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Humans are Goal Machines
Humans are goal machines. The human being is an inherently ambitious creature. If we were alien beings looking from space we would see an incredible force of nature in the hairless ape. They have built great structures hundreds of thousands of times their individual size like sky scrapers, roads that run for thousands of miles, bridges than span vast chasms, giant boats and great tunnels through mountains.
The industry of humans is far more impressive than that of any other creature on the blue planet. It would be obvious to the onlooker that here is a creature that has goals, plans and naked ambition. What’s more; these creatures have created all the tools they need to achieve their ambitions. They have been to the moon, sent probes into deep space and can communicate instantly with each other from anywhere on their planet. Incredible! The scale of the impact of the human on this small planet is gigantic. Even to the planetary weather system is affected by the global warming effect the humans are having on their planet. The watchers in space would easily see that there is one driving force behind all of this activity – the desire to achieve things. Goals.
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What would aliens think of our achievements?
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Progress means achieving ever harder goals.
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Progressive Goals are Progressively Harder
Our goals at the simplest level are to breathe, drink, eat, sleep, to do something useful, to love, reproduce and nurture our children. It is interesting that if strip away the first few of these things then nothing else matters. No other goal is of interest to us if we can’t breathe or have nothing to drink or eat. These are therefore the goals of survival. Any goal over and above this is a goal of progression towards prosperity. To do something useful, for example, could be a goal that results in something to eat or drink for others or to provide shelter, security or some other thing useful to humans.
The point is that our basic goals are taken for granted as they are so easily achieved in the more developed countries. The more progressive and complex the goal the harder it becomes to achieve it as it requires more organisation, effort and resources than simpler goals. If we analyse the things required to achieve any goal we can see that the key problems in achieving any goal are as follows:
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1. Time – All goals will take at least some time to achieve, some will take a long time. Time can have many effects on your goal and on your motivation. You may be too busy with family commitments, your ‘day job’ or other commitments to be able to give your goal the time it needs to be achieved. Therefore it is important when setting your goal to be realistic about the amount of time you will have to dedicate to the achievement of the goal.
A good way to measure this is to write down a list of as many of the tasks that will be required on a regular basis to achieve the goal and estimate the amount of time each task will take. At the end multiply this number by 2 as things almost always take longer than you think. Then ask yourself if the time commitment is a price worth paying for the rewards of achieving your goal. Are you prepared to make the sacrifice?
After all, we only have a limited amount of time on this earth and it may be better to spend this time doing something else more beneficial. |
Time - most precious resource. |
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A lack of money can stifle goal achievement. |
2. Money – Many goals require money to mobilise labour, expertise, technology or other pre-requisites to our goal. Many goals are centred around the very acquisition of more money, the currency of living on planet earth. In either case; the proper management of money in terms of savings, investment, profits and provision for the taxman is critical to success in many goals. Some goals require a lot of money to be achieved whereas others require little or none. For example, if your goal is to invent a new form of flight, there is no doubt this will require a lot of money because of the safety requirements and legislative issues. If you don’t have access to the money then you will need to raise it or find one or more investors who agree with you that there is a need for your invention and are prepared to take the risk.
Other goals like getting fit don’t require much, if any, money. Many people join a gym and pay a significant amount of money every month in the mistaken belief that this will get them fit. It may help motivate initially but in many cases it is really guilt money. The act of joining a gym by itself won’t get you fit and certainly no fitter than running 3 miles a few times a week and doing press ups and sit ups every day. This is a good personal example where smart use of your money will help you achieve your goal and save money. |
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3. Desire / Need – No goal is achieved without a burning desire or a pressing need. ‘Necessity who is the mother of invention’ is a phrase coined by the famous Greek philosopher Plato and as in so many of this ancient visionary’s observations he is correct. Need, desire and greed drive us to achieve so many of our goals. In fact, without these forces there is not a single goal that would ever be achieved. Therefore it is critical that you assess just how much you want to achieve your goal.
To do this look at the two sides of the motivational see-saw of success and failure. Make clear list of the benefits of achieving your goal and opposite this list the consequences of not achieving the goal. Make the list as personal as possible, ensuring that both the benefits and consequences are expressed in terms that make you FEEL something good or painful. In this way you can build the desire needed to ensure that you achieve your goal. Do this repeatedly and your desire will grow stronger. |
Does he need it or desire it? |
Ambition is a relative thing. |
4. Ambition – Ambition is not the same as desire, it is an expression of the scale or size of your goal. This is very important as too little ambition will lead to you not valuing the impact of your goal which can lead to a lack of motivation to achieve your goal. On the other hand, too much ambition can greatly increases the risk of failure to achieve your goal or lead to despair in never being able to achieve your goal because it is unrealistic. For these reasons you need to be sensible in the ambition of your goal. It should be a balance between realistically achievable and challenging to stand the best chance of success.
When assessing the ambition level of your goal you need to take into account your available resources of time, money, energy, labour, technology and chances of success. If it all looks a bit overwhelming then it probably is too ambitious and your chances of success will be limited. One way of taming an overly ambitious goal is to break it down into smaller over a longer time period and then schedule all the tasks that are required for each sub goal. Then re-assess the ambition level of each sub goal and see if these seem more achievable and realistic. |
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5. Persistence – nothing of any value is achieved without persistence. This is the very essence of value; the fact that it is hard to achieve makes our goal valuable. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first commercialised light bulb is one of the most famous examples of the kind of persistence required to succeed in your goals. Edison is reputed to have tested and failed in his creation of a long lasting light bulb over 1000 times. He famously remarked “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”.
Persistence is closely related to Desire but it needs to be applied practically to the individual tasks you have identified in order to achieve your goals. This means that you must dream it, think it, plan it, do it and do it repeatedly until it becomes a habit. Those who build good habits that are aligned with their goals almost always achieve their goals on time or ahead of the deadline. To build habits is a very powerful way of developing persistence and ensure that you achieve what you set out to do. You must never lose sight of your goal and constantly strive for its attainment. You will know when you have developed each habit when you do it repeatedly without prompting and with almost no effort.
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Edison never gve up on his bright idea! |
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Plan to Succeed
If you have all of the above in abundance then you have only one critical task left to do and that is PLAN. If you don’t plan your goal you are taking a big risk of failing. The famous saying ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail’ is very true. Therefore, state your goal clearly in the following terms:
1. Give it a clear title: e.g. ‘Start my own business selling widgets online’.
2. Describe your goal detail: e.g. ‘I want to earn a profit from selling widgets online at a better price and higher quality than my competitors.’
3. State the date the goal is to be achieved: e.g. ‘by December 2010.’.
4. List the benefits of achieving the goal in as much personal detail as possible: e.g. ‘I will be able to work for myself and earn more money than I do today. I will be able to spend more time with my young and growing family. I will not have to spend an hour and a half on the train getting to work and back each day.’
5. Make a list of success criteria so that you can later test if the goal has been achieved: e.g. ‘I will have achieved my goal when I have quit my job, am making £2,000 profit per month and am able to take an income from the business.’
6. After having clearly defined your goal now list out all of the tasks that are required to make the goal become reality. These tasks should be scheduled to fit with your available time and resources and then checked against the timescale of the goal, which you may need to adjust after this stage. The list of tasks will vary as time progresses so plan in some contingency time for that. This is because unless you are a super efficient planner there will be tasks that you will overlook and you will underestimate the time taken for some tasks and overestimate for others.
I hope that the above analysis of goal setting and planning gives you some inspiration and motivation to plan and achieve your life goals. Good luck.
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Author: Riaan van der Linde, Date:02/06/2010 06:33:37