I Gave Up on Goals. Here's How I Still Move Forward

Entrepreneurship and life made me look for something more adaptable

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash

I swear I tried. For years. I studied all the goal-setting techniques. I blocked time at the end of every year, month, and week to set and review goals. I always failed.

But I don't mean I never achieved anything. I achieved different things. I constantly had to abandon my goals and set new ones.

Maybe it was my fault, either in the planning or execution phase. But I feel I can work better without complicated goal-setting practices.

I know this is a challenge for many other people. So if you're like them, if you're like me, here's how I replaced goal setting as a content creator and solopreneur. I feel it’s a more realistic approach.

The one thing I had to accept

I think the main reason why my goals didn’t work has been the abundance of factors outside my control. Here are a few events showing what I mean. It’s a long list, but I want to paint a clear picture:

• My first blog was an immediate success, but then I gradually lost interest in photography (and after my son was born, I just didn’t have time to practice).

• Then, photographers started publishing on Instagram and YouTube. Traffic from Google plummeted into a hopeless descent. At that point I was involved in another business, didn’t have time to create content myself and didn’t find partners to create video content.

• I co-founded another business whose main acquisition channel was a podcast. We were pioneers in Italy. But it cost us: we found out in our country the audience wasn’t large enough to build a sustainable business.

• In this second business, we tried to catch the wave of Facebook chatbots, but the trend soon died.

• And of course, there was the pandemic. The Italian economic situation wasn’t already exciting. The prolonged lockdowns messed with our client’s cashflows. They were more worried about surviving than about expanding their business.

• Meanwhile, in the last 5 years, my wife switched jobs 5 times. But inevitably, they all left her so wiped out that I had to pick up the slack at home.

As far as I know, no one has put a curse on me. There’s just too much out of your control that can disrupt your plans, as a person and as a creator.

It’s how the universe works. Goals can’t take everything into account. We need to be lean and adaptable.

Humans have a problem

Science has proven over and over that humans are terrible forecasters. Even experts perform slightly better than random guessing.

Every day, we deal with complex dynamic systems. That is, situations with many factors involved, that keep changing. I try to be humble and accept I just can’t make reliable long term predictions.

Our brains are wonderful. But they just can’t grasp the complexity of these systems.

There's one exception, but…

You may be thinking of some creator that keeps succeeding in everything she does. I have some people in mind, too. I studied them and noticed a pattern. They are usually creators who publish content and sell products teaching how to be successful creators!

This is their script:

• they find success,

• they start teaching what they did, using their mouth-watering results to attract followers, and clients,

• they accumulate a large following and create a healthy cashflow,

• these assets create a foundation, a safety margin, and often a flywheel to keep scaling.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm not saying they aren't capable. They are often good at what they’re doing. But there are a lot of talented creators in other niches that do everything right but can't trigger a similar flywheel.

So what can we do?

Goals can be useful

When a goal is in sight, your performance increases. You probably experienced this during a run. Even if you don’t see the finish line, when you know you’re heading somewhere, you’re more motivated. Multiple studies have shown this (like this one, for example).

This is a conundrum. External factors and our inability to predict make goals almost useless. But we need them for motivation, to not feel aimles. What can we do?

I'm not totally goalless, but my goals are broad:

• I desperately want to avoid traditional jobs,

• I want as much control as possible on my time,

• I want to spend as much time as possible on things that fire my up,

• I want to dedicate as much time and energy as possible to my son’s development.

They are so deeply embedded into me that I don’t need any motivational video or pep talk.

So, the first step is to set goals, but keep them broad. They are closer to ambitions than to specific results.

But such broad goals don’t tell you what to do every month, week, or day, right?

Here’s what I do.

From broad goals to specific actions

My broad goals act like very distant destinations on Google Maps. I know I want to reach them, but I can choose among multiple vehicles and routes. I can add as many stops as I want. I can change routes and vehicles as often as I want.

Confusing? Here’s what it looks like in practice:

• knowing how I want to spend my time and live my life (an endless process of self-discovery),

• constantly studying what works online for solopreneurs and content creators,

• choosing the strategies and tactics that resonate with me,

• experimenting with them,

• assessing the results they bring and how they make me feel,

• adjusting course.

My assessments don’t happen regularly. Some experiments need at least a few weeks to bring results, other need months.

And adjusting sometimes means changing an activity, for example posting more frequently. Other times, it means completely pivoting (read this to help you with drastic changes: Quitting Is a Skill, Not a Shame).

A recent example

At the end of 2024, I was publishing my English content on Medium. I was following advice specific to that platform to maximize views and earnings. But it wasn’t working.

In May, after considering it for a few months, I pulled a trigger and joined Substack. My articles received five times the views and I collected more than 100 email subscribers every month.

But this meant cutting my revenue. I still republished some articles on Medium, but they weren’t optimized for that platform. And on Substack I focused mainly on growth.

An annual revenue goal is typical for every business. If in January I had set a goal such as “I want to make $1000 per month on Medium by the end of the year”, I would have failed. Or I would have missed the opportunity to build an audience on Substack.

More complicated, but more realistic

At the beginning of my career I fell in love with the traditional goal-setting techniques because they promised control. They created the illusion that I could mould reality and predict the future.

But enterprenurship taught me to relinquish control and embrace serendipity. It’s the lesson I’m most grateful for.

Probably, you don’t like to hear this. It means we can never relax. We have to constantly study, assess, and adapt.

But life isn’t static. Believing the opposite is just an illusion. Sooner or later, it leads to dramatic wake-up calls.

Do you resonate with my “non-goal-setting technique”?

If so, begin from identifying the broad goals for your business and life. Then, start the endless cycle of studying, experimenting, assessing, and adjusting.

Good luck!

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