Why Dan Shipper is Wrong about Goals

Why Dan Shipper is Wrong about Goals(isaacsukin.com)

40 points by IceCreamYou 13 years ago | 31 comments

rfugger 13 years ago |

Hmmm... I'm not so sure about this. Looking at the studies he links to, the goals are assigned to the subjects by the researchers, not self-set. When you're doing something for someone else, you don't have the problem of wondering if it's the right thing for you -- you just do it to please/impress the authority figure, something we've all been trained to do from a very young age. The subjects have already decided that whatever token reward they get for participation is worth their time, so they're not worried about whether the task will contribute to their personal growth. They get to feel altruistic for contributing to science.

But when there is no authority figure telling you what to do, it's a whole different game. You wonder whether the pain of growing in a certain direction is worth the future uncertain reward. That's what Dan Shipper's article is about -- not letting those thoughts paralyze you and taking small steps in the right direction without putting too much pressure on yourself. Overly-specific goals in this case can be self-defeating because they can often be set without enough knowledge of the territory you're going into. Trusting yourself to explore and learn before getting into specific goals can be important. Big life goals like personal contentment and peace of mind often can't be made very specific anyway. Who knows what is going to make you happy?

msie 13 years ago |

I was setting goals for myself, failing miserably. Then I thought Dan was onto something. Oh no! Now I'm going to reevaluate my goal setting now. Maybe the best thing is to not read HN so frequently!

dasil003 13 years ago |

Goals are a red herring. Whether spoken or not, goals always exist for every productive thing that happens in the short-term. The high-level nebulous goals aren't goals that make things happen directly, they're more like a vision that allows you to set more focused goals, which is why they don't do much by themselves.

The real issue at hand is motivation. If you are consistently motivated to do something to better yourself, then chances are it will lead you somewhere. High levels of motivation for non-essential self-development is not the human norm, so if you can find a way to harness and apply it I think you stand a good chance of being above average. As a computer geek I think there's a very obvious answer for me and a lot of people here, but I wouldn't describe it as the route to success because there are probably as many ways to find focused motivation as there are successful people.

cbhl 13 years ago |

OP: How do you suggest that people go about setting specific, challenging, and achievable goals? While you've described flaws in Dan Shipper's arguments, you haven't provided concrete advice about what the right thing to do is.

I found Jamie Wong's post on negative social incentives[0] to be helpful in motivating oneself once a specific goal has been set, but I still find myself having trouble figuring out what goals to set in the first place.

[0] http://jamie-wong.com/2011/12/30/immersion-and-schadenfreude...

IceCreamYou 13 years ago | |

Great question, and there's a lot to say about it. As with most things, there is no right answer, but here's a starting point:

If you are sitting here thinking "I need some goals. What are some good goals for me?" then you should start by thinking about the things you are good at and the things you enjoy and finding the intersection. Alternatively you can think about things you think you might enjoy that would require learning new skills, or things you might not enjoy as much that could be useful in your life.

Once you have a topic, or a pre-existing non-motivating "do your best" goal, there are a few situations:

1) If you're a complete beginner and need help figuring out what a good project could be, I discussed some some thoughts in a previous post [1]:

  Good beginner projects tend to be more or less copies of things people have done before.

I also recommend reading a how-to book and asking more knowledgeable friends for advice.

2) If you know somewhat more about the topic and you're struggling to get a different, more motivating perspective on a goal, I recommend doing what physicists usually do: putting the hard problem in the context of an even larger problem. To do this, ask why you want to accomplish the goal you're contemplating. (If you don't know why, go to step 1, or maybe you shouldn't be doing it.) I gave an example in the post of moving from "I should work out because that's a good thing to do" to the meta-goal of "I want to look good for beach season." Or you could move from "I want to learn to program because that's a good thing to do" to "I want to build Ticketmaster for my school" (for example).

3) If you just know you're interested in a general topic and are looking for ideas, I have so much to say about this it needs a separate blog post. This is definitely the best place to be.

What other characteristics make a useful goal? Also a topic for another post, but you can probably guess by now that I think one good baseline is whether you know specifically why you're doing it (beyond "it sounds like a good idea") and whether it is measurable enough that you can proudly tell someone specifically what you've accomplished.

[1] http://www.isaacsukin.com/news/2012/08/i-want-learn-programm...

adrianhoward 13 years ago |

Just to repeat something I mentioned in the comments on Dan Shipper's, there is actually evidence that self-set public goals can make it less likely you complete the goal.

(the theory being roughly that just stating it publicly feels like making progress, so you're less likely to actually make progress.)

See http://sivers.org/zipit for some background info.

There's been more research but I don't have the references to hand ATM.

phildeschaine 13 years ago |

I think you're missing the point of Dan's article. For me, the takeaway from that was "giving yourself too concrete of goals too fast will often lead to abandonment of the entire process to preserve your ego". While I do agree solid goals are important eventually, I agree with Dan's overall point.

It's just the idea of getting comfortable with the grip and texture of the rungs at the bottom of the ladder before trying to climb it.

IceCreamYou 13 years ago | |

I agree with the idea that if you know nothing about a topic, it makes sense not to set goals in that space before you know whether those goals will be achievable or not. But Dan's advice is given with the caveat that "The advice from now on will assume that you know at a very high level what you like, what you're passionate about, or where you want to go" -- and in any case I disagree with the notion that just trying a task for awhile with no end goals is a good way to accomplish something. (It is, however, a reasonable way to discover possible goals, which may have been more of what Dan was getting at.)

javajosh 13 years ago |

Does anyone else see the tautology here? Consider this quote:

>specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than easy goals, "do your best" goals, or no goals.

Note the word "performance". If performance is defined as "achieved certain goals", then this statement reduces to a tautology. Or rather, I'd say that the study (subtly) assumes it's conclusion.

I realize that the author intended the sense of these two words to be different. Perhaps a more careful replacement for the word goal would be "training exercise", and then "performance" would be some sort of standardized test. But even so, the statement still devolves into something that while not a tautology is hardly earth-shattering: "if you practice doing something you'll get better at it."

(As I understand it, Dan's original point is simply that it's easy to get frustrated if you bite off more than you can chew - so content yourself with learning simpler things at first. I agree with that and I'll defend it.)

IceCreamYou 13 years ago | |

Performance and goals don't have to mean the same thing. An example of a goal is "acquire 30 new customers by the end of the month" and the relevant performance metric there would be "number of new customers acquired." Better performance in that case might mean 50 customers acquired while worse performance might mean 10 customers acquired.

I agree that "it's easy to get frustrated if you bite off more than you can chew - so content yourself with learning simpler things at first." I don't think that's contradictory to what I wrote; one component of good goals is that they're achievable. In retrospect I can see how you would read that lesson into Dan's post, but what he actually wrote is that what you should do if you want to "build skill in the long term" is "setting firm goals and keeping track of what you're doing is a problem for beginners." I think that is not appropriate advice for most people.

wamatt 13 years ago |

Not sure if I agree or not, but reckon the mantra 'Always Be Shipping' works out pretty well for him :p

zsherm 13 years ago |

Do anyone else's eyes hurt after reading that post?

sigkill 13 years ago | |

Yes. I think it has got a lot to do with the color combination rather than the light text on dark bg. I've personally noticed that the sweet spot for me is having a black to near black background with gray (70/30 or 80/20 white/black mix). Having a full white text feels like someone is etching my eyes with a laser stenciled in the said text.

IceCreamYou 13 years ago | |

Sorry -- some people struggle with light-on-dark text. I tend to like it (obviously) but I'll probably switch at some point for this reason. I also want to experiment with just making the text larger.

Would be interested in hearing if other people have experienced this issue and had success solving it.

meritt 13 years ago |

This entire post could be summarized as: 'Vague goals don't work, make them SMART instead'

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

dreeves 13 years ago | |

Yay for S.M.A.R.T. goals! See also http://blog.beeminder.com/smart

dmd149 13 years ago |

Borrowing from Stoic principles, you must acknowledge that a) there are some things you can control, b) some things you can't, and c) some things you control somewhat.

A professional golfer can't control whether he wins a match, but he can control how well he practices.

Don't get too emotional or attached to outcomes you can't control.

Do focus on "doing your best" at things you can actually control.

This is the point Dan makes, and I think you can make decent progress with this line of thinking and preserve your mental tranquility at the same time.

pitkali 13 years ago |

I think the OP misread the article he's referring to. The point is not to avoid setting goals, but that if you want to actually get good at anything, you should first learn to create habits, and then just start doing it. Once you're already doing it, it'll be a lot easier to improve, and then go ahead and follow the usual advice on setting goals.

After all, what's the point of setting specific and challenging goals, if you're unable to stick to them?

hakaaak 13 years ago |

Agree with the OP. I also think that competition and negative or positive reinforcement is critical to goal execution. Then once you have goals you can try to have habits, but many times goals work and habits you thought you developed don't stick. If habits worked for everyone, there would be no Weight Watchers. That company survives off of people continuing to think it works, when it only works temporarily for most.

xianshou 13 years ago |

Also: Losers have "goals," winners have systems.

ryanmolden 13 years ago | |

And do systems not have end goals? Or do you just set up artifice for entertainments sake?

quorn3000 13 years ago | | |

Maintaining the system is the one goal. But that distance, and that trust, that the system is yours alone, is what works.

EricDeb 13 years ago |

I agree completely. I learn far better when I need to learn new tools in order to complete some project. In fact, that's how I've learned all the languages I know thus far: either for school or personal projects

pfortuny 13 years ago |

Whenever I hear "science" applied to applied psychology etc. I get the creeps. Stopped reading at the first quotation.

the_cat_kittles 13 years ago |

Lets not forget that people are heterogenous, and that their response to goals may also be.

IceCreamYou 13 years ago | |

Thank you for pointing this out! I was specifically trying not to say there is One True Way of setting goals but rather that science suggests certain kinds of goals work better for most people most of the time. However, I should have been more explicit in saying that no method will work for everyone.

tessr 13 years ago |

DRAMA. Also, nice post!