Maybe You Don’t Need a New Goal. Maybe You Need a New Script.
I like a plan. Love a to-do list.
Not necessarily a rigid five-year strategy- as I've never really known where exactly I want to be or do. But something to aim at. A target. A sense that effort is accumulating towards a defined point. Perhaps also this leans heavily on my (hopefully recovering) people pleasing tendency.
So when I started reading Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff , and encountered the argument that success is less about single-minded pursuit and more about sustained curiosity, I felt unsettled.
“We are told that success is the result of extraordinary gifts or exceptional grit. But rather than some innate quality or single-minded pursuit of a big dream, endless curiosity is what enabled Amelia Earhart.”
My immediate reaction wasn’t inspiration. It was anxiety. Are we too focused on one thing that we miss opportunities that could contribute to that thing? And if we let go of that “one thing” -what anchors us? Where is my to do list in this world? How will I know if the thing I am curious about is the thing having impact? Does that even matter? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.
I think the problem is, especially in such a fast paced environment, as soon as we reach the target, there is a new one, or we weren't supposed to be aiming for that target anyway because we got a new goal and no one told us - working towards one thing can sometimes lead to disappointment or a sense of anti-climax when we get there - then just onto another. A treadmill, and that is not exciting, or fulfilling. We ARE doing big, important things - having big impact on people, and children's lives - so why don't we see it?
It feels like the Red Queen effect from Alice in Wonderland, running just to stay in the same place. (Even though we may have moved mountains).
Maybe to 'feel' it we first need to acknowledge when we are doing great things and then explore the feeling or skill we were practicing while making them great.
In professional development, if curiosity, experimentation, and breadth of exposure matter more than linear progression, then our professional learning design may need to shift.
Rather than offering a route, we might offer a matrix or curriculum:
This is less “follow the programme” and more “create your own adventure”, where leaders assemble their development through informed choice, supported reflection, and purposeful experimentation. (This thought excites me a lot)
The Script We Don’t Question
But what if you don’t have a goal? This personally stresses me.
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who embraces challenge, and I still do. So why was I so attached to following one clear idea or path?
Without a goal, how do you measure that?
Cognitive script theory suggests we all carry mental templates for how things are supposed to work. The dominant professional script looks like this:
The problem is that step four rarely lands in complex systems.
Improvement becomes maintenance. Achievement becomes “expected”. Progress becomes compliance. The script break, but we keep following it because we don't really know what else to do. As leaders, we design targets for others all the time. A harder question is: Are we designing scripts that actually produce meaning? Or are we just accelerating the treadmill?
So when someone suggests abandoning fixed goals entirely, it doesn’t feel freeing. It feels destabilising. Without a script, how do you know effort matters? This is probably quite personal for me, as knowing my effort matters, that I am having impact wider than myself sits high on my value sphere.
So I decided to test myself - and used ChatGPT as a Reflection Vehicle for 7 working days.
Rather than announce a new direction publicly (which I suspect often becomes performative), I decided to run an experiment.
For seven days, I would reflect on my work honestly. High energy. Low energy. Friction. Enjoyment. No performance. No branding. (This took less than 10 minutes a day and I was happily honest between myself and open source AI...)
This was the exact prompt I used:
I’m running a 7-day reflection experiment inspired by Tiny Experiments. I’m going to write freely about my workday below. Please do the following: Summarise what I’ve written in a few clear bullet points (no judgement, no advice yet). Reflect back moments of energy, enjoyment, curiosity, or quiet satisfaction you notice. Reflect back moments of drain, friction, boredom, or stress you notice. Name any early patterns or tensions, but lightly — do not draw conclusions yet. Please store this as Day X of my 7-day experiment. At the end of Day 7, I will ask you to: Identify patterns across the week Surface what seems to bring me the most joy and energy at work Suggest 5–7 tiny experiments I could run next, aligned to those patterns.
That was it.
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No grand reinvention. No public declaration. Just structured noticing.
What Emerged
My patterns became visible quickly.
High energy:
Low energy:
The key shift was subtle.
Instead of asking: “What is my next big goal?”
The experiment nudged me towards: “What kind of work compounds capability and energy -even if the destination changes?”
That question feels far more stable in a Red Queen system.
Tiny Experiments vs Big Declarations
I also found myself questioning public goal-setting.
When I typed:
“social media = public goals = bad?”
(classic example of my thoughts) what I was really interrogating was this:
Public goals often create premature satisfaction. You announce intention. You receive validation. Your brain registers progress before the work has begun. They also harden identity too early. Changing direction later feels like failure.
Tiny experiments are different.
A goal is a commitment to arrive. An experiment is a commitment to learn. It is small and doable, (the book recommends once you have thought of an experiment make it smaller). My first experiment was simply to commit to reflecting for 7 days.
From Arrival to Trajectory
The biggest internal reframe for me has been this:
Targets are things you pass through. Trajectory is what you’re building. If success is defined as arrival, work becomes a treadmill. We need something bigger - is this a Theory of Change? I don't know? Probably - but maybe one that feels less intense, something more personal and about leaning into what give us energy and doing a teeny but more of that in order to sustain the other things we inevitably have to do.
If success is defined as increasing range, judgement, and usefulness, the same effort feels different. I still like a plan. I know I always will - it helps me feel in control.
But perhaps the plan doesn’t need to specify the destination. Perhaps it just needs to ensure that wherever the system moves the goalposts next, I am more capable than I was before.
If you’re tempted to try this yourself, copy the prompt above exactly and run it for seven days.
No audience. No performance. Just structured curiosity.
Maybe you don’t need a new goal. Maybe you need a script that works in the world we actually live in.
An interesting reflection. What I immediately thought of reading the 1st line was the self-determination theory view of 'need substitutes'. These can form when motivation or actions feel controlled by external forces leading us to do things we don't really agree with/see the point of, or where we are trying to gain a reward or avoid 'punishment'. This is often the case in high-stakes accountability systems. It chimes with your para, 'Improvement becomes maintenance. Achievement becomes “expected”. Progress becomes compliance'. Putting things into the public domain, so feeling you have to continue with them when the meaning or value has gone or changed can have a similar effect as it becomes a type of controlled motivation. The achievement of need substitutes, often at best, creates only a temporary feeling of success and is linked to poorer psych wellbeing. Combine this with not celebrating acheivements due to the need to move on to the next goal or focus and it's no wonder that wellbeing, particularly feelings of competence and achievement suffers. Taking time to reflect, find the value/meaning, and celebrate successes is so important. Supervision can help with this but your personal reflection activity looks great for this too.