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Why I Stopped Setting Goals (And What I Do Instead)

Tara McMullin
8 min readDec 14, 2020

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Photo by Amy Sibert on UnsplashWoman sits at the top of a mountain looking out at a valley below

Most small business owners I know have an “it’s complicated” type of relationship to setting goals.

They know they’re supposed to set goals for their life and business. They know they’re supposed to make plans to meet those goals. Some do, some don’t.

Some set goals one month only to abandon them the next. Some set goals and power through them even when new information comes to light. Some spend months (or longer) just trying to figure out what goals to set. Some swear by their goal-setting process but end up judging themselves or their actions harshly when it doesn’t quite work out.

I get it.

My relationship with goal-setting has always been complicated, too. I’m an achievement-oriented, hyper-competitive, winning-is-my-personal-identity type. Setting goals and racing toward the finish line was just how I functioned.

I’ve never seen a shiny medal I didn’t want to win.

Unfortunately, chasing medals and merit badges hasn’t always led me down the right-for-me path. My personal specialty is choosing a goal based on limited (and often faulty) information and then calculating the fastest path to achieving it without regard for long-term…

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Tara McMullin
Tara McMullin

Written by Tara McMullin

Writer, podcaster, producer. I think and write about navigating the 21st-century economy with your humanity intact.

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