Let’s suppose you are in tune with the idea that the most important thing for you to do is purge your mind of tasks and thoughts. That is to say: you accept that the important thing to do is to recognize you are manifesting actions, and to release the thoughts and tasks that might be in mind—especially at moments when you don't-feel-like-doing-anything.

 

One thing to point out is the benefits to be found at laying action-steps required to unravel released (written) tasks. 

You might recognize laying action-steps required to unravel written tasks is part of the purge process, and you'd be right. But there can be a tendency to miss this until it is explicitly named.

So, at moments when you don't-feel-like-doing-anything, let this suffice: 

Dissatisfaction implies something to be satisfied about exists. A description of the action required to fruit that satisfaction is what can be thought of as a goal. 

Now, let's suppose you're in an episode of anxiety.  You're lying on your couch, hosting the anxiety rather than picking up writing tools to release the swirling of thoughts and tasks in your mind. 

One can argue that it is because of the presence of goals—active actions required to fruit satisfaction—that the anxiety and an extended entertainment of the anxiety arise. It is because of a sense you are, now at 7:30pm, to go do laundry and select clothes for tomorrow and shoot YouTube video and tidy kitchen and warehouse and make and drink smoothie and squat and do other exercises like ab-roll and declutter house—all before 10pm—that you are anxious. 

But an argument can also be made that the anxiety is not that a task isn't getting done... but that every task and promise swirling in your mind, won't get done. So, in this line, the issue is not so much the goal as it is your relationship with the goal. 

To follow this latter line of argument is to come upon a workable solution to the issue, which is: 

This instruction is important because it hinges on the recognition that the pressure experienced from the relationship with a goal is self imposed. 

Of course, the reality with adopting the instruction as an approach is, even though you can allow yourself do nothing, you can't actually do nothing. You are always in the process of choosing actions to carry out. 

What goals do is serve as beacons for you to determine or remember what to choose. They are pre-determined consequences realized by the curated enactment of your actions. 

What makes a goal different from a system is that a system is not a beacon that signals the action you are to choose. A system is a constellation of the actions themselves, mapped out to draw you closer to or help you embody your goal. Without goals your systems become undirected slews of actions that produce potentially misdirected outcomes. 

Another thing worthy of note is goals are not out there for you to reach. They are within you for you to realize (or see) and work towards. 

You might ask, "How do you set goal?" And the answer is: Capture your aspiration. 

 An external representation of your goal sets it, so that you are not carrying it around in your head. And it offers opportunity for you to define and refine it.

Consider this instruction: Release thoughts and tasks whenever they arise.

It can be thought of as a goal in how is provides direction. But, is it a goal?

Now compare it with: Pick writing tool and write out lines of tasks and thoughts whenever the need arises.

This second is truer in its sense of what a goal is. 

So, release. Define and refine. 

Watch your goals emerge and crystallize. 

And see how they serve as the beacons that they truly are.