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On the Value
of Not Reaching
Your Goals
What I learned from not
becoming a New York
Times best-selling author
BY SIMONE STOLZOFF
JUNE 13, 2023
♥ 59

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Midjourney / Prompt: "Create an illustration in the style of

Maurice Sendak of a writer failing to achieve their dream"

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Becoming a New York Times best-selling

author doesn’t bring you lasting fulfillment,
endless riches, or a lifetime of good health. It
doesn’t actually sell that many books. But it is a
flex, a status symbol. Land a spot on The List
once, and it’s in your bio forever. It’s what
journalist David Brooks calls a résumé virtue:
an accolade that might bring fleeting
excitement, but not enduring contentment.

Alas, when I started to write my first book, I

set the goal of making The List. (I am not
above a good stroke of the ego.) There was a
certain irony to my aim; my book is about the
danger of tethering self-worth to professional
accomplishments. Nevertheless, shoot for the
stars and end up in the clouds, I thought. It was a
long shot, especially for a first-timer like me,
but why not strive for the top?

Well, my book has officially been out for a few

weeks, and it appears I’ve fallen short. The
general rule of thumb is that you need to sell
4,000–5,000 copies in a seven-day period to
have a shot of appearing on The List. I sold
3,908 copies in week one, which is typically
when a debut author has their best shot at
making it, with the hype around the launch
driving sales. Barring a phone call from Oprah
or Good Morning America, I’ve likely missed the
mark.

While doing the reporting for my book, I read

a postmortem from a successful startup
founder. They said something along the lines
of: “One of the best things that can happen to
you is to achieve professional success when
you’re young. That way you can learn that it
does little to change your happiness.” For
better or worse, achieving your goals shows
you that no material accomplishment will
fundamentally alter who you are.

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There are countless examples of folks who have

achieved their wildest professional dreams—
from athletes like Michael Phelps to founders
like Melissa Bernstein—only for that to lead to
a spiral of depression. One study of nearly 250
successful entrepreneurs found that 72%
suffered from mental health issues. The single-
minded pursuit of success can be used as a
crutch to distract from deeper insecurities.

I’m reminded of two seemingly contradictory

insights I came across in my research. The first
was from a study of NIH grant applicants,
which concluded that scientists who nearly
missed out on grants early in their careers
systematically outperformed their peers who
received the grants over the long term.
“Overall, these findings are consistent with the
concept that ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me
stronger,’” the researchers wrote.

The second was a point from David Foster

Wallace’s iconic This Is Water speech:
Whatever you worship will eventually eat you
alive. “If you worship money and things…then
you will never feel you have enough,” he writes.
“Worship your own body and beauty and
sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and
when time and age start showing, you will die a
million deaths before they finally plant you.”

If the NIH study concludes that setbacks are a

vital part of success, Wallace argues that
success is a false idol. There’s a paradox here,
and yet I see both as true. Ambition—even
when driven by the ego—isn’t inherently bad.
Setting ambitious goals allowed us to create
mRNA vaccines and put a man on the moon.
The key is to balance the striving with the
understanding that blind ambition often
comes with a cost.

After falling short of my goal, I’m left with the

question of where to go from here. One
approach might be to use this setback as
motivation. Now that the target is within
reach, I can set my sights on book two. Much
like an entrepreneur raising money, where each
“no” from a potential investor can fuel the fire
of the next pitch.

The alternative is to take a step back to

reevaluate my goals and reconsider my
motivations.

The greatest risk of a goal-oriented life is that

we remove ourselves from our present
experience. If we are always striving to grab the
next rung on the career ladder or to achieve the
next life milestone, we can miss out on where
we are today. Lasting fulfillment is the result of
presence, not checking off boxes from some
achievement rubric.

The literature on hedonistic adaptation makes

it clear that even if we achieve what we set out
to do, we’ll likely just push our goalposts of
desire further out. Intrinsic motivation tends
to provide a more sustainable fuel source than
external rewards.

Of course, I know all this. Hell, I wrote a book

about these themes. The old cliché is that
authors write the book they need to read, and I
spent over three years researching the cost of
success. And yet it doesn’t make missing my
mark any less disappointing.

I wanted to share my experience because it

paints a more nuanced picture than the
“wisdom” dispelled on TikTok and LinkedIn.
I, like you, contain multitudes, and reading an
academic paper on the value of non-
attachment is an unsatisfying balm for the
existential reckoning of what could have been.
I know I’m not the first or last person to fall
short of their professional goals.

The developmental value of disappointment is

that it forces you to slow down and ground in
how you’re feeling right now. These feelings
can clarify what you value. Said another way,
we hurt in proportion with how much we care.

Not making The New York Times best-seller

list provided me with an opportunity to
interrogate the goal itself. There’s no silver
lining my feelings away, but I can take a
moment to recognize how far I have come.
And even though dreaming a wildly ambitious
dream might be a recipe for disappointment, I
also feel an odd pleasure in knowing I gave it a
shot.

Author bio: Simone Stolzoff is a San Francisco–

based author, journalist, and designer. His
book The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from
Work is now available. If you liked this piece,
you can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to
his free newsletter.

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Comments

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Post

Mark Jansen 29 days ago

Simone, is there a chance your book is
evergreen?

Lots of NYT list books achieve a peak on sales

and then taper off. Yours might as achieve
steady sales for a longer time?
♡ 2 · Reply

Nicholas Christowitz 29 days ago

Just purchased the audiobook! Seems the
marketing hype missed me
♡ 1 · Reply

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