Essay
Do Your Goals Deserve You?
When Doing More Achieves Less
We live in a culture obsessed with optimization, productivity hacks, and doing things faster. Yet we rarely pause to examine whether we're racing toward destinations worth reaching.
The Hierarchy of Impact
To live better, we must understand the hierarchy of impact in our decision-making:
Level 1: Efficiency - Doing things well
Level 2: Alignment - Doing the right things
Level 3: Mission & Values - Doing the right things for the right reasons
Most people primarily operate at Level 1, obsessing over time management techniques and productivity.
Fewer reach Level 2, where they align their actions with meaningful outcomes.
But the truly transformative life happens at Level 3, where your deepest values and authentic purpose inform not just what you do, but why you do it. This is the realm of your Pillars and Guiding Principles.
You Can't Win a Race to Nowhere
When we reactively optimize for imaginary goals (e.g., status, productivity), untethered from our core meaning and purpose, we eventually realize we're running in place. There's no sense of progress, because there's no fundamental human value to be realized here. It's a psychological trap, our mind creates a fantasy finish line that perpetually reconstructs itself elsewhere as we strive to reach it.
But when we intentionally align our efforts with deeper aspirations (authentic contribution, meaningful relationships, personal growth) we demonstrate devotion to things that matter at our core. We feel genuine progress toward something worthwhile, and it empowers us to do more.
Consider the difference between someone who exercises solely to achieve a certain socially-prized body aesthetic versus someone who moves their body to be more capable and more alive. Both may get fit, but only one creates a sustainable relationship with health that enriches their whole life. The first chases a moving target that never satisfies, the second builds a foundation that supports everything else they care about.
A Framework for Goal Worthiness
Before optimizing any process, put your objective through this evaluation:
The Authenticity Test: Does this Goal emerge from your Pillars & Guiding Principles and line up with your stated Life Aspirations, or has it emerged from external expectations and societal pressures?
The Integration Test: Does this Goal harmonize with other important areas of your life, or does it require you to sacrifice relationships, health, or core values? Efficient pursuit of isolated goals often creates destructive trade-offs. Be conscious of these.
The Growth Test: Will achieving this Goal expand your capacity for contribution, connection, or personal development? Or is it merely maintenance disguised as progress?
Practical Implementation Strategies
Archaeological Work: Before optimizing anything, examine the origins of your current objectives. How many of your goals are inherited artifacts from younger versions of yourself or well-meaning others? Create space to regularly excavate and evaluate (perhaps in your Review Cycles).
Alignment Verification: Before optimizing any process or starting a significant undertaking, identify Goals or Aspirations it could serve. If you can't connect it to existing objectives, decide whether you should add new ones or question whether this process should be a part of your life. Often, this reveals that you're solving the wrong problem entirely.
Practice Strategic Inefficiency: Deliberately introduce inefficiency in service of better goals. Take the longer route that passes through nature. Choose the conversation over the email. Select the learning opportunity over the expedient solution. This isn't laziness, it's wisdom about what optimization truly serves.
Create Goal Ladders: For every efficiency you're tempted to implement, ask "In service of what?" repeatedly. If you want to wake up earlier, ask why. To exercise? Why exercise? To have energy? For what? This ladder often reveals that your surface goal isn't your true goal.
Connecting to Your Life Design
This principle forms the bedrock of intentional living and a deliberately designed life. Your Pillars (core values and sources of meaning) should determine which Goals deserve your efficient pursuit.
Your Pipelines (the systems and processes you work through to achieve objectives) should serve these worthy objectives, not just any objectives.
And your Vaults (the knowledge and resources you cultivate) should support both the identification of meaningful objectives and the efficient achievement of them.
The most profound shift occurs when you realize that choosing the right goals is itself a skill that requires development. We're often more thoughtful about choosing a restaurant than choosing our life's direction.
Perhaps the highest leverage skill you can cultivate is developing discernment about which goals deserve your efficiency.
In a world that celebrates busy, choose purposeful.
In a culture that worships fast, choose meaningful.
And when you do find goals worthy of your full engagement — then, and only then, unleash the full power of your efficiency in their service.