the goal

We think of goals as if they are easy descriptions, something we can attach to a post-it on our wall, a simple label.

I realized that sometimes we confuse goals and outcomes, and I realized this, as it often happens, through the learnings of being a dad.

As a parent, I’d love my child to tidy up her room, and sometimes I get angry because she doesn’t do that.
But that is the outcome, not the goal. The outcome is a clean and tidy room. The goal is to learn the independence to tidy up the room, to learn where each piece should go, and to sustain the boring task of putting them in their own place.

To get that outcome, there is a lot to learn, plenty of messy rooms in between. But the goal is not the tidy room. 

It is indeed easy to desire the outcome, the fancy status, the beautiful home, but it’s the underlying goal (learning to fish, so you don’t go hungry, learning to sail, so you can navigate the world) that makes the difference.