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Welcome creatives! These are discussions, thoughts, case studies, interviews, and lessons about how our creativity relates to life. The host, Mr Benja, is a former video game programmer / designer for Rockstar Games, Sony Santa Monica, The 3DO Company, and others, as well as a fine artist. -- Be sure to check out the website for more.
Have you ever heard anyone talking
about these so called SMART goals?
That is goals that you need to do in
a certain way to achieve a certain
result, because this is how you do it.
And let us tell you how
it's going to be specific.
It's going to be measured.
Measurable is going to be actionable.
It's going to be realistic,
and it's gonna be timely.
And if you set your goal up this
way, there will be parades and
gumdrops will be thrown at you.
Cherry blossoms will be blooming.
The wind will be sh, the wind will be
blowing and the sun will be shining.
Everything will be a great day
because you used smart goals.
Well, I've heard this so often, and
it's been coming up a lot in random
YouTube videos and random podcasts.
I just wanted to do a little
pushback because in a lot of
ways, smart goals are stupid.
And this is going to be a little
bit of a follow up from what I've
been thinking about with the whole
new year's resolutions and goals,
objective aspirations, your ambition,
your strategies and tactics, uh,
your trajectory and so forth.
And especially is going to continue
a little bit from the podcast I did
on Tuesday, which was about rigid
planning, throwing creative types off.
So if you've been listening, you
know, I feel that everybody's
a creative in a certain light.
Everybody's a creative in a certain way.
Everybody's building something.
They're taking something
from a form they do not want.
Or want to be better and they're improving
on it and making something more to
their liking, more to their expectation.
You're creating all the time.
You're creating a happy family,
you're creating a happy home,
you're creating a better body,
you're creating a better mentality.
You know, you're creating
a project at your job.
You're creating a, you know,
nicely landscaped lawn.
You're creating a tax reform.
Whatever you're doing, you're creating.
And the certain mindset of creativity
is necessary and is something that
I've studied for a while, something
I've lived in, made video games
professionally for 13 years, and worked
in this creative aspects all of my life.
So I'm just now starting to really
express and talk about some of
the things that I've, I've learned
and discussed with people on a
professional and, uh, and social levels.
So.
This whole creativity
thing in terms of goals.
Well, as we said before, a
goal is a stated objective.
Um, it's a very specific by nature.
A goal is specific.
It's usually something like, and
we're going to use the weight
loss example as something that.
It's a classic one that always
comes up and what a lot of people
are thinking about in the new year.
So we'll stick with it.
You know, you want to lose 20
pounds by a certain date, you
know, by, by March, let's say,
well, it was 20 pounds by March.
That's going to be your goal and goals
by their very nature are specific.
And that's fine.
Goals have their place.
They have their purpose.
Don't get me wrong there.
But somewhere along the way, we
got this idea that everything
should be a smart goal.
And if you, if you obviously went
against the idea of a smart goal,
then you weren't very smart.
You were probably, you know, that's
the, that's the connotation when
everybody, when people come up
with these types of statements.
Well, once again, let me, let me
just go over this really quickly.
Cause we're going to hit everyone
section by section and we're going
to go step by step with this.
Not going to go crazy in depth on it.
I have some things written up on, on the
topic, but suffice to say smart goals
don't work out for a lot of people.
And they may be part of the prevailing
reason why a lot of your goals.
In general, don't work out for you.
A lot of your resolutions may have
fallen short because you're probably
following a mindset of the smart
goals that have been pushed on you.
So once again, you got to keep
these in mind to be a smart goal.
It needs to be specific.
Sounds good.
Needs to be measurable.
Also sounds good.
Needs to be actionable and you'd
be able to take action on it.
Okay.
You need to be realistic
and you need to be timely.
That means it needs to be based
in time in some form or fashion.
It needs to have a schedule.
It needs to be, um, have a deadline or so
on, but it's not always the best for you.
And I'm going to go over the why,
um, and I'll quickly replay the.
The, the thing that happened to me Tuesday
or the thing I talked about on Tuesday,
basically, I was working a project,
corporate project, and we want to
make sure everything was smart.
So we set out, broke out Microsoft
project, started planning with Gantt
charts and, you know, Excel sheets,
making sure everything was ordered.
The budget was out properly.
It was, it was very detailed.
Everybody was going to
know what they were doing.
We were able to track progress.
Everything that we were supposed
to do, we'd be able to accomplish.
We knew how to attack certain issues, and
we knew the milestones we wanted to make.
Everything was very realistic.
It made sense.
And of course, we had deadlines,
and everything was timed out, and
it seemed like it would all work.
But if you've ever worked in
video games, you know that nothing
ever goes according to plan.
And as the great philosopher Mike
Tyson said, Everybody has a plan
until they get punched in the mouth.
If all that sounds interesting to you,
I encourage you to check out the podcast
from two days previous, uh, about
planning and setting rigid, rigid plans.
Let's get back to SMART goals.
So what's so wrong?
Obviously a lot of you're
going to jump up, Hey, what's
wrong with being very specific?
It's good to be specific in your goals.
Good to be specific and know exactly what
you want to do and where you want to go.
Um, well, first of all, before I get
into exactly what I mean by specific,
I should state that the reason a lot of
this is a problem is because it's coming
from a corporate supervision mandate.
You'd have a
lot of the average person's dealings
with their professional growth
and their personal development.
Or their self improvement.
It just got taken or morphed from the
corporate mindset and they say, Hey, if
it works for a corporation, it can work
for you, but that's not exactly true.
That's outstanding with the goal.
After we worked out this, this big
detailed plan at work, one of the big
dog managers came in and basically
balled the plan up and said, all right,
that all sounds well and good, but
what are you going to do right now?
Blew my mind.
It's like, oh, okay, you're right.
I got all this stuff planned out and uh,
it doesn't necessarily relate to reality.
The boots on the ground situation
is wildly different than whatever
somebody else has sitting in
some conference room somewhere.
So the first thing I want to just attack
or jump on right quick is the idea
that something needs to be specific.
So a lot of times they'll tell
you, you need a specific goal.
It has to be very well defined in
terms of what you're going to do, how
you're going to get there, what it's
all going to look like in the end.
And this is a good visualization
practice at best, because you
want to, you don't want to just
go around kind of lost roaming.
If you, if you say, yes, I'm trying to
get to that mountain over there, getting
a plan together is probably a good idea.
Okay.
Yeah, we're gonna get in the car.
We're gonna get dressed.
Um, we're going to make
sure we have enough gas.
We're going to stop by
pick up some snacks.
We're gonna start on the drive.
We've used our GPS.
We know how long it's
going to take to get there.
We know the exact route.
That's fine.
Specific is good, to a certain
degree, because at some point
things are going to come up.
Things are going to Arise where
it's like, well, you know what?
I tried to get up at this time of
the day But when I checked the GPS
it said it would take three hours.
Now It looks like it's gonna take
five hours because of traffic.
Oh, man.
I didn't account for traffic.
Right, right, right.
Okay, so now you're driving and
you got to get off the road because
there's Too much traffic and you're
going to have to take a detour.
Somebody needs to reprogram the GPS.
Oh crap.
Now our phone, our phone needs a charger.
We don't have one in the car.
We're going to have to stop at a Best Buy.
Oh crap.
And all your plans start to go awry.
But if you're listening to a lot
of the corporate logic, it says
stick with the plan as much as
you, you know, stick with the plan.
Follow the script, run the play.
But when you've got big goals, the
bigger your goal starts to get, the
more unclear things start to look.
And maybe you don't need things
as specific as a corporate
supervision mandate would tell
you, because that's for them.
If they can mark down on a spreadsheet
or sheet of paper that yes, this person,
this group, this team, this workforce.
Was able to reach this goal at
a certain time, then everything
seems like it's in order.
But in reality, even from the corporate
side of things, what happens is that
supervision turns into management
where you need to manage every
little aspect of what's going on to
see if we can get back on course.
It's something I call clipboarding, where
you're walking around with a clipboard,
checking the status of everything,
making adjustments here and there.
But if you're one person and
you're trying to follow things very
specifically, this can be very draining.
This could be very frustrating.
infuriating in many situations
where it's like, well, I thought it
was supposed to work out this way.
And they told me that if I just did
this and now I have to wait till Monday
before I can talk to my mentor again and
find out what I should do differently.
And you know what?
This whole plan, I thought
it was going to work.
It's not working for me.
I've got headaches.
I'm my sleep schedules all messed up.
I thought I was going to
lose 20 pounds by March.
Screw it.
I'm not doing it.
I give up.
I quit.
And next thing you know,
you're waiting until 20, 025.
2025 to get to your next goal.
It's always this process of trying and
messing up and then getting discouraged.
What I want to do is encourage you
to move away so much from this rigid
specificity of a plan of a goal and start
to work more towards a trajectory where
you have this idea where you want to go
individually in the very short steps.
You know, you keep your big idea,
your big trajectory, your big goal,
your big destination, that's fine.
But along the way, your individual
path, make sure those are specific.
The small, short, individual
steps along the way.
And you keep updating them.
And if you write, if you write your
things down in like a notebook or
a planner or a guidebook that some
people use, Or a travel journal or a
work journal, you should see plenty
of changes, updates, things scratched
out, things inserted, things redacted,
to dos thrown in on the margins.
You should see a lot of scribbles.
There should be a lot of change.
It should be a relatively messy process.
If you are an individual trying to move
quickly throughout your life, you will
know that a lot of little things come up
and will cause wrinkles in the system.
That you need to deal with.
So that's debunking the first
one being very, very specific.
If you're dealing in a, in a situation
that is more execution based than
creative, then yes, you may want to
really start nailing down the specifics.
And, you know, over time you build
up this process that always works.
That's fine.
And that is part of the creative
process, that iterative improvement,
that iterative learning.
But on an individual sense,
if you're trying to create
something, you go with what works.
At the moment, that's going
to get you to that next step.
That'll get you to the next
step after that and let go of
the specificity a little bit.
You know, maybe you were supposed to have
breakfast at a certain time with somebody,
but it's like, Hey, you know what?
Send them a text and say, Hey, listen,
can you make it there a half hour earlier?
Can we have breakfast a half hour earlier?
I'm trying to get X, Y, and Z done.
And they're like, well, I had
plans and it was very specific,
but I can change them up.
Cool.
Boom.
Both of you have breakfast
a half hour earlier.
You just made an adjustment.
So point is don't get stuck with the whole
specific thing because that's stupid.
Next we'll jump on.
We'll go to being measurable.
The problem with a lot of
things being measurable is
you don't know what to measure.
You don't often know what the
measurement means, and you don't often
understand the quality of the metrics.
Until long afterwards, or until you've
been doing it a few times at any really
small valuation measurements are,
they can be tricky.
Say, for example, you've got a penny
stock, you know, just, um, well,
we'll stick with the weight loss.
And, you know, once you, you know,
you start going to the gym and the
very first day you start to measure
your progress and it's like, cool.
I went to the gym, marked
off one day on the calendar.
I ended up sweating.
My heart rate got up to,
you know, whatever beats per
minute, 160 beats per minute.
Cool.
I'm good.
I measured that, wrote it down.
Then you do that the next day.
And the day after that, you may
notice that you start to gain weight.
It's like, Oh wait, I gained weight.
How did that happen?
Okay.
Well, I thought I was getting better.
I'm only, I'm only two weeks into
this, but it seems I've gained weight.
How'd that happen?
Or maybe you go to the gym more
and You don't sweat as much.
So you're, you're noticing
how much you sweat.
You're trying to measure that.
And it's like, well, wait a minute.
I'm not sweating as much.
What happened?
Was it something I ate?
Was it, well, hold on.
My, my heart rate is not as consistent as.
You start looking at all these numbers
and all these facts, and at any small
enough scale, for any appreciably small
scale, the numbers don't mean that much.
Numbers start to really mean something
when you're looking long term.
I was having this discussion with
somebody about this on their podcast.
We were looking at podcast
numbers and they're like, well,
our podcast numbers doubled.
I'm like, oh, okay, really?
From what to what?
And I was like, well, from
10 viewers to 20 viewers.
And it's like, Oh, that could
have been a total fluke.
I mean, you might want to look at it,
but you're only dealing with 10 viewers.
What do you know?
What do you actually know?
You may have just caught
somebody at the right time.
You may have said something about
football in the headline, and it
just happened to be the day before
a football game everybody was going
to watch, but you had no clue.
You may have been talking
about American football where
they're talking about soccer.
So the measurements can
throw us off a lot of times.
They're definitely good to have, but
don't get in the trap of Only going
by the numbers, or getting lost in
numbers that don't necessarily or
don't fundamentally mean a lot to you.
Is it better to say that, yes,
you had, you know, you're trying
to lose your 20 pounds by March
and you ate X number of calories?
Uh, that may be good, but what
you could do is just look in the
refrigerator and decide to stop
eating cheesecake on Friday.
You know, say every Friday
you ate an entire cheesecake.
You know what?
Eat half the cheesecake, give
the other half to your neighbor.
And of course, counting calories will
help with that, but as I said, when
you're working on an individual on a
small scale, a lot of these really,
really specific numerical trackings don't
help as much as you would like, and a
lot of times they actually hinder you.
Because the whole process of keeping track
of a lot of numbers becomes difficult.
And it becomes confusing because
you're not sure of what's
affecting those numbers exactly.
Now, if you're working at a high level,
if you're working at a professional
level, you know, your, your personal
trainers are, they're, they're very
apt to break out the, the charts
and calorie counters and all that.
Because, hey, you know, they've,
they've gone through some, some serious
work, and they may try to be, they
may be trying to get rid of that last
10 percent of their own body fat.
You know, bodybuilder status, professional
gym rats, people who are, are models.
They're working on a very
specific, hardcore measurable goal.
That's at a high level once again, but
for your average Joe trying to work
something out, you know, it's just
like, Hey, I'm trying to, I'm trying
to get a little better with this.
It's like, you know what you
may want to measure, but instead
of measuring, how about this?
Instead of measuring so exactly,
how about tracking, and just
watching what's going on.
What feels a little better to you,
and what feels a little worse to you?
Does calorie tracking feel great,
or does Hey, you know what?
If I go to McDonald's,
I only go on Saturdays.
You put a little friction on it.
Maybe let's say, you know what?
I never go to any McDonald's
except for the one on fifth
Avenue, fifth Avenue McDonald's.
That's the only one I go to.
And if you're far away from
that McDonald's, let's say
you put in that little bit of
friction and you don't go there.
That's easier to handle and easier to
measure than, you know, trying to count
calories, trying to make sure that,
you know, every penny is accounted for.
And as I said, if you've got, if you've
got money for like a personal trainer
or personal finance kind of, Um, a
lifestyle coach or, you know, a guru
or mentor or whatever, that may make
more sense, but a lot of times for
these individuals trying to go achieve
their, their humble yet powerful goals.
You don't want to always get
caught up in the measurement trap.
In fact, I would only suggest that
you really start measuring after
you have gotten up a sufficient
number of reps, your outputs
there, you're really into the zone.
You're working things out because if
you start from the numbers right off
the bat, you may be measuring the
wrong thing and you're probably getting
caught in the specificity trap as
well as the measurement trap as well.
So just start a lot of times
you're still in this figuring out
phase and we're still in January.
I was just looking at my, My resolutions,
which I never really mentioned out loud,
but I was looking at my resolutions
and realized that, you know what?
I started on this path and now
I need to change it already.
I need to do a little clipboarding.
I need to adjust, adjust my trajectory.
I need to change text just a little bit.
And the reason I have to do
huge amounts of things that
need to be put in a spreadsheet.
Now, I'm the kind of number crunching
head that actually does put some
things in a spreadsheet, but that
was after doing it for six months.
I was like, okay, I'm really starting
to get a handle on this thing.
Let me start putting it into a
spreadsheet and tracking it like that.
And even then, once you get a
handle on it and you've tracked the
spreadsheet, sometimes you can let go
of the numbers a little bit and just
go a little more off of intuition.
If things don't seem like they're
going in the right direction, maybe
you need to pull the numbers back out.
But don't get too caught in the numbers.
The number sauce is a, is an evil trap.
Hard to, hard to follow along with.
Shout out to Margaret Crone, b.
1276 and homegirl Liberty
Madison for checking this out.
Always appreciate people
coming through on Instagram.
Threads, Facebook and YouTube.
It's always a good time.
All right.
The third thing they
always ask you to check out, they
always ask you to look into is, is
your goal, is your resolution, is
what you're trying to do actionable?
Can you actually take action on it?
Is it something you can
realistically put into action?
I hesitated with realistic
cause that's the next one, but
is it something you can act on?
So someone says, you know, I
want to lose 20 pounds by March.
That's usually pretty actionable.
I mean, there are things you
can do, eat less, exercise more,
change what you eat, change how
you eat, change who you eat with.
These are actionable things.
The important part here is to
make sure that you're figuring
out what works for you.
Once again, if you're coming from a
corporate mindset or a supervisor mindset,
where the SMART goals came from, you're
likely going to be looking at actionable
in the sense that they can track it
and they can be very specific with it.
But actionable for you is going to
mean something very different than
what it means to people on the outside.
Actionable comes into the a comes in
two parts, actionable and accountable,
but we'll get to that later.
So when you say something's
actionable, if you've got a.
If you've got a meeting that always
occurs and every time in this meeting,
people bring food or they cater food
in, if you're expected to eat their
food, otherwise be shunned or look that
funny, and this actually happened to
me at a job, then you've got a problem.
You're trying to work on your, I
was at one job and I'm trying to
work on, you know, what I'm eating
and how, how I'm eating everything.
And they kept on catering in
nonsense that I didn't want.
It was always pizza.
There's always these, you know, big greasy
sandwiches, burgers from in and out.
Sometimes they would get stuff from
Carl Strauss, you know, call themselves
high end and it'd be these fried potato
wedges, you know, with pasta and greasy
marinara sauce, and it was just always a.
And as you're getting all this
stuff, you think, how actionable
is it for me to act on what I need?
At some point, I tried to actually
not partake in the food and that
got me, that got negative pushbacks.
Like, Hey, you're not eating.
Why aren't you eating?
What's wrong with him?
And they kept on at it.
It's like, geez, man, I just.
And then of course they
cater in the salads, but the
salads were never very good.
It's like, so what do you have to do?
You have, I have to
suffer and eat this salad.
That's not very good.
Or if they order pizza, I just have to sit
down and eat one slice of cheese pizza,
which I really didn't want at the time.
If I'm going to eat pizza, man, I
want to get down and I want to get
down and eat pizza, eat pizza, drink
beer, sit on the couch, get fat.
That's what I, when I eat
pizza, that's how I want it.
So I started looking like a jerk because
I would start bringing in my own food,
have my own little drink, my own little.
My own little dinner, lunch, whatever,
whatever time they're catering.
Sometimes we got breakfast catered in too.
It's a thing,
but me bringing in my own food
seemed like a slap in the face
to the rest of the company.
I wasn't sitting around getting fat
and sluggish like everybody else, or at
least I was trying to fight against it.
And that is seen as a subtle
attack on the way things were.
So was my plan very actionable?
This is actually something you have
to question is what I'm trying to do.
Oftentimes they say it is.
It's going to be difficult for you.
So yeah, um, one of these goals
is always one of the parts of the
smart goals is always making sure
something's actionable or not.
A lot of times you really don't have a
lot of choice in the matter, especially
when you're an individual in a big,
in a big system that's moving along
a certain way, is it actionable?
Well, Hey, just write down here.
The specifics here are, here's the
things that we're going to measure.
Is it actionable and actionable also
means, can you take action on it?
All of the time.
Can you keep doing it if you're working
towards any type of goal or trajectory
or end result, whether something
is actionable or not, is going to
be whether it's repeatable or not.
Can you take action on this
repeatedly in in many situations?
Can you repeat this process?
And as I said, you know,
you're an individual.
Let's say you're trying to go to the
gym all the time, and you know what?
God dog it.
I got to take such and such to daycare.
I got to go pick up this or wait.
Things are busy I'm not even
gonna have the car on this day
How am I gonna get to the gym?
And suddenly this rigid idea of being
actionable has to change So maybe
it's not going to the gym every week
Maybe your action starts to loosen up
a little bit and it starts to become
a little less specific I will, I will
move my body three times a week to
the point where I start sweating.
And maybe that's not even reasonable.
Maybe that's not even actionable
because you're at work and you're at
home and it just seems goofy to you.
There's no place inside the house and
maybe outside it's raining or snowing.
It gets hard to be actionable all the time
when there isn't a big system behind you.
So actionable is actually very difficult
in reality, but you should always
try to take some sort of action.
I want you to make sure you're
seeing the difference there.
Always make sure you're trying to take
some sort of action, but when you write
out your plan, you should understand
that it's not always going to be an
actionable action that you can take.
In the way you thought you would take it.
You're going to have to get creative.
You're going to have to
get a little flexible.
You may have to skip one week
and double up the next week.
You may have to try different things out.
You may have to call up, call upon other
people or other resources to get things.
Working the way that you, that you
feel are in the proper action sphere.
I don't even know what
an action sphere is.
Your, your, your probable way
of getting things done is not
going to be that probable.
You're going to have to change it up until
the rest of your workflow and the rest of
your life starts to adjust to accommodate.
You probably aren't going to be
very routine with your actions.
I'm being very routine with this
podcast right now, but this isn't
the first time I've tried this.
It took a lot of effort.
It took a lot of building towards
this, getting this whole process,
this idea, this mind flow set up.
So now I can definitely
obviously take action on it.
But I couldn't do that before.
I had to try different things out.
I had to jump from a podcast, to a live
stream, to a blog, and people are looking
at me and saying, Hey, I thought you
were trying to take action on your goals.
It's like, listen, I know, I'm doing
activities, I'm taking actions,
but I'm still figuring this out.
Step back a second, or jump in
and help me figure this out.
But I didn't know what
actionable was all the time.
So, actionable, I would rephrase
that to be sure you're taking
some type of action to learn from
the real world what's happening.
That'll help your goals be a
little smarter than the stupid
smart goals they mentioned.
I
probably should have just started
out by defining stupidity, but I'll
leave that to the end, I suppose.
So along with actionable, I
want to throw in another one.
Um, actionable should actually
be changed to accountability.
You want your goals to have some type of
accountability if you're an individual.
Or a small group, because what can
easily happen is no one takes account
of what the little guy is doing
or what you're doing individually.
If you don't go to the gym,
eh, who's going to care?
Who's going to, who's going
to hold you accountable.
You need to have some system or
process in place to make sure
that you account for yourself.
You know, some people like doing
things like, well, if I ever missed
going to the gym, I pay somebody, um,
I pay somebody extra money and some
people do that with subscriptions,
it's like, well, I paid for it.
Now I have to use it.
And that's enough to keep them
accountable and to other people that
just becomes a waste of money, but
you need to find whatever goes on with
you to keep you accountable and no one
brings up the accountability side of
things they want to use deadlines, which
is the timely portion of this, which
I'll discuss later as accountability.
But once again, this is
coming from a corporate.
Mindset and that assumes
accountability is in place, but
you can't have that assumption.
You have to bring
accountability in yourself.
So rather than worrying about the action
you'll take, because the action might
change, think about the accountability.
What are you going to do to make
sure that you're accountable?
How are you going to hold yourself to it?
Maybe you have a friend, an accountability
partner, somebody that you work with
or that you keep tabs on that both
of you interact with each other and
you keep each other on your toes.
So you have accountability there.
Maybe you have a deadline.
Maybe you're accountable to
your, your phone notifications
when the reminders come up.
Maybe you're accountable to
your children or your family or
your wife or your, your parents.
Something holds you accountable.
Let's say you, you cancel your,
your mother's Grubhub subscription
and say, you know what?
I'm going to spend more
time with my mother.
I'm going to bring her food or
make sure she gets food every week.
I'm going to be the person
who brings over food on the
weekends and talks to my mother.
I'm canceling her Grubhub account, save
money, and gives me more quality time.
Maybe that's something that you
do to keep yourself accountable.
Because the corporation isn't around
to always do it for you, and if you're
thinking of a SMART goal and applying it
to yourself personally, you're going to
need to work more on accountability than
trying to figure out an exact action.
Let's head to R.
Is it realistic?
We
don't want to fail.
Why doesn't the corporation want to fail?
Because that'll look bad on the
quarterly report, that'll look bad on
the budget sheet, that'll look bad to
the stockholders, and everybody starts
to get all upset and up in arms that you
didn't hit your projections, you didn't
reach your defined goals, and everybody
starts to get very upset when corporations
Don't hit their mark, but you're you.
So you can be unrealistic.
In fact, being unrealistic may give
you that energy, that drive to do
something that you haven't tried before.
In fact, this is what they mean
when they talk about big 10 X goals.
They don't actually expect you as
an individual to hit your goals.
You can undershoot your goals
and still make it very far.
The whole process of coming up
with a big goal means you have
to come out of your comfort zone.
You have to come out of your area of
expertise and start learning something
new, extending yourself and letting go of
things that were holding you back before.
There's a lot of research that has gone
into this and it works especially well for
people who are individuals trying to work
out a goal or an objective or trajectory.
They have big ambitions.
You sit there and say, Hey, I'm
going to be, I'm going to be
president of the United States.
Maybe you don't make it to presidency.
Maybe you make it to.
You know, a world class, uh, senator
or ambassador or something like that.
And you know what?
That worked out better for you anyway,
because you like to travel, you're
an ambassador now, and you're not
bothered by all these people that were
bothering you, that would have bothered
you if you were the president, but
hey, set your, set your goals high.
You've heard that before.
That's one that I really rock with.
If people try to say, Hey,
let's set a smart goal.
And you said something unrealistic.
They're going to go, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.
We're trying to make a smart goal.
Is this realistic?
Can you do this?
It's like, look, man,
you know, it's realistic.
My drive is realistic.
My intensity is realistic.
I don't care if I can be the champion
or if I don't care, if I can't lose that
much weight, I'm going to work towards it.
I'm going to do what it would take.
Will I fail?
Probably.
But failure doesn't mean losing to me.
Failure doesn't mean being a loser.
Failing is frequently
attempting iterative learning.
Uh.
Write that one down, kids.
I'll come back to that one later,
but you don't need to be realistic.
When I was young, I actually
told myself, yeah, I'm going to
work in the video game industry.
Nobody around me had any clue
of how that was going to happen.
Nobody even knew about programming,
but I kept on talking it and living
it enough in this unrealistic fashion
that it started to become real.
My mother ended up getting me
a computer from a garage sale.
She was like, Hey, I found
this computer at a garage sale.
You he's been talking about
computers and I don't know
exactly why she got it for me.
I can, I can speculate, you know, that
she wanted to provide an outlet for me.
Maybe she wanted to keep me at home.
Cause I was at the computer
lab at school until late hours.
Maybe she wanted to have me at
home a little more, but she got
me a Commodore Vic 20 old ass
computer from a garage sale.
I started learning how
to program on that guy.
It was unrealistic, but I was like,
I'm going to make the best video
game ever on this Commodore Vic 20.
People were laughing at me.
They were like, dude, things
got a cassette tape for a drive.
Are you kidding me?
How are you going to, what
are you talking about?
You're crazy.
I was like, nope, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to make this awesome game.
It's going to be on the Commodore VIC 20.
Later on that got updated to a, a
386 computer, started programming in
Quick Basic, QBasic, it was badass.
I was doing great things.
Then a friend saw me program, my
brother, my older brother's friend
who was into computers, Clay Gerrard,
shout out to Clay Gerrard, shout
out to my big brother, Mallory.
They saw me programming on
this computer and they started
talking about it, and guess what?
They brought me software.
They were like, hey listen,
I have these copies of these
programming languages, Pascal and C.
You might want to get into that.
I was like, bam, this is
going to be excellent.
All of this came from an unrealistic goal.
The energy, the intensity, the flow,
the direction, the cycles, the movement,
the momentum towards that unrealistic
goal, as an individual, did far more for
me than trying to set a realistic goal.
Realistic goals should
be thrown out the window.
Screw your realistic goals
if you're an individual.
Make it mean something.
Don't just pluck an, Ah, here's the thing.
Back to being specific.
If you're trying to be not unrealistic,
don't just pull a number out of the sky.
Anybody can pull a number.
A million, two million.
I want to lose 300 pounds.
I want to, you know, that type of
pulling a specific measurable number
that you're going to, that you're
going to try to take action on.
Good luck with that.
But if you pick something
unrealistic, That kind of clouds
all of those other smart goals.
If you can't, if you pulled this
unrealistic option out of the
air, not a number, an option.
So if you say to yourself, guess what?
I'm going to, I'm going to
place in this, I'm going to
place in this, um, in this race.
It's like, Oh really?
You've never run a day in your life.
You're overweight.
You eat like crap and you say you're
going to place in this marathon says who?
And you start being
unrealistic with yourself.
And then you'll notice that along
the way, all of the specifics
start to work themselves out.
All the measurements start
to work themselves out.
All the actions you're going to
take start to work themselves out.
And you're not being realistic.
But nevertheless, you
start making it that way.
If you don't believe this is
true, uh, listen to David Goggins.
If David Goggins is a little too
extreme for you, hey, um, as I said, my
example with the video game industry.
Nobody knew how that was gonna happen.
Some ra I'm I'm a random kid from Florida
reading Nintendo Power Magazine and
hanging out in arcades, trying to figure
out how to become a video game developer.
In fact, I even started mailing Nintendo,
asking them help on becoming a video game
developer and how I could make games.
I started sending them
game ideas randomly.
And one day, after just sending them mail
and messages, they sent me back a letter.
This was one of the most Gosh,
I wish I still had that letter
today, but Nintendo sent me back
a letter saying hey We appreciate
you and your support of Nintendo.
We think you're gonna do great in the
future We hope you the best we wish
you well, and they didn't that Nintendo
doesn't You know, they weren't going
to say, Hey, you know, you're going
to work for us one day, but they kept
it very light and open and supportive.
I was so happy to get this as a child.
I flipped the hell out.
Was it realistic to think that they're
just going to take some random kid
in middle school and cart him up to
one of their game development look?
No, it wasn't realistic.
But that letter that they returned
to me was so nice and gracious.
That set me on a path of awesomeness.
It wasn't even realistic to
think that it could happen.
And you shouldn't, as an individual
with big goals, realism should
be thrown out of the window.
Get rid of that.
Don't be smart with your goals.
Don't be realistic.
Make them a little big.
And as I said, try not to pull a
measurable number out of the sky.
Just think of that, that big dream
that you have and work towards it.
Y'all know what I'm talking about.
Shout out to everybody on Facebook,
YouTube, Instagram, trying this multi
live stream thing, going over smart
goals, because as far as individuals
are concerned, smart goals are stupid.
Let's see.
Oh, we're already 46
minutes in making good time.
As I said, I'm going to keep these
to about an hour all the time.
As always, if you have any comments or
questions, you can check the post later
on, on the blog, creativitythreadslife.
com.
It's all archived there, you can
subscribe on Apple or whatever.
Anyway, let me keep going
with this final one.
Keep it timely.
This is another corporate
push on SMART goals.
Keeping something timely.
That makes sense, once again,
for the corporation, for the
supervisor, for the project
manager, more so for the supervisor.
Because the supervisor comes in,
and they've got their clipboard and
their spreadsheet, and they're just
marking off, okay, did we hit this?
Is this there?
Is this in place?
Is this in order?
They don't want to see any
red marks on the spreadsheet.
They're just looking to make
sure everything's on time.
And if something looks like it's
under time or, you know, taking
something's taking too much time or
you're way ahead of schedule for some
reason, they've got to look into that.
But you don't necessarily
have to, you're an individual.
You're trying to take this smart
goal concept and apply it to you.
Like, well, in three weeks I
should have this in four weeks.
I should have that in five weeks.
And okay, that starts to make
sense more and more as you become
more of a personal corporation,
but you don't have to put these.
regimented, rigid constraints on
time as they would have you do.
We said previously, if you have
a deadline as a corporation,
then there are repercussions.
But if you have a deadline for
yourself, lose 20 pounds by March,
what happens if you hit April
and you haven't lost 20 pounds?
Does anybody care?
No, you just missed the deadline.
You just missed the number.
No one cares.
I mean, you may tell yourself, and
you may beat yourself up over the
fact that you missed your deadline,
but what does that actually mean?
Doesn't mean it doesn't
mean as much for you.
What matters in terms of timeliness
is, is your time being spent?
Well, not a debt, not worrying about
a deadline, not worrying about solving
someone's corporate spreadsheet
problem, but are you spending your time?
Well on the back end?
You can track your time.
Like after the fact, like after you've
been working out three, three months,
or after you've been working out at
the gym three times a week, four times
a week, five times a week, if you
bet after you can say, you know what?
That was time well spent.
I seem to be going at a, at a nice pace.
Maybe I should speed this up
or maybe I should slow it down.
But once again, this
compounds on the other ones.
If I'm being, if I'm not being
realistic with myself and just pushing
myself to go for a big impossible,
kind of out of my own league of
understanding type of unrealistic goal.
If I don't know the actions I'm going
to take, if I'm being a little loose
with the measurements, I just want to
see progress, not necessarily being
a stickler for the measurements.
And if I'm not being as specific
as a corporation would have me
be, because I want to be very
customized to my own experience.
Then what does a deadline even mean?
What does a time crunch even mean?
If you're thinking about it personally.
One day I will set a date
for this, for this podcast.
One day I will set like a specific
time, but right now I'm just
showing up because I don't know yet.
I don't know.
Maybe five a week is too many.
Maybe I'm not supposed to have all these
podcasts recorded at a certain time.
A certain day.
It's going to get better.
It's going to adjust.
Maybe I need to do it in the morning.
Maybe I need to do it at night.
I don't know.
Because I'm an individual and most
individuals with these types of goals,
timeliness, take it or leave it.
It doesn't matter as much as you think.
If you're hearing me out there,
let me know what you think.
By the way, this started out as an
Instagram thing and I started, I actually
tried to at one point, um, back before,
back before it became the podcast version
it is now, I actually, actually was
timing this very, very specifically.
Like I would show up at
this exact time and I would.
Record for exactly this length of time.
And it was fine.
Schedules are great.
I mean, there's schedules
aren't bad, but they shouldn't
hold you back from your goals.
And I think that's where a lot of
people get tripped up where, you know,
Hey, um, and in fact, with timeliness,
that goes back to accountability.
As I said before, if you miss
church, then you can go next weekend.
Nobody really cares.
If you miss the, if you miss the 9am
service, there's always the 11am service.
If you can't make it to Sunday
service, you can go to Friday service.
A lot of churches right now are making
a lot of headway by going online.
So if you can't make it in
person, maybe you can go online.
The deadline just is different and
the deadline's often external, right?
This is this false
sense of accountability.
If it's personal, if you're dealing
with like the bus schedule or
whatever, obviously you have to
be on time and you have to start
building, factoring that into account.
But when it's just you or
you're just trying to build
something out for yourself, or
you're in the very early stages.
Yeah, don't worry about timeliness.
Speaking of timeliness, I actually did say
that I would try to keep these to an hour.
Uh, we can always go
longer, we can go shorter.
I have the flexibility and I'm going
to keep it around an hour right now.
So yes, you don't have to be specific,
you don't have to be measurable,
you don't have to be actionable.
You should be accountable, which
they don't really talk about enough.
You don't have to be realistic
and you don't have to be timely.
This is why I think
smart goals are stupid.
Stupid for a lot of average Joes.
You can go a whole year of trying
to do smart goals and realizing that
what you did was kind of stupid.
Now, what do I mean by stupid?
I'm not calling you a stupid person.
I'm not calling you dumb, not
saying you're an ignoramus.
What is, what does stupid actually mean?
I should, I should go
over that very quickly.
When you're doing something stupid,
you're making intentionally bad decisions,
given the information that's available
or the information that's accessible.
If you run across the street without
looking for cars, that was stupid.
Especially if you know a lot
of cars go through the area.
Why was it stupid?
Because you could have very easily looked.
And you know that you should look.
And you know that cars come by.
If you get in a car and you're inebriated,
you're making a stupid decision.
Because you might be driving
perfectly safe, but then
You know, somebody else isn't
driving safe and you're too slow.
You're too inebriated to respond properly.
You know, I'm going to drive five
miles an hour all the way home.
See how that works out.
That was stupid.
A lot of people do a lot of stupid things.
Now there's calculated risk,
obviously what you do, but
you don't want to be stupid.
You don't want to intentionally
do something when you know
there are better choices.
Based on the information you have, if
you're trying something out and you
don't know what the result might be,
you're experimenting, that's fine.
Experiment away, go ahead, try
things out that you don't understand.
Uh, spend money that may
completely go to waste.
If you're just trying
to figure something out.
If you don't know what's going to happen
and you want to learn, that's fine.
Trying stuff out.
Isn't stupid, but acting in such a way
where you're making intentionally bad
decisions, given the information that's
available or accessible, that's stupid.
So that's what I mean when I
say smart goals are stupid.
You're intentionally doing things in
ways that you know, it won't work for
you, but you heard somebody else say it,
or you heard some corporations say it.
And if you're any, if you're like
most of the people who have given
up on resolutions, you've tried
smart goals or something like it
many, many years at a time, many
years, many months, many iterations.
That's going to be it for this one.
Thanks everybody for joining.
Um, a lot of crazy things going
on in the world right now.
I'm just trying to keep on
pushing with this podcast.
I really like it.
I really like the way it feels.
Uh, creativity is my My superpower,
I'm always able to do something
creative in any situation.
Uh, I was just talking with my man Theo
from the show versus business podcast.
We're watching changes
happening in social media.
We're watching, um, changes happen
in big changes in the world.
I mean, there's a general
attitude going on out there.
That's just, it's just kind of weird.
I was talking to, talking to
people on threads, uh, Meeks,
Derek, the podcast player,
and yeah, it's, it's a
weird state we're in.
In fact, I'm going to, uh, going
to threads right now, seeing, um,
what people are talking about.
Shout out to JustShanti, BirdGas,
LightOfTheGame, MeeksDerek,
AngelicaWhetstone, Vikenty47.
Making good things happen
on threads, that's always a
place where you can find me.
Of course, I have my email
newsletter out there as well.
And let's see what else is going on.
I decided, by the way, I'm doing
this guy side to put the news
and the banter talk at the end.
I want to front load all the
information at the front and then
just talk nonsense at the end.
What are we dealing with?
AI is a big thing.
So if you want to talk about AI, I've got
a lot of thoughts on that and creativity.
By the way, right now I've been,
I've been focusing a lot of my energy
on, on this whole resolutions thing.
I think I have some material that I
want to bring out about resolutions.
So I'm going to have for you this year,
but yeah, it's a.
It's all, it's all kind of crazy
and changing, but anyway, I'm going
to wrap it up for this one, start
figuring out with more specificity.
Uh, and yeah, I'm going to try
to figure out what I'm going to
do at the end of the podcast.
Um, if you've got any of you have got
messages, we'll probably start up a
reader mail section where I read people's
emails or read people's information.
Um, I want to integrate maybe.
I want to integrate threads and the
email list a little more into this.
So I'll do that as well.
But yeah, trying stuff out, man.
That's what 2024 is about.
Maybe that's um, maybe
that's something big.
Getting that community a little stronger.
Check out Creativity Threads
Life, by the way, and com and
the Creative Study Lounge.
That's where the community and
some of the merch is gonna be at.
Anyway, that's it for this one.
I'm just off and rambling now.
Be sure to check me out, follow
on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or
Google Podcasts or whatever Google
Podcasts has become at this point.
And I will get with you
at some other point.
Peace, and I will see you On some other
weekday i'm not gonna even schedule
this just gonna show up on some weekday