One of the most difficult aspects of goalsetting is deciding how high to set the bar. How reasonable should you be with what you plan to accomplish for the year? Should you strive for the impossible and so even if you miss, you’ll be “amongst the stars”, or should you aim for things appropriate for your current self—flawed and undisciplined as you are?
To start with, I think that aiming at something—however big or small—is much better than not aiming at all. Being aimless leads to neurosis of all sorts. Having no aim means having no meaning, and when life is meaningless there is nothing to fortify you against the inevitable suffering of existence. Therefore, a goal and a direction are necessary. That doesn’t mean you need it to be New Years in order to define your aim, or any specific day for that matter. Instead, everyday should be a struggle uphill towards where you want to go—towards your potential.
Let’s look at aiming low first, or more accurately, aiming low enough that someone as lazy and stupid as you and me could most likely do it. Getting off the starting block is much easier when you don’t have very far to go. The idea of sitting down and writing a book is enough to keep most people from ever starting, but setting a goal to sit in front of your computer everyday for 10 minutes and just writing something is much more manageable. And maybe the goal of being the next Dostoyevsky is so impossible and intimidating that you put off writing entirely. Instead, you can set your sights on something lower and do what Michael Malice recommends. Go to a bookstore and look at all the shitty books that got published and are sitting there on the shelves. You could write one of those. The same applies to most things in life. Actually cleaning your house for 5 minutes is better than planning to clean the entire thing and then failing to even start.
Having humility while setting your goals will increase the likelihood of hitting them, which will in turn motivate you to set more. Achieving the small things will help you build momentum and ensure that you stay on the path, and moving slowly on the path is infinitely better than not moving at all—or worse, moving backwards.
What about aiming high? Is there any benefit to setting goals that seem unreachable?
The amount of positive emotion you experience from completing a task is proportionate to the size and significance of the task. Accomplishing a goal of making an extra $100 a month to buy new clothes will feel pretty good, but accomplishing the goal of making $50,000 to pay for a lifesaving surgery for your mom would unquestionably feel much better. Big goals usually take bigger sacrifices and so the victory feels that much sweeter. Aiming high might also push you to your limits and help squeeze every drop of potential out of you. It’s hard to do big things when you aim small. If you are 100 pounds overweight, and you set a goal of losing 10 pounds, the odds of you losing 100 pounds is very slim (excuse the pun).
So aim high or low?
I know it’s a very dissatisfying answer but, it depends on the person. It depends on your situation and your personality. You almost have to consult and negotiate with yourself.
If your life is a mess and you can’t get yourself to do the things you know you need to do, negotiate down until you get to something you would do. Maybe you cant quit drinking or smoking cold turkey, but you are willing to only have two cigarettes a day instead of eight. Or maybe you’re willing to only drink six nights a week instead of seven. You think to yourself “man, that’s pretty pathetic”, but it’s not pathetic. It’s better. And better is better than worse, and five years of better instead of five years of worse could be the difference between hell and not-hell.
Maybe you consult yourself and realize you aren’t asking enough of yourself. You feel like you hit all of your aims but they aren’t challenging you or bringing the best out of you. In that case, you need to aim higher. As corny as it sounds, everyone has something to offer the world to reduce the net amount of suffering and if you know there’s more you could be doing, that you would do if you just aimed higher, then aim higher.
Aim high or aim low, just make sure to aim, otherwise you won’t hit anything. You definitely won’t hit anything desirable.
TheSisyphusBlog 