Setting Your Goals for 2020?

The festive season allows us all to reflect on the commitments that we make to various aspects of our lives and how we shuffle our priorities. Like a fifth weather season, we look forward to this period well before it sweeps us up; and with it comes a chance to recharge, reflect and reinvigorate ourselves either alone or with our loved ones. 

If you felt like last year was hard work, you were right. While ABS research suggests that people are at their most optimal when they work no more than 39 hours per week, almost 50% of Australian employees over the age of 15 worked more than 40 hours a week in 2018. More than 75% of Australian workers felt that stress adversely affected their physical health, and 64% reported an impact from stress on mental health. People are working harder and longer than ever before, and so when the festive season arises, those fortunate enough to get a break from the usual rhythm of society are provided with a moment of intellectual and emotional respite. It is no surprise that around 60% of us take the opportunity to examine the goals, drivers and aspirations that fuelled the year just gone, and set new goals for the year ahead. 

The Value of Setting Goals

The value of goals exceeds the aspirational. They are good for our health, for our workplaces, and ultimately for our society. Nietzsche once wrote that “if we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how”[1], and there is compelling evidence to support it. Having purpose and meaning is a robust predictor of both physical health[2] and longer life[3] [4] and for corporations, the engagement that purposeful employees provide is a valuable asset. The Harvard Business Review reported[5] in 2017 that “disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects. In organizations with low employee engagement scores, they experienced 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth, and 65% lower share price over time. Importantly, businesses with highly engaged employees enjoyed 100% more job applications”. When we set a goal and we pursue it, we are healthier and we are more valuable to society. Perhaps more importantly though, the nature of those goals also matters.

Your Goals Matter More Than You Think

It is tempting to think that our goals are merely about us, rather than shaping the environment in which we all live, but consider this: We are, as we embark on this new decade, fortunate to be living in an era where some of the best questions in history require answering. In the next ten years, society will consider the power and obligations of its institutions; climate change will move from predictive research to demonstrable and observable trend requiring immediate action; and technology will converge discussions of efficiency and innovation with the protection of individual data and the rights of the individual. Robotics will require us to take a view on the adaptability of our human resources and to the prospect of a new proletariat, our methods of communication, our sources of energy and the nature of the way we transport ourselves will change, and we will be asked, in aggregate, to re-solve some of the more complex historical political economy questions ever asked around equity, efficiency, the role of the State versus the individual and the counterpoints of liberty and the benefits of central coordination, and some of our past answers may change.

There has never been a more important time for us all to consider the question of purpose and to aim ourselves at the world we want, because guiding the answers to the complex societal questions of our age will be the purpose and meaning that people and populations set for themselves today, the values we place as a society on policies, actions, values, laws, and positions, and the standards we agree not to walk past. Resolutions made by the people least acknowledged by the powers that be become the social license of tomorrow – a definable, unspinnable and unavoidable test of ultimate authenticity for corporations and the people that run them. Through our individual goals we consider our why, we define what we stand for through our actions, and we set out to defend our core values and principles, and through the power of aggregated action we express our expectations of our employers, our society and on eachother, and we build a better working world. 

So set your goals carefully, and your purpose meaningfully, because what we all do and aim for matters. You cannot hit your why if you aren’t aiming for it, and your why has never been as important for us all as it is today. As Albert Einstein once said, “nothing happens until something moves”. It's your move. 

[1] Original German: “Hat man sein warum? Des Lebens, so vertragt man sich fast mit jedem wie?”

[2] Roepke, Jayawickreme & Riffle, 2014

[3] Boyle, Barnes, Buchman & Bennett, 2009; Cohen, Bavishi & Rozanski, 2016; Hill & Turiano, 2014; Krause, 2009; Skrabski, Kopp, Rózsa, Réthelyi & Rahe, 2005; Tanno, Sakata & the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer, 2007

[4] The above paragraph is drawn from Hooker, Masters, Park “A Meaningful Life is a Healthy Life” at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/gpr0000115

[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/minding-the-body/201707/how-sense-purpose-in-life-improves-your-health