Why Dilbert's Creator Thinks Super Goals Are the Path to Failure

Never invest in someone who is passionate about

This idea was adopted by Adams during his banking career. His former boss forbade him from investing in startups whose leaders are passionate about their business. Why? Because "passion cloudes the mind, people make mistakes because they are driven by passion" - said the boss. Instead, he recommended that Adams invest in people who had experience and worked hard.

What I hear is that no one can pick a winner for a business idea. At the very least, investors who hear a startup's publicity speech cannot say, "This will probably work, we fully foresee it."

In other words, they used to blindly believe that you can choose a winning business idea, but now they just blindly believe that you can find a super team or a person who are brilliant, full of energy and doomed to success.

This led Adams to believe that passion is bad. “When you make your first billion, you will probably be very excited as it will change your life. You did it! And it will make you act quite passionately,”he writes.

Many people think that passion leads to success. But the opposite is true: Success breeds passion.

What to do for those who are already passionate about something?

To this, Adams responds with the words that were once addressed to him: “Cartoonist? How about becoming a lawyer? " You should have a "backup" plan, and preferably two.

Super Goals Depress You

According to Adams, the biggest problem with supergoals is that they make you feel like a failure.

Let's say you want to lose 5 kg, and every day you weigh yourself: how's it going? I am sure you will feel like a failure, even if there really is progress. The point is that you will be in an emotionally painful half-success (or half-failure) stage all the time. But you will not feel that you have succeeded.

Therefore, you should not set super goals. First, you never know if you have set the right goal for yourself (maybe there is a better way?). Secondly, a big goal, like blinders, is always a priority, you do not notice what is happening around you. And around, in related areas, there can be very interesting opportunities.

The world today is completely unpredictable. You can't predict how your career will play out in a year. You cannot predict what technology will appear and how it will change the world. Perhaps a robot will take your workplace. So setting global goals in our world has its drawbacks.

This does not mean that Adams is agitating to completely abandon goal-setting. He believes that goals should be set in some simple short-term cases. For example, you could aim to shoot the bullseye in an archery competition, or cultivate 16 hectares of land if you are a farmer.

But never formulate a goal like this: "I want to take the place of my boss in five years." You can miss out on many chances to develop your career more successfully by focusing on it.

A systematic approach is the key to success

Adams puts the system in opposition to his goals. This is what you do day in and day out to be successful.

Creating Dilbert was not my goal. This was just one of the many things I have tried in my life. All of these things had something that made them not work, although if they did, it would be a huge success. If you don't know my story, I'll tell you - I'm a lucky guy. This guy was trying to create at least one worthwhile thing. But this was not a path full of happiness. It's hard work. I tried a lot and I didn't know which one would bring me success until I tried it and saw the market reaction.

According to Scott Adams, if "Dilbert", like other endeavors, had failed, he would not have perceived this "temporary failure" as a personal failure. After all, in business, luck is an important factor. Systematically increasing your chances of luck is the only way to succeed.