set dumb goals, not SMART ones

why you should have ambiguous new year's resolutions

Instead of SMART goals I am setting DUMB goals this year. Perhaps this story is familiar to you — setting ambitious, specific resolutions at the start of the year that you can really visualize, imagining your blingy future with a cool job, everyone wants a cool job, a balanced breakfast, getting your hands dirty in SELF ACTUALIZATION and EXPERIMENTATION, and time passes and life happens and you do your best but find yourself scratching your head at the end of the year in a Costco wondering where it all went wrong. I'm here to tell you nothing's going wrong. The structure is faulty.

smart goals failed me and they have probably failed you too

SMART goals look like a viable solution for an individual to accomplish something. But they do not work how you want them to. This has less to do with you being a poorly disciplined person and more to do with the framework's inherent rigidity. It's too stiff to accommodate the slippery idiosyncrasies of life. It's a sleight of hand the business world has flipped at us; yet project management does not equate human living. Yes, you may want to start running every day. But you go outside and there's a neighbour to be helped, or a downpour slides its heavy throat down the street, or there are flowers. And what do you do about the flowers?

I bought into SMART goals because they made me feel like they were working. Progress seems so clear. It is measurable. It is unambiguous by design. I'd identify something I wanted to accomplish, make it concrete, and then make some kind of mild progress towards that concrete metric, but I was walking toward a mirror image of my actual desire.

My buy-in to SMART goals was pushed along, too, by my first full-time job in management consulting. Everything was framework, everything was optimization. During my early months of full time I even asked my therapists about how I might 'expedite' my healing.

I illustrated this based on a conversation I had with one of my old therapists

The SMART goal framework consists of the following pillars¹:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Relevant

• Time-Bound

In my years of using SMART goals I would duplicate this approach across my entire life to create a rigorous, project-management system to manage all of my desires. I never accomplished everything I wanted to do, but I accomplished some I attributed the remaining failures to being human (i.e., sitting on the couch and eating chips with your roommates instead of writing the next great American novel, or reading an amazing book instead of doing your homework, or dropping off soup at your sick friend's house.) But it is actually a failure of the system. Let's talk about why.

SMART goals are too rigid for life's spontaneities

Rigorous goal frameworks as a way to achieve desires have a key design flaw. They don't account for life's spontaneities, nor do they account for the natural unfolding that occurs when working towards something. They focus hungrily on the outcome, and the outcome alone. This is how we think about project management in client work. If something takes longer than expected, we adjust the scope or we sacrifice another work stream or we extend the timeline. I remember doing a lot of painful exercises to re-prioritize: what indulgences to cut out, what hobbies to scrap to maximize 'impact'.

With this framework, we have little room to question the goal itself. If I didn't submit poetry to 4 journals a month I'd either try to submit to 8 the next month or I'd accept submitting to less journals for the year. But then instead of adjusting my plans for the month I started this blog and started writing essays for fun, which has brought me much unplanned joy.

Under the SMART goal regime, I would turn away from actions that didn't serve my goals. I wouldn't play guitar if I wasn't actively learning technique. I would avoid reading a book unless I was in the right headspace to take notes. Why deny myself these pleasures for the sake of optimization, and a false definition of optimization at that?

And let's sit by the window and ponder on the things we truly ache to experience in our lives. Like learning to trust yourself more. Healing from some wound you only just realized existed inside you. Finding more joy in the small and everyday. Writing to answer and understand life's questions. Often goals that bring us the most peace and enjoyment resist structure. How to create a SMART goal for that?

SMART goals focus on the joys of outcome, not the joys of progress

progress vs. outcome …….

I stumbled into the world of productivity systems off the back of the Tumblr #bulletjournal community, where students take photos of libraries and share gorgeous spreads of their to-do lists. I was an active participant in this community in high school. Every week: I wake up, make a pretty spread after looking at inspiration online. I printed out pictures of K-POP idols at Staples to glue into my journal. I dutifully wrote my to-do lists each day. The next day I'd guiltily shuttle over half my to-do list to the next day because I hadn't accomplished all my tasks. And I pushed the boulder up that hill for years.

An outcome is a pretty poor measure of progress. The self is simply not a project to manage. The system I had designed for myself — a project management of the self, I guess — worked as simple, rational way to accomplish my goals, but I was ignoring the whole point of the exercise, which was to live a more fulfilling, enriching, and joyful life.

A requirement of the rational system is to look at a half-completed progress bar and ask, how might we get that bar to 100%? When we should instead be asking questions like, am I having fun? What world exists outside of this path I'm on? What is actually important in trying shit? Is completion more important than the work itself? How to tackle this? Answer: not in a SMART goal.

so this year I'm ditching the smart goals. let's talk about dumb goals

So this year I'm toying with a looser framework for working towards desires with the purpose of creating more possibility within them. I will still write them down, but will sweat the small stuff less. I will try to write things down in a way that encourages action, regardless of it is continuing down the same path, and I will try to create some frameworks that feel joyful around it. Let's call them dumb goals for now.

Indulge me on this acronym:

• D — Deep-Rooted: Goals should be connected to your core values, and grow from authentic desires rather than ways you feel like you SHOULD be. They also recognize that growth is not always obvious at a first glance.

• U — Unfolding: Goals should embrace process rather than predetermined outcomes, and should evolve as we do. They should make space for serendipity and should celebrate the journey.

• M — Meaningful: Goals should allow for depth over metrics. What truly matters compared to what can explicitly be measured? How are we defining growth? Does it even need to be defined?

• B — Breathing: Goals should align with seasonal energy and allow for natural cycles of effort and rest. We should also create structure for integration and reflection. What are we learning? Where do we go next after a pause?

my dumb goals for the year

This will most definitely change. But directionally, here's what we've got:

1. 🌻 Create a garden on my balcony: I've been thinking of growing tomato plants on my south-facing balcony for a couple years now. I've been aspiring towards working with plants. Now I need to go beyond watering a houseplant and wringing my hands when they start killing themselves and dying.

2. 🎨 Paint my coffee table and decorate it: I really enjoyed painting my "community chairs" with my friends last year and they've become one of my favourite things in the apartment. Let's keep going; I got a coffee table off Facebook Marketplace for $25.

3. 📖 Start and finish the Artist's Way: I'd like to get to a point where drawing and writing feel very natural, very joyful, and feels more honest. I'm very used to trying to operationalize my creative process. This probably needs the sort of spiritual healing that people seem to get from Julia Cameron's Artist's Way.

4. 🫂 Make intergenerational friends: I don't hang out with enough babies and I don't hang out with enough grannies. That's a lot of joy and wisdom I'm missing out on! Not to mention delicious food. Plus my skill in being able to connect devices to Wi-Fi is most appreciated by this demographic.

5. 🧘 Find better ways to release stress that actually release stress: I do a lot of activities that are supposed to release stress. But I am still a very stressed person, so I think I'm probably not doing the right things.

6. ✌️Maintain my emotional vibe: Basically regulating my emotions better. Get in tune with urge surfing. But also if I'm feeling joyful, to share it with other people and worry less about its appropriateness.

7. 🦜 Talk to more people whose work I find interesting: I'm shy to talk to people about their work but I want to know what possibilities are out there beyond making slide decks that are marginally interesting and poorly researched lol.

8. 🎹 Pick up music again with guitar or with jamming with my band: I miss that spiky, focused feeling of jamming with other people. I'd also like to do some structured learning of an instrument. Probably piano or guitar.

9. ✏️ Write my blog posts with less polish, more curiosity: More rigor on research, more googling, more interesting examples. Spend more time digging around instead of stuck wondering how to phrase something. Focus less on voice and style. This will come naturally with reading more and taking walks and talking to interesting people.

10. 📚 Study more: I need to read up. I am foolish and not proud of it! I'd like to read more, engage with what I'm reading more, and take some classes. Probably about data analysis and design.

11. 💡Try new things in my career: Writing this blog has been really fun and rewarding, but I think experimenting with other mediums will also be fruitful. Maybe trying out YouTube again or reviving the poetry podcast, or drawing on greeting cards; I just want to try something that I can fuck up and then learn from. I'm also thinking about how my 9-5 job shapes all of this exploration.

12. 🥕 Figure out a food system: Get better at managing the admin / planning side of cooking: groceries, ingredient prep, meal planning, nutrition planning. I feel like I can reduce a lot of my food-related stress by planning more effectively.

LMAO

how to set a dumb goal

Here's how I wrote down my dumb goals for the year:

1. Take 20-30 minutes to write down, stream-of-consciousness style, your wishes and desires.

2. Which desires jump out at you as particularly frivolous or practical? Which ones are you having responses to, whether they are icky or thrilling or something you could never allow yourself to do?

3. Highlight those.

4. Sense check: Are these desires aligned with my values? (i.e., is there possibility for growth and surprise if I fulfill this desire?)

5. Ask: If this desire is fulfilled, what might happen to me?

6. Ask: Does this feel urgent?

7. Rewrite: Do any of the desires have a concrete, measurable component? Try to rewrite them based on their purpose. Try to rewrite them to give you as many possibilities and pathways to work toward them that feel exciting or joyful. They should feel expansive, not narrowing.

8. Cull: Now, get realistic. How many of these can you honestly work towards during the year (with acknowledgement that you might necessarily abandon or tweak these as time goes on)? Select only that number. Save the rest for later.

9. Stick them up somewhere so you can look at them often.

how to document goals joyfully without it being really annoying

As an experiment to make this more fun, I'm using seasonal documents as a container for my planning and field notes. These focus on surprises, learnings, and interesting failures instead of trying to analyze why I didn't achieve a certain level of progress. I'm trying to tailor the framework to care more about the process than the goal.

how to document each season

I created a few sections in my digital journal that will allow me to document conveniently while still imposing some structure to be useful for reflection and subsequent action. There are a few sections in the journal:

Day 1 reflection: In the beginnings of the season, I reflect on things like what the season is guiding me to pursue and where I'm situated. Questions to answer include things like:

• What are my current energy levels?

• What are the season's impact on my routines?

• What feels ready to grow?

Seasonal Focus: My main focus for the season and brainstorm some concrete things I might work towards over the next 3 months. This is where I need to get a little bit more structured so I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing. Questions include:

• What's my main focus this season?

• What are concrete things I can work towards this season, aligned with the season?

Laying the Dirt: Notes on creating conditions that support me in accomplishing my concrete focuses for the season. Things I think about include how I can design my physical space, what time and energy considerations I should have this season, and what support systems might be helpful. Some reflection questions include:

• How can I reduce friction points in my environment this season?

• What natural rhythms should I work with this month?

• What resources do I need to gather to support myself in this season?

Field Notes: Notes on the season about my experience — weekly reflections, interesting failures, moments of surprise, patterns that are emerging monthly, collected inspiration, process images, etc. etc.

Seasonal Harvest: Space to celebrate what was accomplished, what I learned about my process, and what seeds to plant next season.

If you're curious for more detailed view of my journal this year and how I'm keeping track of everything, or if you're curious about trying out this structure for yourself, I've put together a Notion template that you can buy here if you're into that sort of thing :)

goodbye optimization. let us be like water

Some interesting, creative people have written about non-rigid structures and aligning to seasonal rhythms:

• Yanyi on the difference between creativity and productivity:

  “Oh, I’ve only done like six points this week when I said I could do 12. What’s going to happen?” The answer is nothing. Nothing’s going to happen because I don’t need to read 12 books a week, which is where I was at. If it’s not really serving the work, then what’s the point? So I stopped doing that.

• anjali
  ’s comic on feeling December:

winter stagnation

• Carolyn Yoo
  on seasonal pacing:

  As an introvert who relishes going inward and staying at home, winter is my most productive season. Yet for many years, I pushed myself to forge ahead with projects and goals without considering winter’s softer, slower pace, culminating in burnout." She ran a 31 day challenge here for winter and it was SO COOL:

Join 31 Days of Creative Resilience

So it seems to make sense to move through the seasons as your desires soften or intensify. Think Claire Schwartz's lines from her poem, Lecture on Loneliness:

Some ideas for what aligning your practices to seasons could look like (if you live in a place where winter is cold, like me):

winter

• building foundational knowledge of a new desire — reading up!

• planning what containers you need for your container garden

• weightlifting at home

• sleeping! resting!

• trying new soupy recipes

Spring

• trying out some desires in small increments

• setting a planter up on the balcony

• trying new bakeries or bookstores that may turn into good community spaces for things you'd like to organize with friends

• taking walks outside and familiarizing yourself with potential run routes

Summer

• active engagement with projects that you have resources already pulled together for

• getting your hands dirty in the garden

• organizing community events

• biking to regular classes at a local gym

Fall

• gathering your learnings and preparing to rest

• letting go of what's complete

• planning virtual touch points with your friends to make art together in your own homes

• enjoying your harvest with your friends by cooking together

• transitioning to weightlifting more at home

and now what? what are your desires? 💭

I've spent January thinking about how to anchor my practices around honest joy and desire rather than what I THINK I should be doing. Do new year's resolutions work for you? What are your honest desires for the year?

1. sorry lol. I used an Atlassian link.