False goals

One bit of conventional wisdom that has been omnipresent since I first heard of it in middle school Guidance class is that you should set goals. They gave us a worksheet where we had to write down five short-term goals, five medium-term goals, and five long-term goals.  So I dutifully wrote down things like completing my science project, passing my next piano exam, and graduating.

But those weren't actual goals.  Those were just things I was supposed to be doing at the time.

For most of my life, I haven't had actual goals.  I wanted to finish high school and go to university because...that's what people usually do at that age, and I couldn't think of anything better.  I wanted to get a job because...I didn't have one.  The vast majority of things I could have described as goals were just following the script.  I achieved these goals, of course, but that's because I basically took something I was already going to achieve within an appropriate timeframe by proceeding through life normally and thought of it as a goal.

It's not like I'm following the script at the expense of my real goals either.  Most of the time there isn't actually anything there.  For most of my life, there's been nothing on my bucket list.  There's nothing on it now.  There have only ever been two things on my bucket list, and no more than one has ever been on the list at a given time, with large gaps before, in between, and after. (The two things were losing my virginity and seeing Eddie Izzard - which points to another problem: my genuine goals are rather more dependent on the cooperation of others than typical goals are.)  Most of the stuff that I might put on a goal list (buy a condo? get promoted?) is stuff where it wouldn't hurt if I didn't achieve it.

Right now I'm reading a book on success factors (which I might blog about once I'm done), and it talks about how people who are highly goal-oriented tend to be more successful than people who are less goal-oriented.  And when I googled some terminology found in that book, the entire first page of google results was articles talking about how you won't ever be successful in life unless you very deliberately set goals and then work to achieve them.

But what if your goals aren't even real?  How does that fall into this goal-setting philosophy?