People With Goals Use People Without Goals

When my mind is occupied, a cross country airplane flight of five hours seems short.  Otherwise the five hours seem long. On one such flight the movies were boring and the canned music dull, so I listened to a speech by a management consultant.  One of his statements was, alone, worth the tedious 15 hours I seemed to have spent in my not-so-comfortable economy seat.

“People with goals use people without goals,” he said.  This is one of those statements which seems obvious the moment you hear it.  “People with goals use people without goals.”

Suppose we decide to see a movie.  I say, “What would you like to see?”

“The new Superman movie.  I’ve really been looking forward to it.”

Which movie do we see?  The new Superman movie, of course.  Why?  Because you had a goal and I had none, other than to see a movie with you.

Derek and Debra interviewed Elizabeth, a potential nanny, who was leaving her long-term position as a high powered executive assistant.  They offered her the job but during the interview asked Elizabeth where she saw herself professionally in five years.  They did not want their children to lose a new nanny after a month or two.  In rejecting their offer Elizabeth said, “I don’t really know what I want to be doing in five years, but I know what it’s not — being a nanny.”  Inadvertently, Derek and Debra helped Elizabeth to consider, or reconsider, her goals.

In 1990, during a serious recession, I could not fall asleep in my hotel room when I arrived in Oslo to begin a nine day vacation.  When I can’t sleep I either get out of bed and write, or I think about numbers.  That night I thought about numbers.  Remember that this was in the age of the dinosaurs when portable computers did not fit under airplane seats and iThings were just beginning to flow from the imagination of a guy named Steve Jobs. 

I knew my business was losing a lot of cash each month, and during that uncomfortable night I figured out exactly how much.  I couldn’t check my number until I was back in Los Angeles, so I spent a very long week in Norway.  In reading this blog my wife reminds me that before we visited the Kon Tiki museum the next morning I announced we were cutting back on costs during our trip.  We ate cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Back in Los Angeles I was both pleased and dismayed.  My night sweat numbers were correct.  I immediately set a goal to bring cash flow to breakeven within two years.  I figured I would have 440 working days to accomplish that, and during each of those days I would have to either increase monthly income or decrease monthly expenses by $341.  If you multiply 440 by 341 you will realize why my family and I ate cheese sandwiches in Norway.

I achieved my goal one month early and would like to tell you that I never suffered a regular cash loss again.  But if I said that I would be deleting the Great Recession of 2008 – 2012 from my memory, and forgetting that Patterns Persist.  You will find that Tool in “People Tools” when it becomes available in January.

I’m not saying that you have to set a conscious goal for each and every waking moment.  Wandering though your life can yield many unexpected Magic Pianos (see my previous post).  But I am saying that it will be helpful for you to keep in mind what you want to achieve in your life and establish goals accordingly. My goal, at present, is simply that you read this blog and also the important entry next week.

Hmmmmm.

Next week:  Multi-goaling.  When you subscribe, each new blog will magically appear in your Inbox every Tuesday morning.

Alan