Oscar Wilde knew something most productivity gurus refuse to admit: goals are traps dressed as ambition. The moment you define an endpoint, you have already built a ceiling. You arrive. You stop. You wonder why the view doesn't feel like you thought it would.
There are two tragedies in life, Wilde wrote: not getting what you want – and getting it.
I don't believe in goals. Not because I lack direction – but because I believe in something bigger: every encounter, every unexpected collision with a person, a place, an idea, can crack open a portal to a whole new world. Goals make you walk past those portals. You're too busy staring at the destination to notice the door right next to you.
Fixed stairs vs. the tree
A career ladder is fixed stairs. Step one, step two, step three – someone else built them, someone else decided where they lead. You follow. You arrive. You stand at the top and discover the top was just someone else's idea of a ceiling.
A career ladder is fixed stairs. Mine is a tree.
A tree is different. A tree lets you choose the branch. You can go sideways. You can go back down and find a better route. You can sit in the middle of it and realise the middle is exactly where you want to be. The tree doesn't care about your five-year plan – it just keeps growing, and so do you.
The difference in practice
Pre-set steps. Someone else's destination. Goals as finish lines. Arrive. Stagnate.
Your own branches. Every encounter is a portal. Growth without ceiling. Climb. Wonder. Stay.
The KIDULT way
This is what I call the KIDULT way: stay curious enough to climb, stay wild enough to not need a map. Every branch is a bet on aliveness over certainty.
I'm not chasing a goal. I'm staying open to the encounter – the meeting, the moment, the collision that changes everything. That's not irresponsibility. That's the highest form of intention: being alive enough to recognise the portal when it appears.
My own path is the clearest evidence I have. I left school without a qualification. I went from radio sales to Red Bull management, from early-stage startup to SAP Senior Director, from anonymous to SPIEGEL bestselling author. No ladder would have mapped that route. The tree did.
What this means for organisations
When I speak in companies about this – at Volkswagen, Siemens, Microsoft, Adidas – I often ask the same question: how many of your best people ended up exactly where they planned to be? The answer is almost always the same. Almost none.
The people who created the most value were the ones who stayed open to the unexpected branch. Who said yes to the conversation that wasn't on the agenda. Who followed the signal before they understood the reason.
This is not a romantic idea. It is a competitive advantage. In a world where AI handles the planned, the optimised, the predictable – the tree-climbers are the ones who will matter.
Don't climb the ladder. Climb the tree. Not because it's easier – it isn't. But because the view from your own branch is the only view that was ever worth having.