MID-TERM GOALS SUCK

An introspection-oriented goal-setting guide focuses on careers and success.

As the title of his nonfiction debut indicates, Zargaran has little patience for one of the standard concepts in most business-motivation literature: the idea of the midterm goal. “What is the point of placing 24 or 36 month targets in the forefront,” he asks, “when an ever changing work environment could lead to this going to waste?” Short-term tactics are fine and necessary, he argues, but they should be determined by a long-term objective, a vision, rather than midterm goals that construct the illusion of control down the line. And the two come together in the guiding conceit that opens the author’s book: the idea that the journey through life is like a car ride. The body is the chassis; the brain is the engine; money is the fuel; and the “soul” is the driver. “A car with a big body and a small engine won’t have the power capacity to move forward,” Zargaran writes. “Similarly, a car with a full tank of gas, but no tires, is going nowhere, fast.” The author sets out five steps to chart the course of this drive, moving from the Dreaming Stage to the Imagination Stage and so on. The author deftly describes a nonlinear conception of life in order to set up a fairly standard “Manifest Your Destiny” idea. “Everything already exists,” he writes, “your only job is to manifest it in the here and now.” There is an alternate reality in which readers have achieved all the success they dreamed about, he asserts; all they need to do is will it into existence in this world. A good deal of this material is standard for the genre, but Zargaran walks his audience through it all with clarity and enthusiasm, gamely reminding his readers that they’re creating a movie, not a snapshot.

An energetic, if familiar, call for readers to rethink their paths to achieving their desires.