106. On Goals & Mistaking the Ladder for the Climb

“I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there, you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.”
— Zig Ziglar

Many of us grew up believing the above quote. We were taught to begin with the end in mind and that goal setting is foundational to productivity and success. We often hear the advice: “You must have a clear goal,” “Create a 5-year plan,” or “Get disciplined.” These ideas can sound harmless, even empowering. Society expects you to have a plan. This is best illustrated by job interview questions like "Where do you see yourself in (X) years?"

Maybe 10 years is too far forward. What about 5 years?

The problem with this approach is that “Goals” can be coercive. When someone is fixated on a specific outcome, they might dismiss unforeseen issues or treat them as obstacles that need to be ignored. This fixation prevents them from benefiting from the unexpected insights or creative solutions that arise during the process.

Having goals and rigidly sticking to them ignores the fact that human minds continuously generate new preferences and ideas. To hold fast to a single, long-range plan can mean labeling these new ideas as “distractions” or “failures.” In other words, if a new preference bubbles up, the rigid mindset sees it as a deviation rather than a potential improvement. This is anti-rational. It dismisses new thoughts without understanding them first. It traps you into a single path with no room to correct mistakes and mistakes are inevitable.

You must be thinking then how do you explain why every success story speaks of grit and perseverance, of never giving up, and giving it your all?

Before I answer let me share the following with you:

“Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something. Not even me. All right? You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.”
- Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

So now let me share what I learned from Brett Hall about this.

If the activity or target you’re pursuing is still your best guess for how to spend your time each day, then that’s not a mere “goal”, it’s an ongoing, living, creative choice. It’s more that each day you re-choose that direction because it aligns with your current preferences and excitement, not because you feel duty-bound to some earlier plan. It is a rational decision based on your best understanding at the time but there are times when a conflict between new ideas and past preferences occurs that is not quickly resolved. This is where Wittgenstein’s ladder comes in.

Successful individuals often credit a specific discipline-based method for their achievements, and it later becomes an ossified formula that’s taught to others. In reality, that “method” functioned more like Wittgenstein’s ladder: a temporary scaffold they needed during a period of lost enthusiasm or direction. Once they rediscovered a genuine reason to proceed, found an engaging problem, reinterpreted their aims, or reached a new mental vantage, that scaffolding became less relevant. The “discipline steps,” “productivity hacks,” or “goal frameworks” may have played a crucial transitional role for the person who used them. But once they’re in a new mindset, deeply enthused, that external structure is no longer the main driver. Unfortunately, they mistook the ladder for the climb when they tried to explain their success.

Many success-oriented routines—like to-do lists, morning rituals, or motivational affirmations—address a momentary lack of clarity. They’re a “bridge” for when intrinsic motivation or a good explanation of “why do this?” is faltering. The deeper reason for success is typically that the person found or created a set of problems that deeply interested them. Once that interest took hold, it generated the creative energy to keep going. Continuing was the most rational thing to do.

To rationally find renewed enthusiasm daily, you re-choose the activity on the basis of living, evolving reasons—not out of dogged loyalty to a plan. You can do this by

1. continuously forging a fresh explanation for “why this?”
2. structuring your activity to present ongoing, open-ended challenges, and
3. staying sensitive to new knowledge that may alter your path.

In doing so, you’re not just “checking a box”, you’re actively engaging in the creative process of solving problems and discovering new dimensions. This daily re-validation prevents the staleness and coercion often associated with rigid, long-term goals.

Conclusion

To sum up:

1. Goals as Prophecy: Overly prescriptive goals can become coercive, deterring us from correcting errors or pursuing new discoveries.
2. Daily Re-Choice: The healthy alternative is to treat each new day as a moment to re-choose whatever truly interests or fascinates us now.
3. Temporary Scaffolds: Discipline-based frameworks can help when we’re stuck, but they’re best seen as provisional. Once we’re motivated from within, we can “kick away the ladder.”
4. True Driver of Progress: Enthusiasm and the constant search for better explanations—fresh ways of seeing problems—are ultimately what propels us forward.