The two sides to a goal: On seeking and finding

 It has been a while since I last wrote. I draw a deep breath of trepidation as I begin to write this. I am almost tempted to close it citing a random excuse, but this idea has been in my head for a week now, and I must write about it.

A short while ago, my friend SM wrote in an article that her fitness goals caused her to become obsessed with reaching those goals, and took away from the joy and peace of actually working out. This idea remained in the back of my mind, and during the week I saw several examples of the same.(Baader-Meinhof anyone?) There was a customer care executive I was talking to, and he spoke at 2x the normal conversing speed. He also cut me off mid-question several times, already answering what he thought I would ask. It seemed to me that he was trying really hard to minimize the time he spent addressing my concern. The logical answer, was that he was incentivised on average time per call. Thus, his goal was to spend the least amount of time talking to people such as me, even if that meant cutting me off mid-sentence.

To my surprise, I also identified this pattern of behavior in myself. I'd signed up for the Goodreads Reading Challenge 2020, where I had set the number of books that I'd read in this year to 52.(One book per week. Easy-peasy right?) Back in January, I thought setting this as a goal was great. I had set a deadline, I could monitor my progress, and I could remain committed to this goal, one small step at a time. And every book I'd finish would serve as motivation to reach that magic number of 52. What better then? I have read religiously, and my current count stands at 40 out of 52, which is fairly on track for my goal. Here's the other side of that story though. I have started obsessing over this goal. I fret about not reaching it. Last week I had to pick a book to read. I have been wanting to read Dostoevsky for a long time now. I have Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and several other works of his downloaded onto my kindle. But here's the thing about writers like Dostoevsky--their works are extremely verbose and erudite. In my head, I knew that with the limited reading time I had per week, picking up a book like this would detract from my goal. Therefore, I chose an easier book. But the reasons for my choice rankled me. I sneered at myself: Really? All you want to do is read 52 random books? Doesn't it matter what you're reading? What kind of a skewed goal is this?

I was listening to a dancer's talk about possible career paths in her domain, and she spoke of a goal as confining oneself. As restricting oneself to a very narrow idea of what success should look like. She instead urged people to have a very broad goal, and thus open themselves up to all the opportunities that surrounded them. I found myself agreeing with her.

A while ago, I would have found this idea completely contrary to my beliefs. I, like the vast majority of the world, presumed that people with concrete goals had clear definitive notions of what their lives should be like. And that those with fewer precise goals were lost and confused, wandering through life clueless as to what they wanted out of it. But that is a very one-sided picture of what a goal is. If you asked me now to describe a goal, this is what I would tell you.

A goal is akin to the blinkers on a horse. It detracts the horse from the distraction of looking sideways, true. But that is the bad and the good of it. On the one side is the laser sharp focus a goal gives you. On the other, it closes up your vision to everything else. In other words, tunnel vision. 

It is remarkable, Reader, how a single idea is voiced by different people of different domains.It makes me marvel about how connected everything is. To give you a tiny example of this:

In literature,I see this idea in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, where he says: 
“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

In economy, there is the popular Goodhart's Law, which states:“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

The next time I set a goal, Reader, I will ponder carefully over the distinction between a measure and a target and what I am choosing this to be. I will also think about the duality of depth and breadth, and question if I should be choosing this goal at all.