In my previous article, I extolled the virtues of process-focused systems over outcome-driven goals. I laid out the neuroscience behind habits, the psychology of why goals often fail, and mindset tips for building effective routines.

Systems, I argued, are the reliable path to sustainable life changes. Goals are fleeting motivational hits that often leave us crashing back into our old patterns. Disciplined habits and practices remake us from the inside-out in a more lasting way.

But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t address one of the key pitfalls of an overly systems-focused approach: vagueness and lack of direction. While ambitious outcome goals can sometimes paralyze us, having no overarching aims at all can leave us adrift, too.

The Danger of Aimless Routines

Let’s say you decide to build “success systems” around working harder, waking earlier, exercising regularly, and so on. But without any clarity on what you’re working so hard towards, your routine risks becoming just another hamster wheel routine.

You may get in amazing shape, be incredibly productive, and accomplish a lot of ‘busy’ness. But if those systems aren’t oriented towards any defined purpose or passion, it can all feel pretty meaningless and unrewarding in the end.

This problem of vague systems leading to aimless busyness is very real. Researchers have found that individuals with chronically ambiguous strivings and ambitions report lower well-being and greater psychological distress¹.

Having routines and habits without goals is a bit like sailing across the ocean without a port of destination. You’ll go through all the motions and rigor of sailing but never savor the rewarding feeling of arriving somewhere promising and new.

The Balance: Crisp Systems Steered by Directional Aims

The solution, then, is to blend the best of goal-setting and system-building. We want the structured daily disciplines that reshape our habits and identities for the better. But we also need a motivating sense of direction and purpose to push that routine towards.

This is why I advocate for a both/and approach rather than an either/or dichotomy between goals and systems:

First, define overarching “directional” aims to provide a sense of meaning and orientation. These are not SMART goals with specific timelines and measurements. But they are meaningful targets on the horizon to steer your systems towards, such as:

• Building a lifestyle business that allows me to live anywhere
• Becoming a professional speaker who inspires audiences
• Writing fiction novels that move and entertain people
• Getting into elite physical shape through dedicated training

With those overarching aims defined, you then construct robust systems, habits, and routines to carry you in that direction each day. Maybe it’s a rigorous writing practice, a daily home workout program, or regular public speaking workshops.

The systems themselves don’t necessarily have quantified goals, timelines, or deadlines. Those are artificial finish lines that can promote unhealthy deprivation mindsets and relapses once reached.

Instead, your systems are oriented by those overarching directional aims. You let your steady, regular inputs gradually carry you towards those broader destinations, making micro-adjustments and improvements as you go.

Why Vague Goals Can Sometimes Be Superior

Interestingly, researchers have identified cases where having imprecisely-defined goals can actually be advantageous for motivation and progress.

A study published in the Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes journal found that vague goals around “attaining a high level of performance” promoted more sustainable effort than strict “do your best” or clearly defined performance targets². The vague framing reduced the tendency for people to punt once they hit a seemingly “good enough” metric. The same seemed to counter the tendency to consciously or unconsciously anchor oneself to artificial finish lines.

The takeaway is that while clearly defined SMART goals can be useful for very discrete tasks, overly rigid goals can ironically dampen motivation before we reach our full potential. Vaguer, more expansive framings can keep us in a sustainable stride toward improvement.

Bringing it All Together

To summarize: Do we need some form of goal-setting and aspirations to provide motivation, direction, and meaning? Absolutely. Drifting through life without any sense of where we’re headed is a recipe for restlessness and inertia.

But neither should we enslave ourselves to overly-defined targets that promote deprivation and relapses. We want motivating aims to steer our systems towards, not limiting finish lines to demotivate us.

The idea is to blend crisp, internalized systems with open-ended directions:

1. Define overarching directional aims and aspirations, like “becoming a professional writer” or “achieving elite fitness.”
2. Construct concrete, sustainable systems of routines and habits around that directional aim. Outline your recurring writing practice, nutrition plan, workout schedule, etc.
3. Let your input-focused systems carry you steadily in your chosen direction, making continual micro-adjustments and not punting once a strict metric is hit.

With this balanced approach, you get the structured daily disciplines that compound over time to reshape your skills, habits, traits, and identity. Those crisp systems provide an integral foundation.

But you also get the sustaining sense of orientation, meaning, and continuous self-motivation that comes from having inspirational aims on the horizon, not trapped finish lines. The overarching goals imbue those daily systems with driving purposes.

In the end, systems are indeed superior to goals in most cases. But pair those systems with expansive life directions, and you get both steadiness and drive. Consistency and meaning. Habit and purpose. That’s the antidote to both aimless busyness and futile bouts of motivation. It’s the sweet spot for meaningful, sustainable growth across all your life dimensions.

References

1. Emmons, R. A., & Diener, E. (1986). Influence of impulsivity and sociability on subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(6), 1211–1215.  ↩︎
2. Locke, E. A., Chah, D.-O., Harrison, S., & Lustgarten, N. (1989). Separating the effects of goal specificity from goal level. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 43(2), 270–287. ↩︎