Goal Hierarchy Architecture
Organize all your goals into a pyramid where lower goals serve one ultimate concern
Duckworth presents a hierarchical model of goals where low-level, concrete goals serve mid-level goals, which in turn serve a single top-level goal — your ultimate concern or life philosophy. Low-level goals are the specific daily actions you take. Mid-level goals are the broader objectives those actions serve. And your top-level goal is the abstract, overarching compass that gives meaning and direction to everything below it.
The critical insight is that gritty people hold their top-level goals with fierce tenacity while remaining flexible about lower-level goals. Quitting a particular tactic, project, or even career path is not only acceptable but sometimes necessary, as long as you are pivoting in service of the same ultimate concern. The New Yorker cartoonist Bob Mankoff, for example, submitted 2,000 rejected cartoons before his first acceptance, but throughout that decade of failure, he was unwavering in his top-level goal of becoming a successful cartoonist — he simply kept changing his approach.
Problems arise when goals at different levels conflict or when a person has no top-level goal at all. Positive fantasizing about outcomes without connecting them to concrete lower-level actions is ineffective. Similarly, grinding away at low-level tasks without understanding how they serve a larger purpose leads to burnout. The architecture requires alignment from top to bottom.
- Goals exist at multiple levels: low-level (daily actions), mid-level (objectives), top-level (ultimate concern)
- Low-level goals should serve mid-level goals, which serve the top-level goal
- Flexibility at the bottom, tenacity at the top
- Giving up on lower-level goals is acceptable and sometimes necessary
- The higher the goal level, the more stubborn you should be about keeping it
- Goal conflicts between levels drain motivation and create frustration
- A missing top-level goal produces aimless activity even if you're very busy
- Identify or clarify your top-level goalAsk yourself: What is the one overarching purpose that unifies everything I do? This should be abstract enough to allow many possible paths but specific enough to provide genuine direction. Pete Carroll calls this your 'life philosophy.' If you don't have one yet, that is itself important diagnostic information.
- Map your mid-level goals beneath itList the major objectives that serve your top-level goal. These are your career ambitions, key relationships, major projects. Each should clearly connect upward to your ultimate concern. If a mid-level goal doesn't connect, either find the connection or consider whether it belongs.
- Connect daily actions to mid-level goalsFor each mid-level goal, identify the specific daily habits and tasks that advance it. These are your low-level goals. They should be concrete, actionable, and directly supportive of the level above them.
- Prune misaligned or orphaned goalsLook for goals at any level that don't connect to the hierarchy. A mid-level goal with no top-level connection is a distraction. A low-level goal that serves no mid-level goal is busywork. Eliminate or replace these to restore alignment and free up resources for what matters.
- Practice flexible tenacityWhen a low-level approach fails, swap it for another that serves the same mid-level goal. When a mid-level goal becomes impossible, find an alternative route to your top-level goal. But before abandoning your top-level goal, think very carefully. Grit paragons almost never change their compass heading.
For a decade, cartoonist Bob Mankoff submitted cartoons to The New Yorker and was rejected roughly 2,000 times. His top-level goal (becoming a successful cartoonist) never wavered, but his low-level approach evolved dramatically. He changed his drawing style, his comedic approach, and his submission strategy multiple times. He advises aspiring cartoonists to submit in batches of ten 'because in cartooning, as in life, nine out of ten things never work out.'
Duckworth developed this model by studying how grit paragons make decisions about what to pursue and what to abandon. She noticed that the most successful people she interviewed had a clear hierarchy: they were stubbornly committed to their ultimate aims but remarkably flexible about the means. She also drew on research from psychologists who study goal systems and the work of Pete Carroll, who uses the term 'life philosophy' for what Duckworth calls the top-level goal.