On goal setting, motivation and personal growth: you can learn a lot from a 3-year old
Let me tell you a little bit about setting goals.
Let me also tell you a little bit about process versus product.
I dislike goals. I don’t have any, for the most part. But I’m content and generally feel like I am developing, both personally and professionally. I know this may seem to be a contrarian idea, but let me explain.
Let’s look at this from the point of view of teaching a language.
You’re learning English, for example. There’s no question that goal setting can increase your extrinsic motivation (you want to emigrate, get a particular exam result, you need it for a job opportunity, etc) but at the same time it may affect your intrinsic motivation: doing it for pleasure and enjoying the process. The reality is, there might be things we have to do in terms of goal setting but we shouldn’t lose sight of the beauty of doing things for pure pleasure if we feel it aids in our growth. There are dangers to having too narrow a focus so I always try to keep an open mind. Goals can often inspire performance, but they can also, if approached in the wrong way, prevent real learning if we close ourselves off to unexpected opportunities along the way.*
My three-year old daughter has taught me a lot about the idea of goals and just enjoying the process. We do puzzles and mosaics together. We build structures with lego-like bricks. We spend a few minutes, destroy the puzzle, destroy the building, and then start all over. She loves it. She laughs, giggles, gets so excited, she has a look of sheer joy on her face and what’s the end result? Absolutely nothing. There is no end product or result, just a process.
Too many of the learners I see get bogged down in the product side of things: they want to reach a particular end result and they don’t see the importance of process. This doesn’t mean that the process has to be enjoyable, per se, but that process is a crucial part of the journey.
Think about it like travelling: the journey is important too. As Clark Griswold said in National Lampoon’s Vacation: “Why aren't we flying? Because getting there is half the fun.”
Of course there are times when it’s worth flying. But you might miss out on a beautiful part of the journey, the getting there part of it.
We all take different attitudes to goals and personal development. Some love concrete, specific, detailed goals. Others prefer broader, more general goals. Over the last couple of years, in some circles there’s been a drive away from goals and more towards establishing good habits. If you’re a language learner, that might mean less of something like ‘My goal is to achieve a proficient (C2) level of English’ and something more akin to ‘I want to spend at least 30 minutes a day reading texts in English and 15 minutes revising collocations’.**
My daughter does puzzles, constructs buildings and flips through books. She enjoys the process. That is her habit. Day by day she gets better at the things she does, but at the same time, her little eyes are always scanning the room for new opportunities, new areas to explore. And if she has her mind set on one thing, but then a better opportunity presents itself, she drops everything and feverishly attacks the new project.
And she’s developing and learning. It’s a magical process I can see unfolding before my eyes. She doesn’t have goals. She wants to learn, to grow, as much as she can, in any way that she can. A little, day by day.
We can learn a lot from babies and children.
My key point here is that we should not limit ourselves to whatever clearly defined goals we’ve set (or felt like we had to set). Keep an open mind and be open to taking your ‘goals’ in new directions, veering course when need be. Be fluid with them, or follow the sage words of Bruce Lee:
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Further recommended reading
Anything from Morgan Housel is well worth reading, but this post served as particularly good inspiration for my thoughts. The title says it all:
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman (in particular, chapter 4: Goal Crazy: When Trying to Control the Future Doesn’t Work)
References
* Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting, Harvard Business School Working Paper, © 2009 by Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman
** On habits as opposed to goals, a recent influential book is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (disclaimer: I’ve not read this)
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