You’ve probably been told that if you want to achieve something big, you need a plan. A map. A five-year strategy with key performance indicators and a vision board. We are obsessed with the idea that success is a straight line from point A to point B. But honestly? That’s usually a lie. Most of the stuff that actually changes the world—the world-shaking inventions, the legendary art, the breakthrough businesses—didn't happen because someone sat down and followed a rigid checklist. It happened because someone wandered.
The obsession with "objectives" is making us mediocre. It sounds counterintuitive, right? How can having a goal make you less successful? Well, it turns out that when you fixate on a specific target, you become blind to the incredible opportunities sitting right next to you. This isn't just some "go with the flow" hippie philosophy. There is actual, hard science and computer logic behind why greatness cannot be planned the myth of the objective is a concept we need to take seriously if we ever want to do anything worthwhile.
The Tyranny of the Goal
In 2015, researchers Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman published a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. It wasn't your typical self-help fluff. They were AI researchers. They spent years watching algorithms try to solve problems, and what they found was startling. The algorithms that were told to "reach the goal" almost always failed at complex tasks. The ones that were simply told to "find something interesting" or "try something new" actually ended up solving the problem faster.
Think about that for a second.
We live in a culture that worships the "Objective." Your boss wants quarterly targets. Your fitness app wants 10,000 steps. Your school wanted a 4.0 GPA. But if you're trying to do something truly innovative—something "great"—that objective actually acts as a set of blinders. You’re so focused on the finish line that you don't notice the shortcut through the woods or the shiny diamond sitting in the dirt three feet to your left.
Precision is the enemy of discovery. If you know exactly where you're going, you're just following a path someone else already cleared. That’s fine for building a deck or baking a cake. It’s a disaster for creating something the world has never seen before.
The Stepping Stone Problem
The biggest issue with objectives is the "stepping stone" problem. To get to a truly great achievement, you often have to pass through stages that look absolutely nothing like the final result.
Take the vacuum tube.
When it was invented, nobody was thinking, "Hey, this is going to lead to the internet." It was just a weird glass tube that controlled electricity. If the inventors had been given a strict objective to "invent the World Wide Web" in the 1900s, they would have failed miserably. They didn't even have the concepts yet. You can't plan for the internet if you don't have computers, and you can't have computers if you don't have vacuum tubes, and you don't get vacuum tubes by trying to build a global communication network. You get them by playing around with physics.
Greatness is a series of stepping stones, but here’s the kicker: you can’t see where the stones lead until you’re standing on them. From where you are right now, the next step toward a massive breakthrough might look like a total distraction. It might look like a hobby. Or a mistake.
Why Your Five-Year Plan is Probably Garbage
We love the illusion of control. It feels safe to say, "By age 30, I will be a Senior VP." It feels professional. But the reality is that the most successful people are often the ones who are the best at being "opportunistically aimless."
Look at YouTube.
The founders didn't set out to create the world's largest video-sharing platform and a multi-billion dollar cultural juggernaut. It started as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up." It was a failure. People didn't want to upload videos to find dates. But they did want to upload videos of their cats and their trips to the zoo. Because the founders were willing to ditch their "objective" and follow the "interestingness" of what was actually happening, they stumbled into greatness. If they had stuck to their original plan, YouTube would be a forgotten footnote in a digital graveyard.
The Trap of Metric-Fixation
We've reached a point where we value the measurement more than the thing we're measuring. This is often called Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
In business, this happens constantly. A company decides they want to improve customer satisfaction, so they start measuring call times. Suddenly, support agents are hanging up on customers just to keep their call averages low. They hit the metric. They "achieved the objective." But the actual goal—happy customers—is dead in the water.
When you apply this to your life, it gets even grimmer. You want to be "healthy," so you focus on the number on the scale. You stop eating enough nutrients, you lose muscle, and you're miserable, but hey—the objective was met. You're lighter. Are you "great"? No. You're just a smaller version of your previous, unhappy self.
The Power of Novelty Search
So, if planning doesn't work for greatness, what does? Stanley and Lehman suggest something called "Novelty Search." Instead of asking "Does this get me closer to my goal?" you ask "Is this new? Is this different? Does this open up a door I haven't seen before?"
It’s about following the "interesting" path rather than the "correct" one.
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This requires a massive amount of bravery because it looks like you’re wasting time. Your friends will ask why you’re learning ancient Greek or building birdhouses when you should be "focusing on your career." But maybe that ancient Greek logic or the structural mechanics of a birdhouse is the exact "stepping stone" you need for a breakthrough in your actual field three years from now.
Greatness is an emergent property. It’s what happens when you collect enough interesting experiences and skills that they eventually collide in a way that looks like magic to everyone else.
Evolution Doesn't Have a To-Do List
If you need proof that greatness cannot be planned the myth of the objective is the way of the universe, look at biology.
Evolution is the most successful "creative" process in history. It produced the human brain, the flight of the hawk, and the camouflage of the octopus. But evolution has zero objectives. It isn't "trying" to build an intelligent species. It’s just trying things. It’s a massive, parallel experiment in novelty. If an organism has a mutation that makes it slightly better at surviving in a weird niche, it stays.
If evolution had a goal—say, "create a creature that can write poetry"—it probably would have failed. By just rewarding what worked in the moment and exploring every possible niche, it stumbled upon us. We are the ultimate byproduct of a process that never had a plan.
The Case for Curiosity Over Consistency
We are told that consistency is the key to success. "Show up every day and do the work." And sure, if you want to be a decent accountant, that works. But if you want to be a visionary? Consistency can be a cage.
True innovation usually comes from the "adjacent possible"—a term coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman. It’s the idea that at any given moment, there are a limited number of ways the world can change. You can’t jump from a horse-and-buggy to a SpaceX rocket in one go. You need the internal combustion engine, then the jet engine, then liquid fuel.
Curiosity is the tool that lets you explore the adjacent possible. Objectives force you to look forward, but curiosity lets you look sideways.
When Objectives Are Actually Useful
I’m not saying you should never have a goal again. That’s a great way to end up broke and living in a basement. Objectives are fantastic for execution.
- Need to lose 10 pounds? Set an objective.
- Need to finish a specific coding project for a client? Set an objective.
- Need to build a bridge that doesn't fall down? Please, for the love of God, use an objective.
Objectives work when the path is already known. They work for "closed-ended" problems. But greatness is an "open-ended" problem. If you are trying to find a new way to live, a new way to create, or a new way to lead, an objective will only lead you back to what is already known.
How to Live Without a Map
This shift is terrifying. We use plans as a defense mechanism against the anxiety of the unknown. Without a plan, we feel lost. But being "lost" is exactly where the new stuff happens.
Think about the most interesting person you know. Did they follow a linear path? Probably not. They probably studied philosophy, then worked at a bakery, then moved to Japan, then started a tech company. To an outside observer, their 20s looked like a mess. But each of those "distractions" was a stepping stone.
Actionable Steps for the Aimless
If you want to stop being a slave to the myth of the objective and actually start moving toward something great, you have to change how you spend your Tuesday afternoons.
Stop optimizing your schedule for 24 hours. Pick one day a week where you have no "to-do" list. Follow whatever rabbit hole looks interesting. If you spend four hours reading about the history of salt, let yourself do it. You are collecting stones.
Audit your "goals" vs. your "interests." Look at your current list of objectives. How many of them are there just because you think you "should" do them? Pick one and kill it. Replace it with a "curiosity project" that has no intended outcome.
Value the "interestingness" of people over their utility. Stop networking with people who can "help your career." Start talking to people who think in ways you don't understand. The most valuable connections are often the ones that have nothing to do with your current objective.
Learn to pivot without guilt. If you’re halfway through a project and you realize it’s boring, but you found a weird side-problem that is fascinating—switch. Society calls this "quitting." In the world of greatness, it’s called "following the scent."
The Fear of Wasted Time
The biggest hurdle is the fear that you’re wasting your life. We are so conditioned to be "productive" that an afternoon spent wandering feels like a sin. But the "wasted" time is where the subconscious does its best work.
Archimedes didn't figure out displacement while staring at a math problem; he figured it out in the bathtub. Newton didn't get hit by an apple while "planning to discover gravity." He was just sitting in a garden.
Greatness requires slack. It requires a system that has enough room for accidents to happen. If your life is optimized for efficiency, you have no room for the "happy accident" that could change everything.
The myth of the objective tells us that we are the masters of our fate and that we can engineer our way to the top. But the truth is humbler and way more exciting: we are explorers in a vast, dark landscape. We don't need a map; we just need a good flashlight and the courage to see what’s behind the next rock.
Stop trying to be great. Just try to be interested. The greatness will take care of itself.
Next Steps for Implementing This Philosophy
- Identify your "false objectives": Write down three goals you are currently pursuing. Ask yourself: "If I reached this, would it actually lead to something new, or am I just doing it because it’s the next logical step?"
- The "Interestingness" Journal: For the next week, don't track your habits. Track what sparked your curiosity. Was it a weird line in a book? A strange architectural detail? A specific scientific concept?
- Create "Strategic Slack": Intentionally leave at least four hours of your work week completely unplanned. Use this time exclusively for things that have no "objective" value but feel compelling.