A Simple Resolution to Being Goal Oriented vs Value Oriented

Goal orientation and value orientation are 2 different ways to frame your life, and many people seem to be conflicted on which to choose. For good reason — as there’s obvious advantages to each orientation. I don’t really remember when/how I resolved this for myself, but I’d like to present a sensical unification of the two — values driven at the highest level, and goal driven for intermediate steps.

Being goal oriented is practical. Goals are concrete and achievable. Being goal oriented is effective (and optimal) for achieving things, for making things happen, for effectively affecting any change you wish to see in the world. But being goal oriented is the definition of the hedonic treadmill problem — where achievement of a goal is at best mediocrely satisfying, because you couldn’t fully appreciate the journey, and have long since moved the goalposts of your goal/success. And furthermore, goals are addictive — they tend to dominate our thoughts, and can easily become all consuming; they are to be dealt with carefully.

This is where the values oriented perspective comes in. Well thought out values are intrinsically valuable and infinitely pursuable; the pursuit of them is itself the goal, and they are never “achieved”. The problem is that they’re not very clearly actionable, so they don’t lend themselves very well to doing.

Resolution

Here’s my resolution: at the “meaning of life” level, you orient around values — as sources of happiness/meaning, to make major life decisions, etc. But in the medium term, you set goals that are steps in service of your values, and organize around them. Goals should be thought of as powerful tools that help you take meaningful action towards the things that really matter to you — your values (which can probably be captured in terms of Harvard’s flourishing measures).

The key thing to remember and constantly remind yourself is that your goals, which realistically consume the majority of your day to day and mindshare, exist in service of your values — they are intrinsically valueless except insofar as they help you pursue your values. We set goals that are maximally aligned with our values, but it is impossible for them to match perfectly.

To spend quality time with close friends/family you might set a goal of planning a weekend away. If, during the weekend, things don’t go according to plan, it’s important to remember that the point is the quality time, not the “goal” of the plan.

To pursue the value of health, you might set a goal of running a marathon, which motivates you to set a running regimen that improves your cardiovascular health. If something happens at the last minute and you can’t participate in the marathon, you have to remember that the point was to run and improve your health, not the “goal” of running the actual event.

To pursue values of self betterment, altruism, and financial security, you might set a goal of delivering some result at work and getting a promotion. However, if one or both of those things doesn’t work out, you should keep in mind that the result and the promotion were just goals in service of your higher callings. If you made progress towards your values, that’s all that should matter to you.

Hopefully this discourse illustrates the proper interplay between being goal oriented and value oriented. We should live according to our values, but deploy goals strategically, intentionally, and carefully to help us make progress against those infinitely pursuable values.