Originally published as System vs. Goals in Jan of 2022

It’s the new year and everyone knows that you are supposed to have resolutions… but how long do most people make it with their shiny new goals? Research says anywhere from just 14 to a little over 30 days. Taking a cue from their 800 million users’ data, Strava — the social network for athletes — has even dubbed the second Friday in January as “Quitter’s Day.” So how do you get past “Quitter’s Day” with your still new resolutions intact?

FOCUS ON SYSTEMS, NOT GOALS

New York Times best seller, James Clear, writes about the difference in his book Atomic Habits.

“…goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.” A goal is what you hope to accomplish but a system is your plan for actually accomplishing it. While this might seem like semantics, the difference is actually quite profound. If a goal is the destination, the system is the list of directions for getting there.

THOSE WHO WIN AND THOSE WHO LOSE HAVE THE SAME GOAL

Clear points out, goals are not what differentiate winners and losers. Olympians competing in an event all have the same goal of winning the gold medal but only one person actually accomplishes that goal. The goal is not what sets them apart, the training is. The same is true when it comes to our New Year’s resolutions. We all want to succeed in keeping our resolution but most people do not. This is why simply creating a goal is not enough to ensure success. We have to focus on the systems that we are employing to guide us to our goal.

FOCUS ON THE JOURNEY, NOT THE DESTINATION

When employed incorrectly, goals can actually become counterproductive and lead us to take short cuts and develop unhealthy yo-yo patterns. Take the example of losing weight. We want to shed 10 pounds so we go on a month long diet that is completely unsustainable in the long term. We reach our goal but then return to eating the same way that we did before and gain it all back. Instead of focusing on changing our actual lifestyle —eating smaller portions of our favorite foods, adding more fruits and vegetables into our diet and incorporating regular exercise — we focused on the destination at the expense of the journey, the goal at the expense of the system. This leaves us in a worst state than before: discouraged, frustrated and right back to where we started. If we had focused on our system of accomplishing our goal we would have found ourselves with real and sustainable life change.

SYSTEMS LEAD TO GREATER SATISFACTION

In his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, author Scott Adams writes, "Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system." While goals are not bad, when not paired with systems, they can keep us from feeling the immediate gratification that comes from accomplishing what we set our mind to in the present. When we only focus on goals they can make us so future oriented that we fail to focus on the present in a meaningful way. Systems can help us break out of this cycle by forcing us to evaluate what it actually takes in the present to accomplish what we hope to see in the future.

TO SUM IT UP…

Goals are not bad, in fact they are very useful for setting our trajectory and being purposeful about the direction that we are headed, but too often we focus on our goals at the expense of our systems. To quote a familiar cliche, “a goal without a plan (system!) is just a wish.” So this year, focus on building your systems for accomplishing your goals and cruise past “Quitter’s Day” with ease!