The tyranny of certainty
In my role as a coach, I frequently get confronted with questions about how certain a plan is to work. The great philosopher Mike Tyson said it best, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Plans are usually fairly straightforward, and they might include alternatives. The reality is that no plan is ever guaranteed to work, and the further out in the future the plan extends, the lower the odds are that it will be of any use at all. Conversely, goals can determine the trajectory of your life, but achieving them is typically not a straightforward process, and there usually is not an alternative. If you believe you are destined to be an astronaut, you probably won’t settle for working as an engineer at NASA (not that there’s anything wrong with being an engineer at NASA).
In my experience, plans tend to only be effective for around 30 days (depending on what you’re planning. Vacation plans may seem like lower risk with more certainty 6 months - 1 year out, but even there you’ll be competing with natural events, financial events, and political events. Who saw the COVID shutdown coming?). You can use plans to achieve goals, but depending on the distance to your goal, you may have to use many plans and adjust them often.
A plan for the current week may be as high as 95% certain, since most of the things will occur within just a few days, and the opportunity to modify the plan is very near term. For example, perhaps you need to make a car payment by Friday. As long as you have the funds on hand during the week, you can probably adjust your spending to ensure that the payment is made. You might even be able to make the payment early in the week to reduce the temptation to spend the money elsewhere, and end up not being able to make the payment.
Plans for “next” week tend to be less certain, and will have some dependencies on the way things go in the current week. For example, in the same scenario, if you get paid this week, but your car payment isn’t due until next week, and you don’t expect to get paid again before it is due, it will take some more significant willpower and good decision making on your part to ensure the funds are on-hand for the payment due date.
Anything beyond that introduces so much uncertainty that the plan holds no value at all. Continuing with the previous example, a payment due 3 or more weeks in the future would likely not even be a consideration in the current week’s spending because other, more pressing factors may be higher priority. Perhaps you expect another paycheck before your payment is due, which means the money on hand may be free to invest in other pursuits. Or perhaps you’ve been notified that you won’t be receiving another paycheck from your current employer, in which case you may have significantly more pressing matters to attend to (although ensuring you don’t lose your means of transportation in the meantime should certainly rise to the top of the list at that point!)
Does this mean we shouldn’t plan or set goals? No, not at all. Planning and goal setting are both valuable, but they aren’t the same thing, and should not be approached from the same perspective. When you make a plan, you are stating what you intend to do, barring some unforeseen events. As long as your plan is short-term, or only includes things with very low-risk of failure, you will very likely experience high success rates with planning. For example, if you plan a route to a particular destination in the same town, you may easily be able to adjust your course if there’s roadwork that prevents you from taking your primary route. On the other hand, if you’re driving to another state or across the country, and a major road is closed, you might find that adjusting your course is much harder to do, and may even require some backward progress before being able to go forward again.
On the other hand, goal setting can be used to project far into the future, anywhere from minutes to decades. Goals depend less on a certainty of process, and more on the certainty of outcome. For example, you may set your goal as arriving in Los Angeles, and you may have to adjust your course many times along the way, but if you remain focused on achieving your goal, you will eventually arrive in Los Angeles. Or you might set your goal to be the highest paid singer in your country. The plans to achieve that may make your path look like the Curly Shuffle, but again, if you remain focused and continuously work towards that goal (and you can sell yourself as a singer), the odds of achieving that goal increase dramatically.
Bottom line: Do not allow yourself to be tyrannized by the certainty of a plan. Rather, allow yourself to be motivated by the certainty of a goal. Realize that you can adjust your plans frequently without having to change your goal, and reinforce the idea that once you have set a goal, you will achieve it regardless of the personal sacrifices required to achieve it. (Caveat: I do not recommend pursuing unhealthy goals, or goals that impact someone else’s happiness, and for the love of all that’s holy, do not sacrifice your family for anything else, it’s just not worth it).
Challenge: Pay attention to the plans and goals you have right now. You do have some, even if you’re not really thinking about them in that way. What are you trying to do with your career? Your family? Your finances? Pick an area you want to improve and then set a long term goal. Spend some time really thinking about specifically what you want to achieve. A bad example of a goal is “have a better relationship with my wife.” A good example of a goal is “spend 1 hour per week of quality, alone time with my wife to discuss the strategic goals of our family.” To help with differentiating between well-formed goals and poorly-formed goals, you can use the SMART acronym. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. And yes, it’s absolutely realistic and achievable to set income goals of $1,000,000 or higher, you will just have to decide how much effort you’re willing to put into achieving it.
As always, I am ready to serve you. If you’re interested in an accountability partner and a guide on your journey, then reach out to me and let’s get started on your adventure.
Be strong and of good courage, and good things will come your way.