Why Do You Need To Set Anti-Goals?
Setting anti-goals is more important than setting goals, but you are probably not doing it yet. Therefore, we will show you:
1. What anti-goals are
2. The advantages of setting anti-goals, and
3. How you can set anti-goals.
1. What are Anti-Goals?
While goals are the things that you desire and want to focus on, anti-goals are the things that you also desire but you decide not to focus on. For example, let’s say you want to improve your English and also start learning French and Spanish. After considering your available study time you decide to only focus on improving your English and not to start learning French and Spanish. That means that improving English becomes your goal, while learning French and Spanish become your anti-goals.
1.1. Make Defocus Explicit
While few people set anti-goals explicitly, they do so implicitly when setting goals. This is because in the goal setting process, they are making decisions on what to focus on. But each decision on what to focus on also is an implicit decision on what not to focus on. But beyond doing this implicitly there are big advantages to setting the anti-goals explicitly by making a list of anti-goals.
1.2. Difference Between Anti-Goals And Avoidance Goals
Many people confuse anti-goals with avoidance goals. Anti-goals are the things you desire but decide not to focus on. Avoidance goals are the things you want to avoid and you decide to focus on avoiding them. For example, maybe you hate making useless phone calls, or long meetings. In that case you could set avoidance goals to specifically avoid these activities. So avoidance goals are things you want to avoid, while anti-goals are things you actually want but decide not to focus on.
The difference between goals, anti-goals and avoidance goals is illustrated in the diagram below:
● We see that “normal” goals lead us to a good outcome and an outcome we want to focus on.
● With avoidance goals we also focus, but not on achieving a good outcome but on avoiding a bad outcome.
● With anti-goals we would also like to achieve a good outcome but we decide to defocus on it, so as to be able to focus on more important goals.
While setting avoidance goals is also important, here we will talk only about anti-goals.
1.3. Anti-Goals Are About The Things You Love
Anti-goals are not about the things you hate, but about the things you love. For example, let’s say you have no interest in learning Latin or Russian but you really want to learn Spanish and French. So when you decide that improving your English is the only goal you want to focus on right now, the anti-goal is not learning Latin or Russian, as you never had any intention to do so. The real anti-goal is only learning French or Spanish, because these are the things that you actually wanted to do, but you decided against them.
2. Why Do We Need Anti-Goals?
Anti-goals are important because they provide focus.
Most successful gurus will tell you about the extraordinary importance of setting goals. They say that goal setting leads you to being more motivated and to achieve more. But this neglects that in today’s industrialized society the problem that people face is not a lack of goals; it is having too many goals. So when a typical knowledge worker does not know what to work on next, it is not because he doesn’t have things to do, but because he has to do too many things. In this situation of overload, setting more goals is not helpful. In fact, adding more goals can create paralysis. Therefore, it is better to create a list of anti-goals which are those things that the person does not want to focus on, and therefore should delete from his list of goals.
Anti-goals thus help in creating focus. Focus has never been so important as now, as modern day workers are overloaded with stuff to do. This leads to the following problems:
● Burnout
● Not getting anything done
● Constant switching
● Demotivation
If we suffer from the above, we probably need less goals rather than more. We can illustrate the difference between goals and anti-goals as follows:
2.1. Burnout
If you have too many goals to work on and you are simultaneously trying to accomplish all of your goals, you will be very stressed and eventually burn out. This state of burnout is a response by your brain to the continuous stress of too much work. When you burn out you are no longer able to accomplish any of your goals.
2.2. Not getting anything done
When you are working on too many goals simultaneously you might be spreading yourself too thinly. Spreading yourself too thinly means that you might not be able to accomplish any of your goals.
2.3. Constant switching
Alternatively if you are working on too many goals you might focus on one goal at one time, only to switch focus to a second goal another time and then switch to a third goal yet another time.
This way you are always focused on one goal at a time, but the constant switching might prevent you from accomplishing any of them.
2.4. Demotivation
When you have many goals you might think that you have more motivation; more goals, more motivation. But in fact, the opposite is true, as your motivation can only be directed at one thing at a time. If you have too many goals, you will have too many directions of motivation cancelling each other out. This way you end up not being motivated to work on any goal.
Setting anti-goals helps you to be focused, so that you do not burn out, stay motivated and actually accomplish your goals.
3. How To Set An Anti-Goal
The anti-goal setting process was laid out by Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett was coaching his pilot Mike Flint on a simple process to gain clarity on his priorities and achieve his goals.
The process contains three steps:
Step 1: Write down your top 25 goals
The first thing Warren Buffett asked his pilot Flint to do was to list the 25 most important goals he wanted to achieve in his lifetime.
Step 2: Select the top 5 goals
Once Flint compiled his list of 25 goals, Buffett asked him to draw a circle around his top 5 most important goals. Flint was hesitant because each goal was important to him, but nevertheless, he circled five goals.
Step 3: Focus on Your Top 5 Goals and Say No to the Rest
After a brief discussion, Flint said to Buffett, “Warren, these are the most important things in my life right now. I am going to work on my goals right away.”
Buffett replied, “But what about these other 20 things on your list that you didn’t circle? What is your plan for completing those?” Flint replied swiftly, “Well the top five are my primary focus but the other twenty come in at a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently. They are not as urgent but I still plan to give them dedicated effort.”
After a brief moment of silence, Buffett looked straight into Flint’s eyes and said, “No. You’ve got it wrong. Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all cost list’. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”
This is great advice! What it means is that the 20 almost-top-goals do not become secondary goals but become anti-goals! Goals that need to be avoided.
Why? Because these are the most likely goals to get us distracted from our top goals.
Different from Warren Buffett we think that you do not necessarily have to cross out 20 out of your 25 goals, and only focus on 5. We advise you to only focus on the top third of your goal list. So if you make a list of 30 goals, the top 10 would become your actual goals and the other 20 would become your anti-goals.
Let us summarize the anti-goal setting process:
- Create a broad list of goals
- Select the top goals from that list, the other goals then become your anti-goals
- Avoid pursuing these secondary goals, the anti-goals, at all cost
In conclusion, setting anti-goals has many benefits. The biggest one is giving you more focus. The increased focus will help you reduce stress and burnout while also making it more likely that you stay motivated and actually achieve your most important goals.
