The easiest way I can explain what goals are is
to tell that they are your final destination. It’s the
place where you want to be– mentally,
physically, spiritually, intellectually.
A goal r
Read more epresents a future we desire to happen
and it serves as a focal point to where we want
to go in life
Objectives, on the other hand, are the ways of
you getting to your goal. For any single goal, you
could have many objectives. An objective in the
case above would be renting a trailer (way of
getting to Miami) but as I said, you can and
should have many objectives for a single goal.
You could add additional objectives to the goal of
reaching Miami by stating that you will drive
every day for 6 hours (one objective). Also,
objectives can serve as indicators that tell you
that you are on the right way of achieving your
goal.
If you take the road from New York to Miami,
along the way you should pass through cities like
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C.,
Richmond and Jacksonville. All of these serve as
indicators that you are on the right way and that
you should be continuing your way.
But is there a systematic difference which will
help to differ goals and objectives? Yes, there is
and the following chapter is all about that.
Goals vs Objectives
Goals answer the question of what.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to take my family on a vacation to Miami”
Objectives, on the other hand, answer the
questions of how.
“How are you getting to Miami”
“We are renting a trailer and driving all the way”
Goals can be vague, qualitative statements that
are hard to measure. Sometimes they can be
binary where you measure them by either done/
not done. An example is a goal Napoleon had: “I
want to conquer Russia.” It can be easily
measured by done/not done. In his case, it was
not done.
But then, there are those goals which are
completely unquantifiable. For example, “I want
to be the best clarinet player in the world,” or “I
want to be successful,” or “I want to find the love
of my life.” These goals are unquantifiable
because they are based mostly on feelings and
feelings are impossible to measure.
Goals are mostly vague and impossible to
measure, yet we need them as they provide
direction. So we need something which is
measurable and quantifiable and that is why
objectives exist.
Objectives are completely measurable, specific
things we do to achieve our goal.
In the family vacation example mentioned, where
the goal is to get to Miami, objectives provide
checkpoints that can be measured. These
provide the much necessary objectives
measurements that tell us if we are on the right
path or we need to change something.
Goal: Drive to Miami from New York in 3 days
Objectives:
Reach Richmond by 7 p.m. the first day,
Reach Jacksonville by 7 p.m. the second day
Drive in Miami at 7 p.m. the third day
If we don’t hit the objectives above, we need to
change something. Otherwise, we won’t achieve
our goal.
If we get late to Richmond on the second day,
that means that we either need to adjust our
speed (drive faster), adjust our driving time
(drive more hours in the day) or make fewer
stops (less resting time). There are multiple
different ways we can adjust our approach to get
to our goal.
But then, there is the question of importance.
What is more important, goals or objectives?
Is one more important than the
other?
Goals and objectives are two sides of the same
coin. There is no value in having just one or the
other side- only when we combine them do they
serve the purpose.
Goals are there to provide direction- future- of
where we want to go. Without a goal, there is no
bigger picture and no motivation of pursuit.
Without objectives, a goal is just something that
lives in our heads. Objectives provide the
waypoint for us to achieve our goals.
Simply having objectives without a goal is
mindless action. I could tell you to practice math
for 7 hours a day but for what reason? If you
don’t want to be the best mathematician in the
world, there is no point in you doing that.
The same thing would be with the family vacation
example.
If you know that you need to pass through
Richmond and Jacksonville but have no idea
what your goal is, how will you know when you
get there (whatever “there” is).
A goal without objectives is simply daydreaming
– it’s a fantasy. In the family vacation example,
it would mean for us to know that we want to go
to Miami but we have no idea of getting there.
The signposts that say Chicago, Houston, or
Boston mean nothing to us when we have no
idea how to get to Miami nor what is a good road
to there.
Okay, but what will I do with all of this
information? The last chapter of this guide will
tell you what
So far I have shown you examples of goals and
objectives, the difference between the two and
importance of having both. Let’s see now how
we can use these to achieve our dreams.
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There is a simple framework I use for all my
dreams, goals and objectives and it’s called the
Hawkeye-Wormeye framework.
The Hawkeye-Wormeye
Perspective
Step 1: The Hawkeye
Imagine that you’re a hawk and that you fly high
above the forest which represents your life.
When you’re a hawk, you see endlessly beyond
and know where the mountains, rivers and hills
are. You see where you need to go and you get
clear on the bigger picture.
“I want to get to the hills beyond the murky
swamps.”
The hawkeye is the first thing you do because it
provides the goal, the bigger picture or whatever
you call it.
When you get clear on where you need to go
from a hawkeye perspective, now it’s time to get
down in the dirt by becoming a worm.
Step 2: The Wormeye
Okay, so we know where we are headed right
now – it’s the “hills beyond the murky swamps.”
But to get there, we need to become a worm
now. Why a worm?
Because a worm can see just 2-3 steps in front
of him. This ensures that even though you know
your final destination, you are just focusing on
the 2-3 steps that are right in front of you.
As Will Smith said in an interview
The same thing is with the wormeye. You know
where your destination is but you decide to focus
only on what is in front of you. This way you
ensure that you “lay the perfect bricks which will
one day become a wall.”
The transition from Wormeye to
Hawkeye to Wormeye
Every 3 or 6 months, you should spend a couple
of days only in the Hawkeye perspective. You do
this because you need to make sure that you are
heading in the right direction and to see if you
need to change/iterate anything in your worms
path. You take as Bill Gates calls it – a “Think
Week”.
The rest of the time (over 95% of it), you spend it
in the wormeye perspective. You are on the
ground, doing work, getting new skills or getting
better at old ones. You step out from the
wormeye to hawkeye only to see if you are still
on the right way.
But what do you actually do in wormeye
perspective?
Chunking goals into objectives
You have the bigger picture, the goal you want to
achieve. Let’s say that goal is to become the
best non-fiction writer in the world. So how do
you become that?
First of all, you take apart what writing actually
is. And there, you realize that writing isn’t just
writing – that writing consists of four different
parts:
1. Generating ideas
2. Researching
3. Writing
4. Editing
Okay, we now know what we actually need to
work on to become the best writer. The four
above are the skills we need to master to
become the best writer in the world.
By putting big, vague goals/dreams into smaller
compartments which can be easily practiced
(daily habits), we are, in fact, chunking our work
to something that can be done.
The hawkeye perspective of becoming the best
writer is focused down on the wormeye
perspective of working on four different parts of
writing.
But what do we do with chunks in the end? This
is where we get to the actions and behaviors
(objectives) you do daily and the last part of our
big puzzle – daily habits.
Daily habits
So we chunked the “become the best writer in
the world” to “practice generating ideas,
researching, writing, and editing.” So what do we
actually do with that?
We form daily habits.
This isn’t something big we need to do – in fact,
it’s quite the opposite. We take small actions
every single day and those actions accumulate
over time to get us to our goal. We take it one
step at a time, slow and steady, and as Eric
Edmeades would say it “I do less today to do
more in a year. “
In the writing example, a simple and easy daily
habit would be “Write 500 words a day.” This
way, you have a daily habit which takes care of
the “writing” part of you becoming the best writer
in the world.
and for editing you create a list of forbidden
words you simply delete from your writing
(“like”,”very”, “thing” etc.).
You don’t need to start doing all of these-
actually I advise you not to. I advise you to start
with one of these and then, when it becomes a
habit, add up another one. That is what I did.
I started with reading habit (20 pages a day).
After 150 days, I added a writing habit (writer
500 words a day). The next one coming is
generating ideas habit and at the end, the editing
habit.
If I started with all of them immediately, none
would stick. As the saying goes “Do less in a day
to do more in a year.”
Learn more about how to build good habits and
make them stick in this guide:
Conclusion
We started with an explanation of goals and
objectives, went over the difference of those two,
understood that one can’t go without the other
one. Then, we saw how to use goals and
objectives in our daily lives.
For that, we used the hawkeye and wormeye
perspective where we saw that we need the
bigger picture of the hawkeye but the focus of
the wormeye- the steps that are right in front of
us.
In the end, we chunked down the big goals we
had into the smallest possible actions and made
daily habits out of these.
Now, we know what we need to do every single
day to achieve our goals and dreams. Everything
standing between us and the goal we want to
achieve is a small daily habit – so just start
doing it.
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