Goals & Performance

Goals drive our businesses. Goals drive our personal lives. And goals are driving us crazy!

Our society has been brainwashed into thinking that goals are the key to success. The reality is, they stifle imagination, squelch passion, and hinder true prosperity. Our “Goal-Free Living” philosophy will enable you to realize your full extraordinary human potential and begin living a more successful personal and professional life.

The Downside of Goals

In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J. D. Dodson developed the aptly named Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is that performance increases relative to motivation (they called it “arousal”) only to a point, after which performance drops. It is typically drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

You will notice three “goal” concepts superimposed on this graph to give you a sense of how they (roughly) relate.

If you are goal-less, you have no sense of direction and no motivation. Therefore, your performance is low. This is not surprising.

As your motivation increases, your performance increases. Being goal-free – having a sense of direction and purpose, without specific deadlines and limitations – can increase performance…to a point.

Then, as you become goal-obsessed, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and focus you on the future rather than the present.

We have seem this phenomenon in numerous situations: Race-car pit crews who increase performance when they are not worried about the stop watch. Students who perform better on exams when they are not as focused on grades. Sales people who sell more when they are not driven by sales targets. Businesses that increase competitiveness by avoiding a myopic focus on rigid processes and plans.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different types of tasks require different levels of arousal (to use their word). To improve concentration, intellectually challenging tasks require lower levels of arousal for optimal performance while physically demanding tasks require higher levels.

We are not suggesting that you eliminate your goals. You can have goals and still perform at optimal levels. They key is to have the RIGHT goals (ones that “pull” you forward and don’t create stress) and be PRESENT to what you are doing (being detached from the desired outcomes).

Video on Our Goal Philosophy

Click here to download a 15 minute of Stephen speaking on Goal-Free Living.

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Do something good for yourself today and read Goal-Free Living. As Dr. Joe Vitale, author of The Attractor Factor, says, “This book is a masterpiece. Get it. Read it. Live it.”

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