Are Your Goals at War With Each Other?
Scott Miker
A friend recently shared his frustration: his company replaced one toxic employee with… another toxic employee. Both brilliant. Both jerks. The irony? The company had explicitly vowed to do better.
This disconnect is more common than we realize—and it highlights the difference between explicit and implicit goals.
Explicit goals are what we say we want: "hire someone better," "lose weight," "achieve world peace."
Implicit goals are the ones actually driving our behavior—often subconsciously. These are the quiet forces behind choices like hiring the same personality type or ordering that double bacon cheeseburger while “on a diet.”
As James Clear puts it: “We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems.” And our systems are shaped by those deeper, often hidden goals.
If you keep missing your goals, pause and ask: What am I really prioritizing underneath the surface?
Only by aligning those implicit desires with our explicit intentions can we build systems that actually move us forward.