Smart Goal Setting

Smart goal setting is tricky because it involves both setting goals clearly (by distinguishing them from projects and specific actions) and letting them go.A “project” is a preferred end or direction, an ultimate process. They are endless in the sense that they cannot be completely achieved. For example, becoming an artist or awakening spiritually are projects because they are capable of indefinite expansion, in other words, you can always become a better artist or more spiritually enlightened.By way of contrast, a “goal” is an achievable object that you want. For example, graduating from college with an art degree or completing a spiritual retreat are goals. Achieving goals requires specific actions to achieve them. For example, completing an assigned art project or completing an application to attend a spiritual retreat are specific actions. Specific actions should be rational means to achieving goals.It is important to set goals that foster projects and to figure out what to do to achieve them.Why?Unless you focus on goals and the relevant actions, except accidentally, you will never get what you want. Furthermore, you will lack any way to decide what to do. For example, unless you had the goal of eliminating hunger by the specific action of eating a meal, you would not know what to do when you are hungry. Why not walk into a wall instead of eating?This, though, creates a problem. If, understanding the importance of goals, you attach too closely to achieving them, your life will be perpetually unhappy. You will become dissatisfied. Incessantly being focused on achieving goals is an oppressive, burdensome way of life.Why?Because it is a way of life based on deprivation. If you are always focusing on your wants, you are always focusing on what you lack. You will be living while incessantly being focused on what is missing from your life!It is no good trying to live without goals. How could there be any purposive action at all without goals?We humans have an awareness of future possibilities that nonverbal animals lack. They act in the present moment as if the present were like the past, whereas we are able to act in the present moment as if the present were to become the future. This is why we are able to create futures that we have never yet experienced.So, as usual, figuring out what to do is tricky. It is not obvious what smart goal setting is. On the one hand, we cannot do without goals; on the other hand, we do not want to focus too much on achieving them. What we need here is wisdom.Here are three recommendations for you to consider.The first recommendation about smart goal setting is to prioritize your projects and the goals that relate to them. Once you have decided what you would ultimately like in life, use instrumental reason to figure out what goals would promote what you ultimately want. Life is short. Choices must be made. You cannot have everything. What really matters to you? Rank your most important projects and set up appropriate goals in four critical domains: the physical, the intellectual (including the artistic), the moral or interpersonal, and the spiritual. If you do not include emotional and financial goals in those domains, you may want to add them as separate domains.The second recommendation about smart goal setting is to prioritize the specific actions that will foster those goals. For example, you may want to read, exercise, and meditate daily.The third recommendation about smart goal setting is to focus only on those actions when you are engaging in them. Do not think about anything else. If you permit yourself to be distracted, you will undermine your progress. Suppose that, while you are painting a painting, you are thinking about how you will market it and how much money it might bring you. Obviously, your thoughts are distracting you from what you are doing. (That is suffering, which is always caused by separation.) Suppose that, while you are meditating, you are thinking about how beneficial it will be for you to experience spiritual enlightenment. Obviously, since thinking is not meditating, you are defeating the purpose of meditating by thinking!Smart goal setting is not easy. It is difficult to decide which projects are the most important. It is less difficult, once they are selected, to figure out which specific actions will foster them. It is extremely difficult to focus only on specific actions as you are doing them.These difficulties about smart goal setting go a long ways towards explaining why it is not easy to live well.