Achievement Unlocked: how online achievement culture affects our definition of success

Last year for my end-of-the-year post, I talked about how the “goal isn’t the goal”. The idea behind that was while individual goals are important, we should focus on the larger intentions those goals are working towards, like health, creativity, or connection. This creates more lasting change, especially if a roadblock gets in the way of a specific goal. If you’re focused on the intention rather than a specific goal, you can find an alternative route that can still help you meet your intention. Another year has passed, and this time around I want to talk about what those intentions and goals are in service of. We all have this idea of what we want our lives to look like and what we need to do to get there. To do that we make intentions, goals, and resolutions that will help us “succeed”. Unfortunately for most people, success is defined by status or hitting certain metrics that we can compare against others. So we chase goals like reading 50 books in a year or getting a certain promotion, thinking that those are what we need to be successful in life. It’s all arbitrary, but yet we never stop to think about if any of that is aligned with what we want out of life, or why we think that represents success in the first place. 

Chasing after arbitrary numbers and status has a lot to do with modern achievement culture. Our generation and the ones growing up after us are constantly shown what “success” looks like through social media, like seeing that annoying kid from college's LinkedIn post about a promotion or a friend from high school buying a house. We see them and thousands of other people agree on what “success” and status look like, so we all try to emulate it. To do that we try to collect the same achievements or have the same metrics as those we see online. There’s this hope that if we can check off all the boxes we can gain that same status and become successful. In doing that, we don’t look for the intrinsic value of what it is we want to do with our lives. It’s all about a cookie-cutter version of success. It’s why helicopter parenting has taken off. Parents believe their kids need as many achievements as possible to meet society’s definition of success. If their kid doesn’t play an instrument, letter in two sports, and get a 4.0 then they won’t be successful. Kids internalize this and the older they get, the bigger those check boxes become. Get a degree from this school. Buy a house by this age. Have this job title. Over time, we lose any sense of what our definition of success is. We compare our goals to what we see on social media and use that to set the bar for success. We then do the same thing to our kids. It’s a vicious cycle that gets worse the more access we have to everyone else's life. Life no longer becomes about living but just checking off boxes. None of this is to say we shouldn’t enjoy the achievements of our life or strive for things. It’s great to get a promotion or buy a beautiful house, but we have to look at the why and motivations behind those things. Were we ready to buy a house, or did we even want to? Was that promotion something you wanted or was it something you thought you should want? Achievement should be about living a life we want to live and not just trying to achieve the same status as those around us. 

Food, shelter, intimacy, and belonging are things that we all want in our lives. It’s valid to evaluate our lives in those terms. When it comes to things like achievement and status though, there’s no way to quantify what makes someone more successful than anyone else. We shouldn’t want to either. Henry Thoreau has a famous quote where he says “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” It’s that last part that we have the most to learn from. True success is about living a life that you can be proud of when you look back at it. While I don’t think we should only focus on the end of the road, I do believe this type of holistic view is worthwhile when it comes to goal setting. We should be setting goals that are in tune with our values and what fulfills us. Living life and enjoying it is the real achievement. By viewing life as a game where you accumulate things and status you lose out on that. Popular New Year's resolutions don’t work because of this. Many of them like reading a certain number of books aren’t great goals because you’re just chasing meaningless metrics. Reading is supposed to be something you do because you get something out of it. Sometimes it’s to learn, other times it’s for enjoyment, or maybe it’s trying to connect with someone else. Putting some arbitrary number on how many books you need to read takes away from that. It turns it into this status thing, where all you’re trying to do is get to that number so you can say you earned the achievement. That’s not to say that these types of goals are all bad. They can help build new habits because you're motivated to reach your goal. What we need to be wary of is why we’re choosing a certain number. This goes back to “the goal isn’t the goal”. It’s about the intention behind the goals. If you’re just trying to achieve status with your goal, then it can become a chore. When goals become chores, the intrinsic motivation and ability to make meaningful change are gone. 

A lot of what I’ve described so far applies to a certain class of person. I understand that most people simply don’t have the time, energy, or resources to try to collect achievements and status. Achievement culture is just as harmful to their well-being though, because they don’t have the same opportunity to achieve. Without these achievements, many people feel like they’re not succeeding like those they see on social media, even if they are doing more with far less. Success for a single mom working two jobs is making sure she has a place to live and food on the table. She doesn’t have the time or resources to get to the same level as some “momfluencer” or even her wealthy friends. These are the things that achievement culture just glosses over, and makes upper-class definitions of success seem ridiculous in comparison. Parents in Palo Alto get upset if their kids don’t get into the right prep school, while other people are hoping their kids have enough food for lunch. Although not to glamorize being poor, those kids will probably be happier than the Palo Alto ones, because they don’t have to deal with the same rigid definitions of success. While they may not have as many resources, kids from lower incomes have more freedom to define themselves. Their parents don’t have the time to helicopter parent so they can develop a stronger sense of self and set their own goals in life. However as kids spend more time on social media, they’ll start helicopter parenting themselves because they’ll be comparing themselves to the standards set by achievement culture. 

Happiness gets thrown around a lot as a wellness buzzword. We’re not always going to be happy or fulfilled with what we’re doing. Life can be tough and we need to do things we don’t like to survive. Yet, there is room to avoid some of the unhappiness that comes with modern life. Constantly chasing achievements that we don’t actually want is exhausting. Life isn’t a video game where there are winners and losers. Some people are better off, but that doesn’t mean that they won, just look at Elon Musk. By achievement standards, he’s a winner, but by life standards, dude’s a loser. Musk has all of this money and achievements but is deeply unhappy and constantly trying to get validation from the internet. Being a “winner” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and there are countless other examples like that in the world. All that to say is that we’re using the wrong things to define success. No one route will lead to a good life. Reading some arbitrary amount of books in a year or getting your kid into a prestigious university won’t do it. It may help but only on paper. We all have basic things we need to survive but beyond that, it comes down to us. When setting goals for the New Year that’s what we need to think about. We’re already reminded of all the other things we “should” be doing every day. We know about the educational, financial, and professional goals we “should” be setting. What we’re not as aware of is if any of the goals lead to the type of life we want. Real success and happiness can’t be distilled into basic metrics. It’s up to us to figure out what our version of success is, not what social media says it is. There’s so much more to life than collecting achievements and status. So before you set any goals for next year, take a second to reflect on what you want out of life and make goals that will help you live that life.