The Hard Truth About Why Outcome Goals Don’t Matter That Much
Yesterday I wrote about the two most important parts of a goal. Today I am adding an addendum to that article, so if you haven’t read it, here is a brief summary. You must break goals into three parts to be effective. Those three parts are the outcome, performance, and process. Out of those three parts, the outcome is the least important of the three, because without the performance and the process the outcome is irrelevant.
With that said, this morning I was explaining this to a client during a one-on-one session and they didn’t agree. The argument was to consider goals that you achieve by default. For example, being the captain of a team because of seniority, receiving an inheritance, winning the lottery, or getting an opportunity because of who you know, not what you know.
Indeed, making the Olympic team for a small country where there was no competition would be cool. In today’s world where people celebrate the cover of a book on social media, people are happy to brag about being an author of a book that isn’t worth reading.
Do You want to Look Good or Be Good?
If you value looking good more than being good, then there is no doubt that the outcome matters more than the performance and the process. On the other hand, if what’s inside the book matters more to you than the cover, there is no shortcutting the process.
Winning the lottery changes your circumstances. However, it does not change you. Unquestionably, you will be the same person when you achieve a goal without a process because it’s not achieving goals that make you better, it’s the process of pursuing a goal that makes you better.
Multiple studies show that about 70% of all lottery winners end up going broke, but you can’t find one study that shows a pattern of rich people who go broke after working hard over decades to earn their money. Unquestionably, the process of learning how to get rich is more valuable than being rich.
Likewise in sports, the process of preparing to win and the performance you give while competing is more valuable than the trophy or medal you may get from winning. If it were any different trophy engraving companies would be on every corner.
Of course, trophies can validate that the process is working. But it’s also true that trophies can be a false positive and not getting one can be a false negative as well. In any case, whether you get a trophy or not, it’s the actual performance that you will remember. So, it still stands that even though outcomes matter, no matter how you look at it, they don’t matter as much as the performance or the process.