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It's the Direction that Counts
Choosing a goal in life is not our most important decision. Choosing the direction is more important than choosing the goal. Enticing short-range goals can take us in the wrong direction. Mature success and satisfaction come in the direction we move, not in the goals we attain.
Too much goal orientation brings us the same problem that Harvard Business School found in the case system of teaching, where bright young students learned to solve problems rather than identifying opportunities. The real progress in life comes in recognizing opportunities. Problem-solving is important, but it is just a means of taking advantage of the opportunities. When we become too goal-oriented, we become almost technological and mechanical in our approach to life. Who wants to be a computer–even a human computer?
I oppose setting an ultimate goal for one's life, in the sense of a specific, definable, measurable, figure-oriented, or describable place in life at which one hopes ultimately to arrive. This puts too much importance on one decision which, many times, cannot be made properly. This creates futility in those who reach what they have termed success and find it was attaining the goal and not the goal itself they really enjoyed. They are then left in the "yellow leaf" of life, like the man who assiduously climbed the ladder only to find that it was leaning against the wrong building.
Goals are mainly important to confirm that we are traveling in the direction we intended to go.
