I wrote in a previous post about how I’ve found it surprising how often I achieve the goals I write down at the start of the year. But what if the year spins out of your control, and everything you planned for becomes completely upended and nothing you set out to do gets done?
For many people, this was 2020.
I’ve seen several video and memes about how the goals people set for themselves were made laughably impossible by the worldwide pandemic last year (and continuing into this year). Traveling, spending more time with friends and family, saving money—these all went out the window for so many people. It can be painful to look back on the aspirations we had for ourselves last year and realize that—no matter our best efforts—we were destined not to achieve our goals. For others, it might seem absurd to set goals in the first place when our ability to achieve them can be capriciously taken away from us.
To say that anyone "failed" because they couldn't meet their original goals would be narrow-mind and missing the point of the goal in the first place. We set our goals in context, and the context changes. Being inflexible to change when situation changes hinders our ability to learning and growing. And the whole point of goals is to grow. We set goals that we want to grow into. And sometimes we outgrow our goals, or they become irrelevant. You're laid off from your job, members of your family can need more of your care and attention, or there's a global pandemic like no one's ever seen in a century. Our goals should change when they need to.
For many people this year, more important and immediate goals took the place of their initial yearly goals: taking care of oneself, protecting others, and simply just surviving. These are laudable and good goals, and more important in context than saving more money or working out regularly.
But is it still worthwhile to set goals when the world is so ultimately out of our control, as we saw last year?
Personally, I find it useful, even as I acknowledge that I don't ultimately have control whether I'll be able to succeed. The purpose of yearly goals is not about hitting 100% completion by December 31st. One reason I have several goal categories—my "Five M's" of mind, muscle, matter, money, and mates—is because the range of options provides multiple targets to shift focus towards as circumstances change. Achieving one goal of many is an improvement, as 1 goal out of 100 is still progress made towards the place you set out to go.
Even if none of the goals on your list are achieved by the end of the year, they can provide you feedback to help you learn about yourself. Maybe that thing you thought you had to do or achieve turned out not to bother you as much when it was no longer an option. Or maybe you regret not taking that trip to visit that old friend before lockdown. The lessons we take from the goals we missed can inform our future goals and the actions we take towards them. We learn to critically examine our goals. We ask ourselves if we really want to achieve that goal, or do we put it because we think others would be impressed by it? We act to buy tickets and make plans for that trip as soon as we can rather than waiting for the end of the year. Failure or not, we learn from our goals, and we grow from them, which is the whole point of goals in the first place.
We don't know what's going to happen this next year; we ultimately don't have control. But when we set goals and seek to learn from them regardless of the ability to control the outcome, yearly goals are "unreasonably effective".