Pragmatic ambitions: goal-setting sanity

Psychology

Jun 2

Ambition involves desires for future circumstances that you deem worth pursuing and dreaming about. Desires can be mimetic, influenced by the people in your sphere of contact. Luke Burgis explains this concept extensively in his book, Mimetic Desires. Social media culture may have exacerbated the influence of mimetic desires on your life. Exposure to the desires of many individuals molds your own desires as a consequence of that exposure.

Your (mimetic) desires are no more constrained within the small(er) confines of your local community and the people you surround yourself with in the physical world. You can see past that and within the lives of people in different corners of the globe. This can be a gift because you can expand the horizon of possibilities and perspectives you can acknowledge. It can also be a scourge if you do not behave with enough discipline to keep your mimetic desires and envy mechanisms under control since the pool of options for your own desires can become very large. More choices can increase the quality of life, and it can also create analysis paralysis and overwhelm, where choosing a direction feels almost impossible.

Ambition is the desire to achieve a specific objective at some point in the future. Ambition can be vague and imprecise or focused and detailed. In the Western world, describing someone as "ambitious" is generally viewed as a positive attribute because it implies an intrinsic motivation to pursue and achieve objectives, without being demoralized by possible failures along the way. In such context, ambition is nothing without resilience, or the capacity to push through obstacles “along the way” to achieve the end state you desire. The myth of the hero who raises to a higher self by overcoming obstacles is one that is celebrated widely in Western-society popular discourses.

In Eastern philosophies, ambition and desires are considered two of the core sources of suffering in human existence. Desires take you away from the present moment, which is all that matters in meditation and broader Eastern philosophies. Therefore, fully internalizing the idea of detaching oneself from desiring can be a life-changing realization, as long as it is not made into a desire itself (e.g., desiring to separate oneself from desires).

You can focus diligently on what is in front of you right now, paying close attention to it and not worrying about what your life will look like in five years, as it appears to others. This does not imply a radical shift in life circumstances or habits. You can live a regular life and do your job and interact with others while paying close attention and being fully immersed in the present moment, stripping away every source of egoic attachment and detachment within you. You can plan for the future while being rooted in the present. The future is then only a thought arising and passing away, just like every breath you take.

In this podcast episode, Cal Newport presents a middle-ground mental model for ambition: pragmatic ambition. This ladder of ambition is reachable, rewarding in the medium to long term, and a source of consistent gratitude. Pragmatic ambition involves mastering the art of goal-setting, without solely seeking stretch goals, and accepting the reality in front of you. It is often lifestyle-centered and can improve your satisfaction in the short to medium term.

Pragmatic ambition represents the next goalpost in your life that you can visualize from a distance but haven’t ultimately reached yet. According to Newport, pragmatic ambition can be a great source of meaning and a sense of tangible progress in your life, something everyone needs. When you stack your pragmatic ambitions over time, you can notice a long tail of compounded progress, similar to the impact of consistent habits.

For example, imagine you are a freelancer working independently for almost a decade, a time frame that has allowed you to earn a significant amount of money and save most of it. Your next pragmatic ambition may be to become even more independent and optimize your living environment for that. You enjoy surfing in the time when you are not working, but you live somewhat distant from the beach and need to commute 1 hour every time you go surfing.

Your pragmatic ambition is to live closer to the beach so you can surf at any time. You decide to buy a property near the beach, as well as a wetsuit and a board that’s just right for you. Such a change has seemingly improved the quality of your life and your satisfaction until you set the next pragmatic ambition and resolve to fulfill it in order to give your existence more meaning — something most of us try to do: to seek satisfaction and numb the inherent underlying pain (and suffering) we all experience.

This is the middle ground of goal-setting: pragmatic ambition (Newport, 2023). The balance between the desire to progress up and to the right, and the necessity to accept the present moment as is and set realistic expectations on the trajectory of one’s life. Ultimately, as the Buddha may put it, pain is inevitable, but how do you handle the second, third, and fourth arrows that hit you while you are walking across the mountain?