Hi Mason,

Just read your article in this month's magazine: Goal Setting is Garbage.

I get it - you got to where you are without actually goal setting. I am sure there are many other examples of people who achieved a high level of success without goal setting.

However, there are many many successful people who did make it with goal setting and would agree with Daniel Negreanu. Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Jim Carey, Michael Jordan, etc..

Your argument for goal setting is garbage is because you made it without it. How do you know you wouldn't have achieved more had you done it?

Hi avatar:

I strongly disagree and think they're very few highly successful people who goal set. But they do work hard at what they like to do.

As for Negreanu, it's my opinion that he's basically brainwashed by the Choice Center nonsense.

Best wishes,
Mason

Is your opinion against Negreanu or goal setting? - those are two different topics.

Your argument against goal setting in your essay is basically based on your own personal experience. I am actually a bit surprised that a logical person with a mathematical and statistical background would make an assertion based on your own personal anecdotal experience.

How do you know if you wouldn't have achieved further with goal setting?
How would the actual goal setting process hinder someone's achievement?
What could be the drawback/downside of actually goal setting with the intention of creating a clear end goal in mind? Setting proper goals does not mean you are completely dead set on it without the flexibility to course correct.

Wouldn't goal setting be similar to building anything like say a house? When one builds a home, they set a goal for the end result - what the end goal or house will look like and then reverse engineer and build a house (i.e. setting foundation).

When you publish your books, don't you set goals in an indirect way - maybe you set a goal for a particular deadline, number of books you wish to sell, etc..

Anyway, I am just putting some thoughts out there. I guess we can agree to disagree. It seems like your mind is already set.

Sounds like you're a Negreanu fan. I was saying that goal setting had little value before Negreanu commented on my comments.

No it's not. I'm a reader of history and I don't see goal setters being the ones who are successful. But I do see people who find something they like to do, then work hard at it, and then seize opportunities as they happen to come along.

There are a number of problems with goal setting. First, it sets you up for failure if you don't reach your goal. Second, it causes a lost of flexibility and can stop you from seizing opportunities as they come along if these opportunities don't quite fit in with the goal.

I'm sure they're lots of people out there who have a goal of buying a house. But so what? Does having that goal mean you're going to be successful?

No, and I have never done this. The books we publish are those books which became available to our company and in which I liked. There have been a couple of times where I saw a poster who was so talented that I suggested to them that they write a book, but that's very different from what you say.

As for number of copies to print and sell, we do try to judge the market and that influences these numbers, but it's not the way we operate.

One final thought. I also view goal setting as a crutch that some people use to explain their level of success or failure since it allows them to stop.

Here's an example. Suppose you have a goal to write a 300 page book. But after 200 pages you have no more to say and feel your work is not finished. Instead of putting it aside and coming back to this subject later if and when more ideas come to you, many authors quit. And I know this is the case because this is exactly what happened to several potential authors who have contacted us about writing a book but were unable to complete their manuscript. They failed to reach their goal so it was over for them.

Mason

I am actually neutral to Negreanu - neither dislike or like him.

I do agree that there are likely several people who achieved success without goal setting. However, goal setting is very prominent in some specific areas such as sports (pretty much every high level professional or Olympic athlete set goals: Usain Bolt is one prominent example). These are very specific modalities where athletes have to have an ultimate end goal and then reverse engineer it into smaller steps. A pro athlete usually just doesn't randomly train without purpose. Example: athlete knows how fast to run or what specific skill to achieve to get to the top of their sport.

Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Jim Carey are both famous for telling their story about setting their intention and goals to be major movie actors.

Business success stories like Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder), Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are all prominent goal setters and swear by their success because of it.

Your assumptions about goal settings are not in alignment with effective goal setting.
If you fail to hit your goal, it doesn't have to be seen as a failure because you are more likely go further than had you not had a goal in the first place. One would just pick up where they are left off and continue on with a new set of goals. Goal setting can also be flexible. Along the way, challenges and obstacles are inevitably going to come along - one can always course correct. Microsoft, Apple and Google are all examples of this - they continually adjusted their goals to account for the changes in their respective areas.

Regarding your example, if someone has a goal of writing a 300 page book, they can always readjust the goal and say - 'ok, I wrote all I think is needed to deliver a quality book and it came in at 250 pages' so I will adjust the goal and submit the manuscript or they can just simply set a goal based on content (i.e. number of chapters, covering X number of topics, etc..).

Anyway, obviously I do have experience and knowledge in this subject so I am chiming in because your views on goals are a little too narrow and fixated on one perspective.

I believe you are always going to look for evidence to support what you believe. There are many very very successful people (way way beyond just Negreanu) who do goal set.

I do agree that in all likelihood - most people do not set goals. They just don't and of course by sheer numbers, there will be some that will just find success and those are the examples you like to look for.

My point is that I am fairly certain that the there is a higher percentage of success found amongst a group of people who do actively set goals than in a larger group of people who do not.

It seemed helpful for something like Supernova Elite grinding. Having a target # of hands/day for time management and sanity. Also in general it may cause disorganized people to stay on task?

I work in sales. The top sales professionals in my industry all set goals - they set targets for their sales volumes and then they break it down by number of sales calls, number of meetings, numbers of offers, etc...

Even if they don't actually hit their goals, they consistently and always do better than the ones who don't set goals or go much higher than if they did not set goals.

If a sales professional sets a goal of making say a $1 million/year and they don't hit it, they will just say they missed their goal but they still got more sales as a result of the goal setting process. It can be seen as a failure but it can be seen anyway you want to see it.

Goals might be different from challenges though. A goal is like putting a point in semi-uncertain space and trying to connect to it...I see the downside of this versus connecting to a more defined spacial position and then having a series of smaller connections.

I think the sales scenario is showing a good act being analyzing their #’s for areas of improvement. The goals can help motivate them I guess.

I don't buy the idea that you name some successful people and say "Hey, they set goals."

I can name people who probably never set goals even though they knew what they had to do. Let me give an example.

In 1857, US Grant was a total failure who was basically working odd jobs to keep from starving. Then in 1860, the Civil War began and it just turned out that Grant had a West Point education and had been an officer in the Army for a bunch of years even though he had resigned due to loneliness and drinking problems.

Well, it just turned out that people with Grants background in 1860 were in demand, so the state of Illinois made him a Colonel of Volunteers. Do you think Grant had a goal of becoming the general that would win The Civil War. I doubt it. My guess is that he was just happy to have a purpose again and to be doing something that he liked and happened to be good at.

Now this doesn't mean there weren't things that Grant knew he had to accomplish. The best example was that he was given the task of taking Vicksburg MS. If you read the history, you'll see that Grant (and Sherman) tried and failed at one thing after another, including attempting to build a canal that was supposed to change the direction of the Mississippi River. But eventually they got it done.

I think that one idea you may not be grasping is the idea of seizing opportunities when they come along. If you read what I wrote, you'll see that's exactly my history, and perhaps seizing opportunities can at times look like goal setting.

Let me tell you a little more about myself. In 2002 2+2 sold 45,000 books. We started as a company in 1987 and this was our best year to that point. I remember telling people that I though we could sell perhaps as many as 60,000 books in 2003. This wasn't a goal. It was more a reflection of a growing company in a growing field.

But then something unexpected happened. The Poker Boom began in May of that year and we sold 152,000 books in 2003. And this happened even though there was no goal set. But an incredible opportunity occurred (which will probably never happen again) that we seized and took advantage of.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason, you have given examples of some people who were in the right place at the right time. US Grant and yourself were in the right place and at the right time and it is great that you both took advantage of those opportunities.

How do you know that you wouldn't have sold more books had you goal set? Maybe you could have sold more books had you set higher sales goals along the way? Sure, you could have a set a very high goal and not hit it but still gotten more sales had you not set goals?

Your argument doesn't address the vast majority of people who may not be presented with being at the right place at the right time.

Many people who are raised in less privileged neighborhoods may not get such an opportunity as US Grant or yourself and if they did, they are usually presented with opportunities that are illegal (i.e. robbery, drug dealing, etc..). People who do get out of such environment do so by setting clear goals (i.e. finishing school, get to college, find meaningful work, stay out of drugs, etc..).

What about people who want something that is clearly defined and measurable such as getting more fit or releasing weight? do they just continue eating whatever they want and hope that some solution will just show up? How about people who want to be a Navy Seal or professional athlete or high volume salesperson? do they just keep carrying on whatever they are doing and hope to become a Navy Seal, professional athlete or high producing salesperson one day because the right 'opportunities' just came along.

You didn't hear my argument in my last post. The vast majority of people do NOT set goals and out of those people, there will be some who just happen to get lucky and find the right opportunity at the right time. I think those situations are just more rare and you happen to be lucky enough to be in that group. Yet, you still don't know if your life could have been better had you actually set goals along the way.

All I know is that I have also read many biographies of successful entrepreneurs, professional athletes and spoken and met with many successful businesspeople and sales professionals and they do set goals - often 1, 3 and 5 year goals. Do they always hit them? No, they don't. Yet, they don't see that as a failure per se, just feedback that they didn't quite accomplish what they had intended yet acknowledged that they gone much further had they not set clear measurable goals and broken down steps to get there.

You keep saying "How do you know that you wouldn't have sold more books had you goal set?" And that can easily be answered with "How do you know that you wouldn't have sold less books had you goal set?"

As for US Grant, since Civil War History is a serious hobby of mine, do you think it was Lincoln's goal to free the slaves? When he ran for president, he made it clear that this was not something he wanted to do. But there was much concern that Britain and/or France would come in on the side of the Confederacy, and by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan 1, 1863 this would become unlikely.

By the way, speaking of goal setting, here are Negreanu's goals for this year's WSOP.

https://fullcontactpoker.com/2018-an...er-goals-blog/

This is the sort of stuff that I consider to be garbage, and let's just look at two of them.

His first goal is to "Cash for $2.5 million." My reaction to this is that even though Negreanu is an excellent tournament player, the short-term luck factor is so high in tournaments, especially since the last tournament of the WSOP has a $1 million buy-in (which I'm sure he'll want to play) that putting a number on it has little meaning. He also says "I set this same goal in 2016 and whiffed pretty badly." Again, this is a reflection of the large short-term luck factor.

His last goal is "120 hours of Poker Study" and he says that 10 hours a month will accomplish this. But is this really a goal? If you like poker and enjoy working hard at it, I would expect someone like him to put in at least 10 hours of study a month and probably more.

The Soviet Union had five year plans for their economy which in a sense were also goals. You should read about how successful these were.

Mason

I think that both of you are failing to consider the possibility that the process of setting goals will offer different "rates of return" (for lack of a better term) based on the the strengths and weaknesses of the individual as well as the situation at hand. It may not be the case that goal setting unilaterally improves outcomes, and I don't think it is the case that goal setting has a consistently detrimental effect either.

The primary reason, in my opinion, that goal setting is so prevalent (and rewarding) in sales environments is that, for the most part, the work is tedious, mundane and monotonous (and almost as redundant as that string of adjectives). This is especially true for entry level sales where much of the day is spent prospecting and making cold calls. Almost nobody enjoys making cold calls, and it is very easy to become distracted from the task at hand when it is boring or unenjoyable. This is where the goal setting assists, primarily in the form of providing accountability both to yourself and your boss(es).

On the other hand, with the example of General Grant, I would imagine (read: guessing) that his undertaking always kept him captivated and that it was also the type of pursuit that less readily lends itself to goal setting. With regard to professional sports, there is a tremendous amount of repetition required to become world class, and I think that is why athletes tend to rely on goal setting - to maintain their focus while dealing with, perhaps, lack of motivation or determination, which is something that everybody falls victim to at one point or another.

Rambling aside, I think that you can both find common ground and concede that there are certain situations that lend themselves to goal setting more readily than others. If you are disorganized, prone to procrastination and have difficulty maintaining focus then you will probably see great returns from goal setting (again, the accountability element). If you have a laser focus, can stay on task, are motivated by the work that you're doing and thrilled to be doing it, then you may need goal setting less, or perhaps not at all.

cleanrunout - you make a good point. There are many endeavors which require mundane and unpleasant repetitive tasks to master and/or to achieve goals:
- I am practicing jiu jitsu and if I want to achieve my goal of next belt promotion, I have to continue attending regularly X number of classes
- in sales, one must make sales calls to achieve an income goal
- athletes need to put in time to work on specific skills (i.e. serve and backhand for tennis, etc..)
- writers need to put in time to write material and content
etc...

so goal setting is definitely helpful and most likely essential to support one to hit their goal in those particular situations.

@Mason - I would be interested in hearing you present your argument against goal setting to such high performing people and convince them that goal setting was pretty much useless in their journey.

In any case, it does appear to me that your argument against goal setting is more of a personal attack on Daniel Negreanu and discrediting him and his decision to be involved with Choice Seminars.

If I'm reading Mason correctly, he's saying that adaptability to an unpredictable world, combined with the natural pursuit of interests, is more important than goal setting. He also claims that goal setting can be an obstacle to optimal outcomes.

Part of the issue with goals is that people are terrible at setting them.

The problem with Daniel's goals is they're external rather than internal. He can't control any of them except how much studying he does and how many hours he plays--and as Mason points out, he's going to do that stuff anyway. His other results-oriented goals are pointless unless he's simply trying to inspire himself to put in more volume, which again, he's most likely going to do anyway.

However, I disagree that goals are entirely pointless. Goals work well for some people and not others. I'm no expert, but I've heard that human brains are, like, complicated, and everyone's different, or something.

Optimal goal setting = making specific attainable goals for what you can control + being flexible to change

Goals are useful for self-evaluation, too. If you set a goal to do something (like work out four days a week) and you fail, you can evaluate how and why you failed and then create better outcomes in the future. Maybe you discover internal motivational issues or ways to improve your diet/other habits to create a better situation for yourself, and maybe that has nothing to do with your exercise habits but leads to improving another aspect in your life.

Bottom line: the world is unpredictable, following your passions and being open to opportunity is important, but that doesn't devalue the potential upside of properly executed goal setting.

Hi cleanrunout:

I'm not going to dispute this point. But the difference is that I'm talking about people who achieve a great level of success. Having a boring daily job is not what I was talking about, and prehaps I didn't make this clear enough.

How about if you find something you very much like to do, which is what happened to me, then working hard at it won't seem like working at all.

Best wishes,
Mason

Unfortunately not everyone can do what they would like to do... A few mistakes can rig life. Flexibile goal setting though seems better than rigid goal setting. I know someone who rigidly writes down goals and ideas and doesnt stop talking about them and he's lucky if he implements 5% of them at best.

The reason why many people don't achieve their goals or are effective at creating results after setting goals is because they don't goal set properly. There are many great resources on goal setting out there. Usually the key things to making goal setting effective are: 1) accountability or coaching - we are more likely to do something when held accountable, 2) getting very clear and specific on the goal itself and ensuring it is attainable (i.e. standard SMART formula) and I think the third one that most important and often neglected is to have a compelling WHY - why is that goal important to you? If the goal does not create an emotional reason as to why it is important and that it is absolulty necessary, we will always find a way to quit.

There is a wide range of social science scholarly literature on goal-setting theory, one of the most famous being E. A. Locke's 1969 piece, and the vast majority concludes that goal-setting is a primary indicator of task performance. You can find research supporting this in almost every field, from increasing productivity in business, to increasing efficacy of psychiatric treatment, it's across the board empirically evident that it is AT LEAST correlated w/ positive outcomes.

Given your cavalier and totally anecdotal dismissals of completely legit counterarguments to pretty much every point you make against goal-setting, I'm pretty sure the reason you're advocating against it is because you're not good at it and you did fine without it, not because it doesn't work.

Agreed. It is so clear and evident that it is not even worth arguing or debating about.

I have made long-run goals without I would not know myself nor my possibilities and my future would be unclear. Great if one is already clear about one's future or type but it is hardly garbage to goal set if one is not.

Additionally, I make short-run clarifications on paper. I don't do much thinking without it, as I just act, do, but then I take time off to think and organize my life of the near future like the next day or even this day, and further, depending on what is needed. It is like making a shopping list, that I also do. Many things not only can be clarified but can be prepared more or less in advance also, being (like) study.

I checked and saw that goal setting seems to be a well-established theory or whatever in psychology. It might feel a bit cultish or whatever but I basically support goal setting. But only the way one thinks it is good.

Having a passion and going without any settings is also good. I have achieved a lot without any goal setting because I sort of had to go after some goals and had a passion for it, and as so goal setting would be garbage compared to that.

I do feel good about goal setting and how it makes my life clearer and better. To achieve those goal settings is not something all mandatory, as one does and one doesn't achieve them. There is room for spontaneity and I don't feel good about pushing things too much.

+1 this paragraph can summon this whole multimpages argument

goal setting is an extra. it can bring you MORE than anything you do without having it

the idea that goal setting makes you inflexible, makes no sense to me. the idea that if i goal set i cant adapt to circumstances along the way, makes no sense to me. i think nobody can have that rigid thinking in this century

abraham lincoln in the movie ''what is the sense of knowing the true north if you'll die in the swamp going straight line?'' but the general direction was there, your goal

I agree 100%

This is an intellectual skill-set, though, that some people just don't have.

I have a business partner who made small fortunes in 1) .com domain names in the 00's 2) Amazon and Apple stock 3) Bitcoin

He is the furthest thing in the world from a 'get rich quick' guy but just has a massive skill for abstract opportunism, going back to an unusual qualitative genius at understanding human behavior, with just enough quantitative reasoning ability to do the accounting and math. To put it another way, he is brilliant at thinking on his feet, super high-agency and taking rational action based on snap insights into things.

I have another business partner who is, literally, the opposite, but I think far more in line with most people. He went to college, he got a degree, he practices in his field and he's VERY good at it. He probably couldn't create anything new or originate an idea or concept if his life depended on it but of foxes and hedgehogs, he's one of the most useful hedgehogs you will ever meet. He does one thing very, very, very well. And not much else.

Opportunists need the relative freedom of decision-mobility, which is antithetical to goal setting. Most other people need the structure that goals provide, if they're to ever achieve anything. Anyone who has ever raised kids knows that some kids respond to reason and logic, some kids respond to emotion, some kids only respond to harsh consequences.

Hi LOLOL:

It'a nice to see this thread come back to life.

I think one of the keys here is to enjoy your life, and I've always felt that goal setting works against that, but success works towards it. That's why it's so important to find something that you like to do and then to work hard at it, and again, since this is something you enjoy, it won't seem like work.

Best wishes,
Mason

Interesting view point Mason.

If it was a binary choice between goal setting good vs goal setting bad, I think your view would be the optimal one.

I think goal setting is a valuable tool but a very difficult one to master. Most people do not realise this, copy and paste goal setting literature and start to face all kinds of problems.

Gary Klein has written some interesting things about goal setting, some of which reflects what you say. Chapter 14 in his book Streetlights and Shadows covers this if you happen to get your hands on a copy. He proposes a strategy of Management by Discovery (MBD). This does involve setting goals but constantly revising them as new information comes to light.

In relation to your quote: "But I do see people who find something they like to do, then work hard at it, and then seize opportunities as they happen to come along." I think you would relate to his Recognition Primed Decision Making theory.