I found the blog post “I’ve never had a goal” over at Jason Kottke blog interesting. There is a quote from Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamep (aka 37signals):
I can’t remember having a goal. An actual goal.
There are things I’ve wanted to do, but if I didn’t do them I’d be fine with that too. There are targets that would have been nice to hit, but if I didn’t hit them I wouldn’t look back and say I missed them.
I don’t aim for things that way.
I do things, I try things, I build things, I want to make progress, I want to make things better for me, my company, my family, my neighborhood, etc. But I’ve never set a goal. It’s just not how I approach things.
Also, Jason Kottke’s therapist advice:
For the longest time, I thought I was wrong to not have goals. Setting goals is the only way of achieving things, right? When I was criticizing my goalless approach to my therapist a few years ago, he looked at me and said, “It seems like you’ve done pretty well for yourself so far without worrying about goals. That’s just the way you are and it’s working for you. You don’t have to change.”
I myself don’t set goals either. But I’m yet to reach that “you’ve done pretty well for yourself” part. Wink.