A Lesson On Setting Goals from Warren Buffett

Intelligent and ambitious people are wired to do more. For us, the start of a new year is like a rush of adrenaline. New ideas for goals we want to pursue pulse through minds just as fast as we can write them down.

Yet this dopamine-induced high for what opportunities lay ahead in the new year is perhaps fueled most by the disappointments of past failures.

Last week we started to explore reasons why we don’t achieve our goals. The first culprit was neglecting to focus on systems. Now in this post we want to remind ourselves that the key to accomplishing more lies in focusing on less.

Warren Buffett and His Pilot

I came across a story about Warren Buffett that has floated around on the internet for a while. Each version is slightly different, so I’m not advocating for its authenticity. But nevertheless, it’s a good illustration on the importance of ruthlessly eliminating competing goals.

The story goes something like this…

Warren Buffett asked his long time private pilot why he was still working for him. “The fact that you’re still working for me, tells me I’m not doing my job. You should be out going after more of your goals and dreams,” said Buffett. He then told his employee to write down a list of 25 goals he hoped to achieve in the coming years.

Once the pilot had completed his list, Buffett told him to circle the 5 that were the most important to him. After some deliberation, the pilot finally had narrowed down the 5 goals that were of highest priority.

“Now that you have your top 5 goals identified, how do you propose setting out to accomplish them?” asked Buffett. His pilot’s response was hesitant at first, but he eventually mustered up enough ideas to satisfy his boss. Finally Buffett asked about the other 20 goals on his list. What would be the pilot’s approach to accomplishing those?

“The top 5 are my primary focus but the other 20 come in at a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit as I’m getting through my top 5. They are not as urgent but I still plan to give them dedicated effort,” replied the pilot.

To the pilot’s surprise, Warren responded sternly,

““No. You’ve got it all wrong. Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all cost list’. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

Ruthlessly Eliminate Competing Goals

The reason why so many goals go unaccomplished isn’t because they weren’t big enough, bold enough, or compelling enough to motivate us across the finish line. It’s because they were choked off by competing priorities. When you make everything priority, suddenly nothing is.

Every good gardener understands that sometimes they need to prune perfectly good buds from the rose bush in order to keep the best flowers healthy. Similarly, we have to ruthlessly eliminate good ideas to make room for the great ones.

We all know to avoid distractions. But do we always recognize distractions for what they are?

This is why Warren Buffett’s advice is so insightful. Items #6-25 on our list are really good ideas. They’re important goals that we hope to achieve someday. But until we finish #1-5, we need to treat the other 20 as distractions.

Focus on Less to Achieve More

Time is a finite resource. There will never be enough hours in the day to make progress on all of our goals. Therefore, as leaders in our organization, we need to be better at making decisions.

You don’t need more time, you just need to decide.

Seth Godin, Author of This is Marketing

That means deciding what NOT to do as well as what to do. Leading positive change means clarifying the wildly important goals for our team and actively working to remove all other distractions.

According to FranklinCovey, only 15 percent of employees actually know their organization’s most important goals—either there are no goals or they have too many goals.

The fastest way to make progress towards your goals in 2019 is to ruthlessly eliminate the unimportant and decide where to focus your team’s energy and resources. A failure to achieve our goals is rarely the fault of goal setting as it is a problem of goal selection.

What wildly important goals do you have for 2019? What merely good ideas do you need to consciously avoid?

Set out to accomplish more next year by focusing on less.