500 Words a Week - Goals vs Systems

I recently started reading “How to fail at almost everything and still win big” by Scott Adams, so far it has been an entertaining read with some nice takeaways. My favourite so far has been Adams describing the difference between goals versus systems, and how we should adopt a systems based approach.

By setting goals, you exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that you hope will be temporary, provided you reach your intended goal. If you don’t reach your goal, that feeling of failure cements and hardens. If you reach your goal, after enjoying your brief period of success, you then loose the thing that gave you purpose and direction.

By being system based, you succeed every time that you apply your system. Being goal based causes us to fight the feeling of discouragement with each turn, whereas with systems, we feel good every time we apply our system.

Adams admits that this goals versus systems point of view is a battle of semantics and you might say every system has a goal, and everyone who pursues a goal has some form of system in place. As with the common theme in this series of blogs, we take from both sides to come to our conclusion. Post reading this, I still see merit in setting goals, but I see more merit in setting a clear system to set us up for long term success. We should also celebrate some’s dedication to a system that brought them to where they are, rather than praise the outcome/ goal being hit.

“That’s amazing you hit a certain new speed/ weight lifted/ lost that amount of body fat, what’s more amazing is the dedication and consistency you applied to your system by training with intent X number of times per week/ cleaned up your food choices.”

Thinking back to Carol Dweck’s “Mindset” book, we acknowledge the outcome but praise the process, the effort and work, and hope to establish a growth mindset in those we work with.

Relating this to our daily practice and communicating with players, we should focus our and their attention on what system we will put in place. Upon discussing goals with our athletes, we must quickly put in an agreed upon system to support them. I will reiterate that it must be agreed upon by both parties. So maybe a player wants to improve upper body hypertrophy, leading to an agreement on 1 extra gym session targeted towards that goal a week with additional alterations to their already present gym programme.

An important point to remember:

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

As S&C coaches we believe we always have the player’s best interests at heart, sometimes this can come across in exuberant amounts of extra work being prescribed to players which can have negative outcomes for them. We must also be conscious of some of the work we do, in that are we doing this to fulfill our sense of belonging to the programme/ need to do something or truly for the player’s best interest.