The Goal isn’t the Goal: rethinking how we look at resolutions

We’re at the start of a new year and that brings mixed emotions. Some of us mourn the year that was, others are glad it’s over, while some look ahead to all of the promises of what might come. These reactions all have the same root, which is reflection. The demarcation of a new year forces us to reflect. The thing is though there’s nothing special about Jan 1st. When you think about it despite the minor cosmic significance of the Earth revolving around the sun another time, that day is essentially meaningless. It’s just another day, and cultures around the globe all have different days, weeks, or months to celebrate another cycle. So if the day isn’t special what is? It’s the label. That label of a new year or new cycle is what causes us to reflect. It’s like a forced reset. Everyone in the same society is resetting at the same time, so even if you claim you don’t care about the new year you’re still going to have to do some reflection because of that label. 

This forced reflection is what fuels all of our new year's resolutions. After reviewing the past year we get an idea of what we did well and didn’t do so well, then we plan for the future. Having one time of year to do it makes it seem more manageable. It’s the same reason that jobs have review cycles. It’s impossible or at the very least exhausting to holistically judge yourself on an ongoing basis. That defeats the purpose of a holistic review. We can only truly evaluate ourselves after a period of time, and that’s exactly what the new year does. This helps explain all of our transformations into Type-A achievers creating lists of goals in the weeks leading up to and after Jan 1st. 

This obsession around resolutions and goals begs the question of whether it’s useful, or if they do anything for us. The review cycle concept makes sense when talking about specific goals or something about a job, but what our life at large. Does making a goal to cook more or run once a week work? To me it all comes down to intentions, not only your intentions behind the goal but what your intentions are for the year and life. 

In college and the business world, they have a framework for goals called SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. This framework helps for a lot things like exercise or other more tangible goals that New Year's resolutions often take the form of. For these goals, you need to be able to measure progress, be able to achieve the goals, have goals that are relevant to your life, and you need be able to achieve them in a reasonable amount of time. Again this makes a lot of sense when talking about things like training for a marathon or learning a new skill… actually you know what, fuck this. Sorry for the u-turn but I’m not sure why I went down that path. I’m not Tim Ferris, I’m not James Clear, and you can read Atomic Habits or any of the other 1,000 books about goal setting, that’s not why or how I write. I write to explore big ideas and their implications on us as people and as a society. So let’s scratch that last half paragraph. 

Alright here we are getting back to the shit, let’s talk about intentions. Personally, I think having an intention for a year is more important than individual goals. Goals are important in getting you where you want to go, but you can’t go anywhere if you don’t know the direction you want to head in. That’s why I think a lot of people give up on their resolutions early or never take any action at all. It’s easy to write a bunch of disparate goals down around health, wealth, family, etc, but if there’s no thought behind what they’re in service of, there’s no real motivation to get any of it done. It’s also easy to see the goals of those around you and just emulate them because that’s what you think you should be doing, but why do you want to achieve those things? Why do you want to run? Why do you want to save money? The answers may seem obvious but when you dig into those questions you may be surprised. More than that, specific goals also make life seem binary. You either meet a goal or you don’t, and if you don’t meet a goal you fail. But that’s not how life works. Life is fluid, there’s merit in trying to reach a goal, even if you don’t meet it, you did something. This is where intentions and self-reflection come into play. 

Instead of writing a lengthy list of goals that you may or may not actually want to do, think about your intention behind the goals and the year. How do you want to be in life? How do you want to live this year? What’s your why? I’ll share my personal intentions as an example, this year my intention is to embrace. I worked extremely hard to get to this point in my life, and now it’s time to embrace the life I’ve built. For me, that means embracing the four pillars which I believe make up a well-lived life which are personal (health, hobbies, interests, passions), professional (career and education), social, and romantic. I have specific goals for each of those areas to help move me in the right direction, but the goals aren’t what’s important. What’s important is the vision I have for each of those areas, the goals are just the steps I take to manifest that vision, but the thing is, those steps can change. There’s always another route to get to where you’re going. 

In our society, we have an unhealthy obsession with checking off boxes. We accomplish a goal so we can check that box off and then compare our boxes to others. But what was the point of the goal if all you did it just check off the box? Writing a list of resolutions just to be able to complete the list isn’t all that impactful. Sure completing the list may give you some sense of accomplishment, but what was the point if there was no big picture? Also what happens if something gets in the way and you can’t complete the list? One of my goals is that I want to consistently run and do more cardio in 2023, but what happens if I get injured? If I had a normal list of resolutions well then I’d be screwed because I can’t run, but running wasn’t what was important to me. It was about embracing my health and wellness, running is a part of that, but if I get injured I can pivot. There’s low impact cardio exercises or alternative types of exercise that can still allow me to embrace my health and wellness. If it’s a serious injury then I can do rehab. I may not be actively achieving some SMART goal I wrote down at the end of December, but I’m still living my intention and being the type of person I want to be. The same goes for things like finances, dating, career development, or any other area of our life. Life is complex and shit happens. Rigid goals may not always be possible to achieve, but we can always do things that help us live our intentions. We can always do things that align with the people we want to be. 

This isn’t an attack on goals. I think we need them to help achieve our intentions. But in order to live fulfilling lives we can’t just be chasing after arbitrary goals and just checking off boxes. That doesn’t lead us anywhere except for creating more boxes to check. We must have a holistic vision and intention for who we want to be and how we want to live. Then we can make meaningful goals that help us be those people. Even more importantly if we have that holistic view then when life inevitably gets in the way we can pivot or make new goals that keep us on track to being our best selves. So let’s stop checking boxes and make intentions for the lives we want to live.