Direction Goals Instead of Destination Goals
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
A goal-setting rule built for people whose rigid targets are managing anxiety rather than mapping a route. Curran cites Carl Rogers on striving toward goals of which we are only dimly aware, and new work by Christian Swann in sport psychology suggesting less specific but still pointed goals are more psychologically freeing and can produce higher performance than hard, specific targets. Ali's version is a pencil-sketch goal that is vague, unambitious and fully within his control, with the bar deliberately set as low as possible when consistency or procrastination is the problem, then raised slightly each time it is cleared. The discriminator Curran adds is motive: for a conscientious person a rigid list is a useful road map, but for a perfectionist the same list is anxiety management and will backfire.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Sketch the direction, not the destination
Hold an ethereal sense of where you want to go, becoming a professor, a VP, a creator with reach, without converting it into a specific outcome on a specific date. Curran's framing from Carl Rogers is striving toward goals of which you are only dimly aware; Ali's is that goals are a direction, not a destination.
Pro tip Phrase it as win some races this year rather than win this race on this date.
- 2
Check the motive behind the goal
Ask whether the target exists as a road map or as anxiety management. Curran's test: a conscientious person makes a list because it directs their energy; a perfectionist sets rigid, lofty goals because if they do not set them and meet them, anxiety goes through the roof. Same artefact, opposite function.
Pro tip If missing the goal would feel like evidence about you rather than about the plan, it is anxiety management.
Watch out Rigid goals are not universally bad. They are bad for the perfectionist.
- 3
Move the goal inside your control
Replace outcome targets you cannot control, ten thousand subscribers, a bestseller list, with process commitments you can. Ali's example is one YouTube video a week for two years, deliberately vague about results, which is what kept him consistent while peers chasing subscriber counts hit failure after failure and burned out.
Watch out A global pandemic, a bad day, or waking up on the wrong side of bed can wreck an outcome goal for no good reason.
- 4
Lower the bar until it is trivially clearable
If you are struggling with procrastination or consistency, set the bar as low as is humanly possible: vaguely defined, not lofty, not ambitious. Curran's version for students stuck on a three-thousand-word essay is to write anything at all, even a letter to your mum, just to get words on a screen and start the process.
Pro tip Cal Newport's mantra, quoted by Ali: this one just needs to be reasonable, the next one is going to be good.
- 5
Raise the bar only after you clear it
Once you are consistently clearing the low bar, raise it slightly, then slightly again. Ali's standing bar for a video or episode is that it helps at least one person, which is low enough that it has survived six years and hundreds of uploads. Height should track the actual problem: an Olympic gymnast and someone struggling to get to the gym need opposite settings.
Watch out Do not import an elite performer's bar height into a consistency problem; it produces procrastination, not motivation.
- 6
Budget for the jagged path
Expect headwinds, stumbling blocks, months of standing still and periods of regression where you discover you did not know what you thought you knew. Curran's point is that these are just as important as growth and are not shameful; the direction goal survives them in a way a dated destination goal does not.
Pro tip Do not feel obliged to convert every setback into eight lessons for a thread. Some setbacks can just sit.
In the wild
Ali contrasts his own approach with peers starting YouTube channels. His goal was deliberately vague and pencil-sketchy: make roughly one video a week for two years and see what happens, with no subscriber target attached. Peers set specific, measurable, challenging goals such as ten thousand subscribers, an outcome nobody can control, and experienced repeated failure until they burned out and quit. Six years later Ali is still publishing, with a standing bar of helping at least one person per upload.
→ Sustained consistency over six years, while outcome-goal peers churned out.
Curran's students freeze in front of a three-thousand-word essay: the topic is hard, they do not know it well, the stakes feel high, and so they open Netflix. His instruction is to write something, anything, even a note to their mother, purely to get words on a screen and enter the frame of mind of writing. Then put down their own thoughts on the topic without consulting the literature, iterate those into a structure, and only then bring in the sources and build it piece by piece.
→ Procrastination is broken by removing the first-draft-must-be-perfect condition rather than by adding pressure.
Common mistakes
Copying a conscientious person's goals
Rigid, specific lists genuinely work as road maps for conscientious people who can accept a miss and move on. A perfectionist adopting the same system is not gaining direction, they are building a machine for generating anxiety they cannot discharge.
Setting outcomes you cannot control
Subscriber counts, bestseller lists and race results depend on factors outside you. When they are missed for no good reason, the perfectionist reads it as personal failure, which feeds the deficit spiral rather than the work.
Adding growth as another should
Curran warns that a mindset set only on growth becomes another entry on the tyranny of shoulds. Requiring every plateau or regression to be converted into a lesson removes the permission to simply stand still, which is a normal part of any long journey.
From the transcript
“Goals are a direction. They're not a destination.”
“You're setting them because they're managing your anxiety.”
“I am at my greatest, happiest when I strive towards goals to which I am dimly aware.”
From the episode
World Expert On Why Perfectionism Is Your Enemy And How To Overcome It - Professor Thomas Curran
Professor Thomas Curran