Maybe goals are stupid. Look for treasure instead.

I've been writing about goal-setting for years. It never made me an expert; I've just constantly wondered out loud about the best way to achieve what I want. When I sat down to finally write again a few weeks ago, though, I was determined to nail down my definitive take on goal-setting and never need to wonder again. But then, of course, I stumbled on a book that blew apart everything.

In Why Greatness Cannot be Planned - The Myth of the Objective, co-authors Joel Lehman and Kenneth O. Stanley confront the idea of ambitious goals (or, as they call them, objectives). We're talking about the goals that are so large we don't even know the stepping stones to achieve them. There is no clear, singular path to building a billion-dollar company, becoming the voice of a generation, or even molding a room full of young minds. But the current consensus seems to be that you need to put your head down and inch your way to achievement.

Lehman and Stanley think differently. They believe that the most ambitious of goals end up being the most deceptive. Why? Because the more steps you need to take, the more opportunities appear for you to trip. With an infinite amount of paths to get to your particular slice of the future, you can't confidently judge if you're ever getting closer or further away from the goal. Or, more importantly, as Lehman and Stanley explain, if either of those directions is best.

Let's start at the beginning.

It's probably important to understand how Lehman and Stanley got to this idea. Both being AI researchers, they built a program called Picbreeder that allowed anyone on the Internet to choose an image from a grid that would then breed a whole batch of new images from their selection. In addition, Picbreeder allowed users to save and share their findings with the world and so others could pick up where they left off. It began with black-and-white blobs and, slowly but surely, users clicked their way to new, radical designs:

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Why in the wide, wide world of sports is this relevant to goal-setting?

Well, originally, it wasn't. Picbreeder had no objective. There was no ultimate image to create. Users just clicked away, exploring an eclectic collection of imagery. But when Lehman and Stanley built an AI program to try and recreate the success of some of those colorful images above, it didn't work. As advanced as modern computing can be, it couldn't reverse-engineer a particular masterpiece.

It seems crazy, right? The users didn't do anything spectacular to stumble on the image of a skull or a car, they just clicked some other images to get there. But because Lehman and Stanley programmed AI with a specific objective, it could only seek out evidence of progress as it chose images to get there. Anything that didn't look like it was getting closer to the goal was thrown away. But sometimes a change you didn't expect is necessary to get where you might want to be.

Stanley offers a more specific example in the book when he describes how he was deceived by his own ambitious goal. Clicking through images, Stanley started to notice two round blobs that he thought looked like tires and he could click his way to becoming a car. But as he progressed with that objective in mind, he started to notice the possibility that those same round blobs could be the eyes of an extra-terrestrial. He ended up in a much different place than he imagined from the beginning.

Lehman and Stanley believe Picbreeder reveals the problem with ambitious goals. The co-authors wrote, "Our preoccupation with objectives is really a preoccupation with the future. Every moment ends up measured against where we want to be in the future. Are we creeping closer to our goal?"

The thing is we don't know. We can't know. Not everything is clear or linear. A failure to do one thing could teach you the skills you need to succeed somewhere else. An embarrassing mistake could lead to meeting the mentor of your dreams. Even an injury or illness could reveal something about yourself that you needed to learn. Lehman and Stanley wrote, "Sometimes the best way to achieve something great is to stop trying to achieve a particular great thing. In other words, greatness is possible if you are willing to stop demanding what that greatness should be."

This is some seriously spiritual shit. We're not machines, we're humans. We can't just punch in some goal coordinates and speed forward until we run out of gas. We're missing the point. When we're busy focusing so intensely on the future and where we want to be, we lose sight of the journey. It's like Alan Watts once said, “Making plans for the future is of use only to people who are capable of living completely in the present.”

The big idea here is not to wander the globe with no goals to your name. Instead, Lehman and Stanley think this simple AI program shows us that we should primarily seek out what interests us. Follow your nose. Click the image and see where it takes you. Be open to opportunities that allow more opportunities. Find the treasure.

Small stuff

It might also be that we get caught up in the ambitious altogether. We don't put enough value in the small stuff. Lehman and Stanley reminded me of one of my favorite XKCD comic strips titled Choices. In the strip, a stick figure stumbles through a void that opens in a corporate office. He floats through space only to find a version of himself that offers some advice for existence. In my ambitious and anxious 20's, I often resonated with a particular bit that now hits more deeply today:

“You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you’re waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.”

I don't know if this is the last I'll write about goals. I still want to do certain things. I want to own my own business, level up in jiu-jitsu, and find a partner that loves bad movies and bad jokes as much as I do. But maybe I just need to find the right stepping stone. Or wander around, looking for treasure for a bit.

Needless to say, I think I found what I was looking for. I wanted to finally understand how to perceive goals and after all I guess I kind of did.

Happy hunting!

You can't do it all

I don't know about you but I had this prevailing thought that if I just juggled everything right, I could do it all.

I could do my job and run a side business. I could eat delicious garbage and maintain a six-pack. I could hang with my friends, find a spicy girlfriend, and make time for my family. But that's not all - if I act now, I could keep a dish-free kitchen sink, finish some no-stress taxes, and empty my Netflix queue! I could be The One to achieve work-life balance - the Neo of Productivity.

But I'm starting to think I can't. Neither can you. And that's kind of the big idea.

Oliver Burkeman's latest book, 4,000 Weeks - Time Management for Mortals, offers the alternative - surrender.

If you're lucky in this life, you get an absurdly short 4,000 weeks (or 80 years). Subconsciously, you know this as well as I do, and that's why we're rushing around to get everything done. But Burkeman argues, "The problem isn’t exactly that these techniques and products don’t work. It’s that they do work - in the sense that you’ll get more done, race to more meetings, ferry your kids to more after-school activities, generate more profit for your employer - and yet, paradoxically, you only feel busier, more anxious, and somehow emptier as a result."

And even if we could spin all the plates perfectly, the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan."

Getting everything done feels like a noble effort. We're trying to avoid the need to make a decision. Basically, why do one thing when I can do them all!?

Burkeman writes: "We push ourselves harder, chasing fantasies of the perfect work-life balance; or we implement time management systems that promise to make time for everything, so that tough choices won’t be required. Or we procrastinate, which is another means of maintaining the feeling of omnipotent control over life - because you needn’t risk the upsetting experience of failing at an intimidating project, obviously, if you never even start it. We gill our minds with busyness and distraction to numb ourselves emotionally. (“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life," wrote Nietzsche, “because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”) Or we plan compulsively, because the alternative is to confront how little control over the future we really have."

While the inevitability of oblivion makes you feel like you need to squeeze every bit of juice out of every second, trying to do so only takes you out of it. If you spend every present moment worrying and planning the future, were you ever really here?

So what do we do after we surrender?

Be here now. Accept that you can only do so much. And then go do it.

Oh, and read Oliver Burkeman's book. My little email could never capture the entire brilliance of his work.

Why I initially chose the side of the oppressor

Until I finally sat down to write the words you’re reading, I hadn’t shared anything publicly about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, or the rest of our country’s current situation.

I had no idea what to say. And, more than anything, I thought that meant I needed to sit down and figure it out. If there is a need for others to raise their voices against injustice, and I feel the impulse to not, there is something there worth exploring. And maybe, I thought, if I can shed some light on how I feel and how I've changed, others that remained quiet for so long might hear, and we can all get somewhere better together.

I should start by saying I have no issue calling what happened to George Floyd what it was - murder.

In the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, though, a sentiment was circulating around social media that being silent means you stand with the oppression. As far as I understand, the original idea stems from the words of Desmond Tutu when he specifically wrote, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

I was immediately defensive. I didn’t want to feel compelled to use my little social media accounts for anything I didn’t want to share. It was some monkey-mind reflex shit. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do!” And that’s true. Partially. In this world, you don’t have to participate in some things and you do have to participate in others. We have to pay taxes. We have to work 40 hours per week (or more) to pay bills. We have to follow the laws. But then sometimes, too many times, those meant to uphold them don't.

I think what made me recoil so quickly was how uncomfortable it makes me admitting that we need to do any of this at all. Just as a teary-eyed Killer Mike began his speech when he spoke at the Atlanta protests the other day - "I didn’t want to come, and I don’t want to be here."

That’s where the defensiveness comes from. You don’t want this to be real. You don’t want this to have to happen. You don't want to have to speak up. But you do. At the least. And as defensive as I could be about something as simple as using my social media, I can’t imagine how it feels to need to march and riot and loot and fight for your basic human rights.

On the other side of all this is my identity.

I was lucky enough to be born white in a country that systematically values it above all else. I have the unfortunate luxury to sit back in times of injustice. And maybe as stupid as it may sound, it feels disingenuous to speak up because I’ve never done it before. I hate admitting that, but I think it’s important to note because I can’t be alone.

I was worried who would read whatever I chose to write. It could be as simple as typing “Black lives matter" but somewhere in my brain I felt like someone is going to call me out. They would know I'd never been very vocal and they'd make me ashamed for it. Or they'd question how much I know about our history, quizzing me on the details. And that led me to wonder if maybe what I’m really worrying about is revealing the ignorant and delusional and privileged among me.

But why stay silent? Why live a lie? Why not confront my own identity as someone that can sit back, and use what I can for good?

Every voice matters. That’s what I didn't really get until I was able to write these words. It's not about educating people that didn't know black lives matter. It's not about sharing the perfect meme or the most captivating video. That's not the point. The simple act of speaking up means you're showing others, white or black, in your smallest of circles that you don't stand for injustice.

I'm sharing this for myself and for others. You can be conscious of your privilege but that’s not enough. Real change requires action. I’m sorry if you want to stay silent, stay out of it, or stay in your healthy, luxurious bubble. The best time to speak up and take action was yesterday. The next best time is now.

Why drilling a hole in your head might make you happy

Happiness is ice cream.

It would be simple if it was just that, but it is, more or less, ice cream. Watching movies in an empty theater is fun and getting drinks with friends is great too. Sex can be pretty amazing. I could keep going but you get the picture. I've experienced happiness and you have too.

But how did we get here? Every day that we wake up in this weird world, we have to decide who we believe about happiness. We’re told stories about what will make us happy. Constantly. A friend describes her perfect dinner at a new restaurant. Your date recommends their latest Netflix binge. A coworker gushes about a trip overseas. And more than anything else, we’re bombarded with media - a kaleidoscope of ecstatic people, doing things we haven’t experienced or we’re not experiencing right at this not-happy-enough moment.

In the book The 4-Hour Work Week, author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss wrote, "Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse."

We can't possibly do it all, so we need to pick and choose about what gets us going.

But what about the happy people of the stories we don’t hear?

I’ll give you an example. We don’t believe monks. We rarely hear their story. What do we know? Bald men in robes, meditating away most of their days. These weirdos don’t watch television. They don't have sex. They barely know what’s going on around the world outside themselves, and yet they claim they’re at peace when people ask.

No one is holding us back from joining them, but no one is hiking up the mountains and shaving their own head. 

What about poor people? Being poor can be a harrowing experience. We assume most poor folks are miserable. But it turns out, maybe not. In his book Tribe, journalist Sebastian Yunger writes, "According to a global survey by the World Health Organization, people in wealthy countries suffer depression at as much as eight times the rate they do in poor countries, and people in countries with large income disparities - like the United States - run a much higher lifelong risk of developing severe mood disorders."

Why are we so quick to question these stories? Or worse, reject them? We tend to only believe the stories we've heard many times before, but what if we've been wrong this whole time? What if we’re stifled by our own experience?

Consider this. There are some people in this world so committed to hunting down their happiness that they voluntarily drilled holes in their skulls! The procedure is called trepanation. It's the oldest surgery known to man, primarily because human beings would suffer a lot of trauma clubbing each other over the head way back when and drilling a hole would release some of  the pressure. But, back in the early 1970s, Amanda Feilding did this to herself with an electric drill after she couldn't find a willing surgeon. She claims trepanation "works by restoring the full pulse pressure of the heartbeat". A hole in the skull increases cerebral circulation, Feilding says, and releases the limits your skull places on the brain when it finally seals shut. The result is an increase in well-being, a more free and creative state.

How can you honestly believe you're going down the right tracks for happiness when people are out there confidently drilling holes in their skulls? We barely believe that throwing away our smartphones for a second and going on a hike will feel good.

The challenge is we're sold different versions of happiness every single day. Most often, it's the dream to be rich, famous, and free. Jim Carrey, arguably one of the biggest stars in the world, a man that brought happiness to millions of people, once famously said "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."

The truth is we don't know. But if Jim Carrey said your dreams are not the answer, and Amanda Fielding is still alive and kicking with a hole in her head, it might be time to rethink our definitions of happiness. 

And if there is something out there as good as ice cream, movies, drinks with friends, and sex, I'd like to hear the story.

How Life is a Simple Choice

Have you ever had one of those dumb friends who thought prison might be a welcome change to life?

They'd say things like, "Oh, I'd get so much reading done," or "Yeah, I'd get ripped." 

They weren't wrong. There is plenty of time to read and pump iron under maximum security. But the joke here is simple, prison is far from ideal. They're ignoring the endless anxiety of being stabbed. And the limited menu. And toilet wine. Oh, and the whole living in a concrete box surrounded by criminals thing.

We're so desperate for simplicity we joke like it's not possible. Living through the most complex era to date, it's too much for some people to deal. Forget getting ripped and reading books, people can't even get off their phones in a movie theater.

Choice is not a problem. Choice is an opportunity. Being locked in a cage will make life simple, but it won't be pretty. 

If you want life to be better, you have to accept nothing less. You can't ask your best friend "don't let me drink too much". You can't hire a trainer and stay healthy. You can't be forced to be better.

Some people in this world quit serious addictions cold turkey. The idea of swallowing pills to numb every aspect of life for the next decade is motivation enough to cut it out. It's far from easy but the choice can be. 

The modern problem is the story can change at any moment. We're bombarded with them. Just as advertising tells us there is something wrong and we need to buy to be whole again, the Internet shows us ten thousand lives to live when we only exist in one.

Change the story you tell yourself and you will see things differently. You don't need a drug problem or jail to simplify. You don't need your best friend to be responsible for you or a trainer for your body. 

Leave yourself no choice but to become better, whatever that means for you.

And knock it off with the bad jokes, you'd definitely get stabbed in prison.

Psycho-Cybernetics: How Your Mind Adapts to The Reality You Feed It

With every millisecond of existence our minds are crunching data from every sense we know and painting this bizarre experience. It's just happening all around us.

What we barely recognize is our imagination. Somewhere between our automatic bodily functions and psychological translations for every action, we're building worlds inside our heads. 

But does your mind know the difference? Does the computer between your ears articulate between what's in front of your nose and what you were daydreaming about at work yesterday afternoon? More importantly, what does it mean if it doesn't?

Maxwell Maltz was grappling with this idea back in the 1950's. Maltz was a plastic surgeon that noticed people would come to him for cosmetic surgery and drag along their life story. Of course everyone had a reason for wanting to go under the knife, but Maltz heard story after story where people would attribute the way they thought the world reacted to them back to the irregularity they saw on their body. A housewife struggling with her husband and kids thought she needed a face-lift to make her family appreciate her more. A businessman too shy to make a company-wide presentation thought he needed a stronger jawline. They were right that a part of their body was holding them back, they just didn't recognize it was more than skin-deep. 

Maltz started taking the psychology of his patients more seriously. Then he was struck by the hot, new scientific field of his day - cybernetics.  He described it as having to do with the "goal-striving, goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems." Think torpedos or heat-seeking missiles. But Maltz noticed parallels with the human mind. He noticed how the "self-image" of his potential patients directed how they acted. If they imagined themselves as ugly, they found reasons in the world to prove that - a longer than average stare, an over-eager make-up salesperson, an unsuccessful date. Their imagination became more real the more vivid they made it.

These people weren't weird. We've all been there. How do you feel when someone in the office asks if you're feeling sick, and you're not? You want to punch them in the mouth, right?

Building on the cybernetics field, Maltz wrote Psycho-Cybernetics. He described it as the idea that man is not a machine, but "that man has and uses a machine." When we're downloading the world around us and daydreaming about what it all means, our minds are cranking the gears. No matter where thoughts begin or end, it's a cycle. Your mind adapts to the reality you feed it. 

In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell offers a similar, more modern example. He tells the story of two Dutch researchers who gathered groups of high school students to play Trivial Pursuit. For just five minutes before the game, one group was asked to think about and write down what it meant to be a professor and the other group was asked to imagine what it meant to be like a soccer hooligan. With just five minutes of imagined experience, the differences in their scores were starling - the "professor" group scored 55.6 percent right while the "hooligans" got 42.6 percent right. 

There is something going on behind the scenes that we don't quite comprehend. It is not just the power of positive thinking. We're just getting closer and closer to closing the gap between our imagination and the world around us. Virtual reality has brought the future to the forefront. Maxwell Maltz thought it took 21 days for a patient to adjust to their new face after plastic surgery. Now it takes something like 21 minutes for you to trick your mind into thinking you're someone else. Joshua Rothman wrote in The New Yorker that he experimented with virtual reality headsets and the sensation of virtual embodiment. With just some physical tracking software and a few minutes of mirrored exercises, Rothman thought he was the embodiment of the robot he saw on the headset screen. What's even more wild is that when Rothman's avatar reached out to touch a piece of virtual cloth, Rothman's biological fingertips felt the sensation! Can we deny the power of the machine now?

The mind adapts to the reality you feed it and sometimes that's the problem. We can be so heavily planted in our norms that we don't take a moment long enough to recognize what's going on inside. We can have such strong routines and habits that we can't even imagine doing anything else. But we know that's not true. There are endless decisions to make and if you want to take an extra moment with each of them, there is nothing holding you back. Because, at the end of every millisecond, the reality is there isn't just one.

Gods With Netflix

Back in 1964, media theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. And in that book, McLuhan wrote, "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence," the idea being that at night, we're left in the dark. With a single light bulb, a whole new world appears.

The Internet is a light bulb that makes an entire galaxy of opportunities visible. If someone from 1964 saw the things we can do now, they'd smash every light bulb they could find over their heads. You can call or text anyone you know. You can buy just about anything you want and ship it to your home in days. You can force strangers to drive you places, and play Mortal Kombat with your friends in Vietnam. You, reading this, can even send the President of the United States a public, formal request to suck your dick (whether or not you have one).

We're monkeys with superpowers at our fingertips. We are gods with this technology.

And yet, we still can't choose a fuckin’ movie to watch on Netflix in less than five minutes.

We'll read a dozen show summaries and watch at least 18 minutes of trailers before we throw our snacks in the air and fire up another episode of something we've seen plenty of times already, like The Office or Parks and Rec.

Author Barry Schwartz calls this the paradox of choice. As human beings we love choice. The more, the better. Except no. It's not.

With too much choice, people freeze up. Where too few choices meant we had to make the best of a world with annoying limits, too many options means it's entirely your fault if you choose something the slightest bit boring.

And you will, and it kills you. Because the other mindfuck of this wide world of choices is that our brains can easily imagine a better option. You can watch a slightly above-average movie and imagine the possibility of choosing a slightly better movie and having a slightly better time. And so you go to bed feeling like a failure, laying there dreading the day where you'll have to look at Netflix again, anxiously squeezing the bridge of your nose, hoping someone else will have the courage to pick something quickly.

The Internet has given us so much it gave us anxiety too. Who would have thought Pandora's Box would be so stupid?

Some people are calling us Generation Anxious. There was a whole other generation a bit before us that fought a WORLD FUCKING WAR and we're anxious about choosing from our infinite library of entertainment.

The even more confusing thought is they might be right. Anxiety bleeds into everything. Like the light bulb, the Internet made this whole new world. Where the grocery store has an entire aisle FILLED with cereal, and another aisle with more than one kind of plastic cup. Where you can use your finger to instantly judge the attractiveness of tons of people in your area. Where it is perfectly acceptable to look down at your phone and text someone while you're in a conversation with another human being right in front of you!

What can we do? The fact of the matter is we're stuck with this environment. With infinite choice comes infinite responsibility.

What helps is remembering that you don’t know until you know. There is no end to the amount of data you can take in and there is no perfect choice. When it comes down to it, you need to take a deep breathe and go. Own your decision, good or bad, because there is always tomorrow and another chance to decide.

The Reality of Streisand's Cloned Dog

We human beings like to dream about the future, but sometimes it's right in front of our eyes and somehow just out of sight.

I'll give you an example. It happened just a few weeks ago and you might have missed it. Barbra Streisand told the world she successfully cloned her dead dog. Twice.

Yeah. Barbra Streisand hired a real biotech company to take some mouth and stomach cells from her dog Samantha back in 2017 and turned around and cloned two brand-new dogs out of them - Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett.

We've had twenty years to accept that this would be possible, and we've been caught slippin'.

But back in 1996, more than twenty years ago, we were just as blind. Scientists took some cells from a sheep and made another sheep out of it. In 1996! Dolly the sheep was the first ever mammal to be cloned, in the same year the Spice Girls were first played on the radio and the Nintendo 64 was released! We were shooting rocket launchers in Goldeneye when scientists found a new way to successfully create life.

And you're dead wrong if you think these nerds are going to walk us through the strange times ahead. Why? Because they're human beings, which means they're just as oblivious. They may know way more than the average person about cellular biology and the scientific process, but I promise you they can be just as dumb.

How do I know this? Reading about cloning, I stumbled on the reason for the name Dolly. Scientists named her Dolly the sheep after Dolly Parton the country singer, and it's not because sheep have beautiful voices or Parton has luxurious wool. Dolly the sheep got her name because she was cloned from another sheep's breast cells. That's the decision that came from the same eggheads responsible for cloning another living being.

Let that sink in.

The future is here, people. We need to keep our eyes open because sooner or later, someone is going to invent a flying car and cure cancer, and we're going to be too focused on cloning Fido to notice.