How To Set Goals

Joe: Living as if the goal has already succeeded is part of how the goals help you get to the place. I've seen this in businesses where there's oh, we have this goal. We're not gonna make it and that's where the creative solution comes. That's where the thing that you never thought was possible could have happened. That's when the team congealed got together, became cohesive. 

Brett: Welcome to the Art of Accomplishment. Where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler here today with my co-host, Joe Hudson. 

Joe: Hi. 

Brett: Today we're gonna talk about goals. We're gonna talk about why so many of us use goals in such a way that makes us miserable, and we're gonna talk about how to use goals, how to set goals, and relate to them in a way that makes us more deeply connected to ourselves and gives us the life that we want.

Joe: Cool. 

Brett: Most people, that I know at least, have a really shitty relationship with goals. Either they're setting a ton of goals that they then feel oppressed by, or maybe a little bit more of my flavor of, they just avoid goals so they don't feel oppressed. They get to feel free, but then also lost and then there's a whole bunch of other shit in the middle.

Joe: Yeah, 

Brett: And we're here at our A OA offsite, we've been here for a couple of days, and what really struck me is the way that you and Mattia introduced the goals and metrics into our process. Which is this started a few months back and then we all reported on our goals for the first time in this way at this meeting.

And as you opened that meeting, you started with a story that was really compelling to me. It was a story about some executive team and how they would prepare for board meetings. Can you elaborate on that? 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So when I was a venture capitalist, one of the things that I saw all the time was executive teams spending days presenting board presentations. So typically board meetings were every quarter, so there was like two or three days of productivity lost by preparing, presenting this deck to the board, and then you'd have a whole day of the board meeting itself. And the other thing that I noticed was that most of the time in the board meeting was looking backwards, which is far less effective than looking forward. Like what are we gonna do next? How are we gonna do it? How can we be of help? And so that's what started getting me thinking about what makes that the case. Because if there's alignment, then the data that the board gets should be the same data that the CEO needs, should be the same data that the departments are creating a need for themselves to be successful in the departments.

If a company is aligned, one of the ways to tell is there should be almost no time to create the board deck. It's, oh, this is what we look at. This is what you look at. Your job is to see if we're running the company well, so that you should be looking at the same data that we look at. And if we're creating data for you, it means that we're not looking at the things that we need to run the company, or the board is not looking at the things that they need to help steer the company. That recognition was the first one to hit, and then the second one to hit is that I realized that's the same internally as well, meaning oftentimes we have this critical voice in our head. 

Brett: Our board. 

Joe: Which is making, yeah, which is saying, here are your goals, but it's not actually the goals of the rest of the system.

So you know, your body has a different goal and your heart has a different goal, and maybe even your mind has a different goal. Your trauma has a different goal. So all these goals are not in alignment with one another and especially not in alignment with the thing that says, I should be married at 35 and why are you so far behind? Or whatever that goal making mechanism, which is just another form of self-abuse, happens inside so many of us and that when there's actual alignment in the goals do two things. The first thing, the goals, really their biggest job isn't to get to them. Oftentimes the goals are so limited.

What we can get to is so much greater than what the goals can even like point at. But the goals, what they do is they give you the right questions to be asking. So if my goal is to have a good relationship with you, it's gonna be very fucking different than if my goal is to have a lifelong relationship with you, or my goal is to have a relationship with you that is deeply intimate or to have a relationship with you that both of us just feel insanely grateful for on a regular basis. That is gonna be a very different thing. I am going to ask myself different questions. 

Brett: Especially different questions than how do I get what I want from you?

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Or how do I manage you to avoid my own emotions? 

Joe: All those things. But even just, oh, a good relationship with you is oh, the question is, what do you think Brett would want to do today? I wanna have a really intimate conversation. I wanna have a really intimate relationship with you, one that we both think we have a lot of gratitude for, my question's gonna be, what is it that I'm not saying to Brett? I'm gonna have different questions. In a company, if your goal is how do we reach 10,000 people, it is gonna be very different than how do we reach 100 people? 100 people you and I can just go door to door, a hundred thousand people, you and I can't go door to door anymore.

We have to do something different. 

Brett: Like this. 

Joe: Yeah, like this. So the goals you have determine the questions that you ask. Goals can open up creativity. And what I notice is that when people don't let go of goals, it can open up a huge amount of performance and creativity. So sports teams, can you imagine a sports team that was like yeah, I don't really want goals.

And that some like amazing performances happen when somebody is behind, but they really want to hit their goal, like just some crazy performances. I think about LeBron James when they were playing the Warriors and he just wanted that ring for Cleveland and he just did unbelievable stuff.

They were down, it was like three games and then he won the next four games, and you could just see it was just he had to take his game to the next level to get there. I've seen this in businesses all over the place. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Where there's oh, we have this goal. We're not gonna make it and that's where the creative solution comes. That's where the thing that you never thought was possible could have happened. That's when the team congealed, got together, became cohesive. 

Brett: There's goal-based sports and there's clear goals in business. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: There's also seemingly non goal based sports and artistic endeavors that still have a sense of direction and goals like base jumping wasn't something that I was necessarily trying to achieve certain goals, but there was always the goal of don't die and there was a certain amount of fun to be had and there were always intermediate steps. Like it would be really cool if I achieved this unlock and was able to do that, or able to safely make this jump and repeat it.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: I'm curious to go a little bit into, there's areas in our lives where we're clear that goals are literally the point, like in soccer. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And there's areas where they're a little bit more implicit. 

Joe: They're implicit, but they're always there. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: If you think about a video game, as soon as you said, wow, you know what, who you are as a human being is gonna be determined if you get to the next level of Mario Brothers and you believe that.

Brett: Which I might have what I was four. 

Joe: Yeah. Mario Brothers is probably not gonna be as fun as, oh, I'm looking at this goal of getting to the next level. I wanna do that. That's a cool thing. Let's see if we can do that, which is like a great way to hold goals.

Oh, how do I do that? It opens up the question, what's the thing to do? And if you look at the way video games work is the same way great goals work, is the goals are the thing that are present, that are in your wants, that are the next step, that gets you to the next step, that gets you to the next step and that's either in a company or that's with yourself. 

Brett: Something you just said that I wanna double click on. You said there's something that is in your wants and I think that's key to how people make themselves miserable with goals because they might start in your want and then your want drifts, but the goal hasn't drifted with the want, or it wasn't set in a way that was really aligned with your wants. And so you find yourself chasing after goals that you don't actually want anymore for the sake of the goal. 

Joe: Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I'm not sure if it was actually in your wants to begin with often. 

Brett: Yeah. Where did the goal come from? The voice in your head, the board, the trauma.

Joe: So oftentimes what I see, like in a company, for instance, is goals that are bottom up. This team determines what are the goals of this team, determined all the way up to the top with the CEO's goals. They're often really effective goals because they're built from the wants of people. It's also really effective the other way, Salesforce has this thing, the CEO sits down and says, this is what I want, and these are the important things, and then everybody else can align around it. The alignment is really important. The want is also really important, and the want has to come from somewhere. 

But when the want isn't there, when everybody's doing it for somebody else. I'm doing it for the board and then I'm doing it for the CEO and there's nobody who actually has that want. It's like very difficult. It's a similar thing from us. It like, just because the voice in the head said this is what your goals should be, doesn't mean it's what we want.

Brett: Yeah. I love the idea of bottom up goals 'cause if a company gets everything the CEO wants, but nothing that any of the employees want, and it's unhealthy for them, the company is not gonna survive. If I hit my target weight and my body's a total wreck as a result, rather than asking my body, what it wants and what it needs to thrive and be healthy and functional. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Then that's a very different place. 

Joe: Yeah. If I recall, the way the Salesforce works is that everybody is being asked how they participate in a way that works for them and their team. I'm sure there's struggle in it. There's always struggle, there's always some friction, and there should be some friction in goals because there's friction in getting to the next level of the video game.

There's friction in taking your marriage to the next level. Anything that we're taking to the next level, there's gonna be some friction in.

There is a place where when people don't want friction, they start turning away from their goals. They're also turning away from aliveness in that. 

Brett: So how do you know if your goals are creating or inviting friction that is constructive or friction that is destructive?

Joe: Do you want it? Do you actually want it? Is that what I really want? And your brain is just gonna say yes right away. My goal is to have my perfect mate, or my goal is to lose 20 pounds. Do you wanna lose 20 pounds? Yes. I absolutely wanna lose 20 pounds. Yeah. Okay. You said it. Yeah. Right away you. Yep. I didn't see you want it. I didn't see you feel the wanting of it. 

Brett: Do you want the perfect mate or do you want an ideal of perfection? 

Joe: Or are you wanting to want the mate? 

Brett: Wanting to want. 

Joe: Do I want to get to lose weight or do I actually want to lose weight? And what happens in a human system is people will jump to, yes, I want it really quickly, but it's not actually allowing themselves to feel that whole process in their system. And when they feel the whole process in their system, they might find out something like, actually, I'm really scared to be in a relationship because my relationship between my mom and dad was absolute shit and I don't wanna recreate it.

And the last two relationships I had, I recreated it and I don't want that. Now what you want is a healthy relationship. So is it what you wanna a mate or is what you really want to learn how to have a healthy relationship? You were in our offsite where we're setting goals and we've literally asked everybody, what does your heart want for yourself in this business? What does your heart want for the business? What does your heart want for the community we serve? That's where our goals come from. It's not a head want. It's oh, it's actually what is this desire that we have and there's a deep investigation of our own wants. That's one of the best ways to really refine what you're doing in the world.

Brett: One of the things I'm picking up here is that what the head wants is almost irrelevant. It's what you want, like what your heart wants, what your body wants, wherever that want is coming from, your head's job isn't to want it. Your head's job is to help you get it. 

Joe: Figure out how to get it. There's a great way to do this, super simple. Write down what you think you want. You just went, yes, I want it without actually feeling it. And then just ask what's the need behind that want? And what's the need behind that want? And what's the need behind that want? And you just go, keep on going down. Oh, the need behind getting $12 million in revenue. Oh, that's the want to be secure. What's the need behind feeling secure? Oh, I wanna feel like I can actually make a difference in the world. Now we're like security and making a difference in the world is actually what we're after. The $12 million is just our strategy to get there. And if you see the thing as a strategy instead of the actual want, and oh, then making that $12 million isn't about making $12 million. It is, oh, there's this way that I'm gonna be able to have impact on the world. I do that with CEOs, interpersonally all the time. The great example of this, which I think I've talked about long ago on the podcast, was that I had a girlfriend who was really good at tennis in college and she served and the tennis coach put out a basket, one of those baskets you pick up balls with, and said, serve and hit it.

And she hit it like two out of five times or something, three outta five times. And then he took that away, put a quarter down in the middle of where that basket was, and said servant hit the quarter and she didn't hit the quarter once. But she would've hit the basket if it was sitting on top of that quarter every time.

And there's a way in which that goal makes you focus through the thing. So the great CEOs that I know, their goal isn't to make money. Money is a necessity to get to the goal. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: My goal isn't to become like self-aware guru, but my self-awareness is really important to get to be a great husband, to be a great dad, to be the leader that I want to be. So the self-awareness, which I do all the time, I'm constantly practicing and running experiments, is there to serve something that's greater than itself. 

Brett: Yeah. So it goes pretty deep. Like you can have $12 million in revenue, that's like a tactic to serve the strategy of make an impact on the world and what's the strategy for what do you get from making an impact on the world? And one thing that's interesting is that a lot of our work, especially as it goes really deep, 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Gets to a really goalless sense of being and so there's a paradox and like here we are talking about goals. When a lot of people come to the art of accomplishment, they're like, oh yeah, this is what I want.

I wanna accomplish things. And then we're like, we do some work with 'em and it dissolves the goals that they had. And they're like who am I? And we're like, great. Stay in that question. 

It's what? 

And then here we are. We're like, goals. Goals, bro. 

Joe: Yeah, totally.

So when I said earlier, imagine you're playing Mario Brothers and all of a sudden you have to do it, or your self-worth is dependent on, you're not a good kid if you don't make Mario Brothers. All of a sudden, that level of force makes you resist the goal. Seeing yourself for what you truly are to enter into the goalless state, it gives you the freedom to see that the goals are not who you are.

Somebody asked me recently why do you do what you do? I'm looking at your world. I know you don't have to do anything else, and yet you're coming out and you're super ambitious, Joe. You're putting out podcasts regularly. You're putting out all this content and you're out there, you're working with companies.

You could just do one of these things and be successful, like what is driving you? And I said, oh, I just want more Legos. I just like playing in Legos. I just want to build shit. This is what I like doing. This is my thing. I was like, I know that's esoteric. Do you know what I mean?

He goes, yeah, I have a, like Lego Titanic sitting behind me in my office, which what a lucky metaphor I used, but that there is just this natural part of us that wants to play the game, that wants to learn how to do the olli on the skateboard, that wants to learn about ourselves through the expansion of doing stuff that we don't know how to do.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Growing into stuff like that's our nature and we try to build meaning into it, and I've gotta do it to save the world and blah, blah, blah, fuck all that. We like building shit. It is a very creative part and that's why it's called the Art of Accomplishment, not how to fucking accomplish it, like it's because there's an artistic quality to it and art you do for the sake of art. 

Brett: Yeah. Goals are a really interesting litmus test. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And breadcrumb back to yourself in this way because so as we were talking about earlier, it's many people will create goals and oppress themselves with them, and maybe they're like really accomplishment oriented.

And then there's people who do the opposite and they're like, I don't want goals. I don't want to oppress myself with 'em. I'm just gonna be free. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: You might pop back and forth between the two because neither is actually working. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: I've popped back and forth between the two for sure. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I think most people have.

Brett: But simply the way that you relate to goals is a really good indicator of how you're relating to yourself and you can trace your relationship with goals and the need behind the want play that need behind the want game, all the way to what is it that you really want? Which is coming from just the place of being.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Being who you are. Being what you are right now. What is the next impulse? Where is your next step, your next evolution. And then from there, of course, goals will help you get that. Goals, will help serve you in that process. 

Joe: So we have this tradition in our family. Every Thanksgiving we sit down and we all talk into the phone and say, what are our goals for the next year?

It is not like a hardcore process. We just know that we're gonna do this on Friday night after Thanksgiving, and we usually don't do it till Sunday, and then we just talk out our goals, like here, four or five. Each of us does it. Then we don't look at it again until the next Thanksgiving and then we listen and almost always there's five goals, and three or four out of the five goals were hit. 

Brett: Huh. 

Joe: We're not thinking about it. There's just, oh, this is the thing that we're expressing our hearts want into the world and we're owning that thing and whatever comes out of it, comes out of it. And sometimes it's just very practical stuff.

Like I want a house that I love to live in, and sometimes it's very, I want a deeper relationship with this person, or I want business to feel like this in my system. So there's all sorts of different interesting things that come out of it, but it's held so gently. 

Brett: There's something really important about that, like setting the goal and never checking it until the next year and you find that it's complete. 

Joe: And you forget. Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. It's like how much is it that the goal is actually just creating an intention? And the intention is something that you are living. 

Joe: Yeah. That's exactly what a goal is meant to do. It's number one is it helps you ask the right questions. And number two, it allows you to know your intention and live into that intention as if it's happening right now. 

Brett: So what matters is that you're living that intention, following that want, less that the goal is even something you're tracking. 

Joe: In business you have to track it for alignment, but personally it's not as necessary.

But there's also living as if the goal is there, is already made. For instance, we recently had a product that we created and we realized that we were chasing some folks because it was a new product and there was some chasing that was going on. And this is the council like we don't chase, we don't want to, as a company, you know this, that we are not running after people's attention, but we noticed that we had done that thing. In that way, we weren't living to our goals. Because to live to the goal, to live in the goal, it's, oh, of course we have something valuable. Of course, we will be successful. Living as if the goal has already succeeded is part of how the goals help you get to the place. It's an interesting nuance. If I'm playing basketball and I'm playing as if I'm winning, as if I'm going to win, as compared to, oh shit, we're 10 points behind, I think I'm gonna lose. I'm not playing as if I'm achieving my goal, and so I'm not playing like a person who's going to win. I'm playing like a person who is losing. 

Brett: Right. 

Joe: That's another thing that a goal really does is, oh, if we as a company or if I as a person have this, how do I act? How do I assume I'm gonna act on the other side of achieving that goal, and how is it to act like that right now in the achievement of that goal?

Brett: The principles are the how am I going to be in any area of my life? Goals are where might I be oriented in driving towards following those principles. 

Joe: Correct. Yeah. That's another thing that's really cool. That's a great point, is that we talked about it early with the board meetings, if there's alignment and the principles are what ensure alignment in the goals.

And then they help you see how you want to live as if you've achieved those goals because you're literally oh, this is my North Star. This is living as if I've gotten to the place that I want to go. This is how I know that they're in alignment. Those principles really tell us if they're in alignment.

Brett: So I wanna tie this up organizationally, just 'cause we opened it up that way and I want to deliver on that promise.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: So we've got principles, and the principles ensure that goals that are set across the entire organization are aligned and that actions that are taken are aligned with the company principles. 

Joe: Yeah. They do a lot more than that but for goals, that's what they do. Yes. 

Brett: Yeah. And then we have metrics, and there's something that's interesting that we've also been working with and the way that this company uses goals and metrics. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Which is that the goal is set by the person who has responsibility for actually the outcome of that goal. 

Joe: Yes. And they have the authority in our organization. And so the principle is how do you want to drive?

The goal is the North star, the metrics of the dashboard. It lets you know how you're doing, if you're getting there, what you need to do to get there and that's the job. And oftentimes people confus the metrics with the goals.

And I think that happens on a personal level and on a business level all the time. Where people think the goal is, I want to be loved. The metric is how many people are my friends on Instagram? And the metric becomes a goal and then you're not loved.

Brett: Or is my wife happy with me right now? 

Joe: Yes, exactly. Yeah. That's the metric. The metrics don't tell me if I've hit the goal, the metrics just tell me how am I driving? How am I getting there? I think the other thing that's just really important to say is that what I've experienced in life is that I always have ended up in a lot better place than I ever thought was possible with the goals.

I've never been in a situation at least in the last 20 something years, where I look back and think I've gotten everything that I've wanted. That's never happened. I've never gotten everything that I've wanted. But I've also never been able to look back and say, what I got wasn't a shit ton better than what I wanted.

There's a rigidity to goals that doesn't encompass all of life. And living by principles and knowing where your north star is oftentimes gets you to a place much better, almost always, than what you thought was possible. 

Brett: I want that to be a journey. I want that to be an adventure. I want that to change me.

Joe: Yes. 

Brett: And the goal by the time I get there, could be like planting a flag on the mountain, but the mountain was the whole point. 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. The only other thing that I would say about goals generally is if you're in a business, the lack of goals is often just an incredibly horrible thing.

It doesn't mean destruction of the business, but it typically means not alignment. I've never been in a business where there's no shared goals and there's alignment. And people like to be on teams that are aligned. Everybody wants to win. But also internally, what I've noticed is that I've lived life with the rejection of goals.

I don't need goals. I'm just gonna enjoy myself in the moment. Not recognizing, enjoying myself in the moment was the goal, bringing the goal to consciousness. There's a benefit to that. There's also a downside. The downside is now I'm gonna beat myself up and have shame if I don't have the goals.

So it's really about how you relate to the goals rather than if you have them or not, because everybody has them. And for me, how you relate to a goal is gently, with a lot of love and with awe and wonder and not through being defined by it. And typically when goals go fucking nuts and fuck shit up is when people are defined by either hitting it or not hitting it.

That's typically when it doesn't build the life that you want. My personal experience of goals is when I make a goal, I feel ecstatic. I'm like, wow, this feels so good to make this goal. And if we miss on a goal, and you saw we missed on a lot of goals, we hit our high end goals, which is great. We did not hit a lot of the lower goals.

Nothing in me is worried about it. I learn, I grow. There's a failure that we got to hang out in together. As a matter of fact, every single person in our company announced at least one failure that they did and everybody applauded them and it was like this wonderful thing. 

Brett: And that was like a high point of the, 

Joe: It was like the high point. I was surprised about how much of a high point that was when we were all like celebrating our failures. I got more pleasure outta celebrating our failures than I did in celebrating all the successes we had. It was cool. That's the way to hold a goal. It's good sportsmanship in life is an interesting way to put it. So we got to play the game. We got to learn. We're improving, and yeah, we really go after our goal. We really go after our goals. But that doesn't mean that we are fucked up if we're failing. We were just growing. 

Brett: A critical component of, that is the word we. There was the connection that was really underlying the enjoyment and of course the goals allow us to continue to do what we're doing in connection and grow that in a way that we're excited about.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: But it's about that connection. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: And internally it's about how connected to myself do I feel. 

Joe: Yeah. Oh, that's a great way to say it. Are your goals helping you feel more connected with yourself or not? Your personal goals. The goals in the company helping you feel more connected to the company?

The company more connected or not. If they're not, then there's a way to make those goals better. There's a way to face those goals, to appreciate those goals, to work with those goals. That is far more meaningful. Because that's what the goals do for me and for this company. 

Brett: Yeah. I think for all of us here, that's our meta goal. How do we relate to ourselves and each other more and more delightfully?

Joe: And our goals are one mechanism to do that. Cool. 

Brett: Awesome. Thank you, Joe. 

Joe: Yeah, pleasure. 

Brett: Thank you everybody. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. This episode is produced by Joe Hudson and myself, Brett Kistler.

Mun Yee Kelly is our production coordinator and Reasonable Volume edited this episode.

Joe: And that's why it's called the Art of Accomplishment, not how to fucking accomplish it.