. For most people, the reality is that their long-term goals will change. That’s good.
We misunderstand the purpose of creating long-term goals.
There are plenty of people out there who preach the importance of setting long-term goals. They’ll force you to get crystal clear on those goals. They’ll encourage you to sit down and think about where you want to be in 10, 15, 50 years. They’ll ask you to draw it on a piece of paper. They’ll have you plot out each step you’ll take to get there.
I’ve gone through these exercises. Many times.
And let me be the first one to tell you that I think these exercises are incredibly powerful. Yes, these practices are actually effective. This isn’t sarcasm! I really do believe that people should sit down and think about these things.
Here’s why.
The act of setting long-term goals is more crucial than the goal itself.
Long-term goals aren’t meant to be achieved.
Long-term goals aren’t meant to be destinations; they’re meant to provide direction.
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They’re also not meant to be “set.”
In reality, long-term goals are meant to be moving targets. They’re meant to be North Stars. They’re meant to be thought-provoking, motivating, and inspiring.
Long-term goals aren’t meant to be destinations; they’re meant to provide direction.
Instead of setting long-term goals, this is what I do instead.
I don’t take the time to think about long-term goals anymore, but I also don’t ignore the future.
What I’ve started to do has led to more personal progress in the last 8 months than in at any other time period in my life.
Here’s what I do.
I take the time to intentionally think about who I want to be down the road. I try to measure every action and decision I make against that person. Personally, I want to be an attentive father, someone who connects people to solve problems, and someone who builds things out of thin air.
Those aren’t typical answers, which makes them perfect for me. Those aren’t destinations either, but they provide me with direction.
And that’s it.
Find direction first.
Destinations are rigid things. They’re places you either go or don’t go. You visit, or you don’t visit. You drive through, or you don’t drive through.
Direction, on the other hand, is fluid.
Direction allows you to change course, take chances, and seize opportunities that you never knew existed.
I don’t know what my destination is, to be honest. Sometimes I’m nervous because I don’t truly know where I’ll end up. But I find comfort in having direction.
The joy–and discovery–is in the journey.
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Photo: Flickr/Don Graham
Great article Jay!