Disclaimer: Written in the quiet anonymity of an Uber ride home, on my own time, representing no employer and no person you might imagine behind it.

There is a particular book by Marshall Smith that returns seasonally to my life like a recurring calendar reminder I do not remember setting. Every few years, someone recommends it again.

This usually means one of two things.

Either:

1. I did not actually apply what the book taught, so the world is sending it back like a bounced check. Or
2. People are using the book as a polite way of saying, “I have feedback for you, but I will outsource it to this author.”

Both are plausible.

I recently spoke to someone I truly look up to.

Let us call him Mr. A, partly for anonymity and partly because most wise people I meet have names beginning with A for reasons sociologists have yet to investigate.

You know someone has really read a non-fiction book when they prescribe not the book, but a specific chapter.

That is how non fiction is meant to be consumed anyway. Less like a novel, more like medicine. Targeted dosage.

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The chapter I was recommended was Chapter 5: Goal Obsession

For those of you who haven’t had the good fortune of being recommended this book, go read it. AI-summaries don’t do a great job.

Some of the diagnosis fit. That is not who I used to be. Earlier, in my India corporate phase, I believed good work would eventually shine on its own. The theory was that merit, like light, cannot be hidden. It will radiate like a halo right above one’s head.

Then I moved to America and discovered a different physics. Here, some peoples hypergrowth can be traced to a simple maneuver: they stand under the light, reflect it cleverly, and sometimes redirect a whole teams brightness onto themselves.

Initially, I judged it. Now I treat it as data only.

We all have agency to think, speak, and act fast. If we choose not to use that agency, someone else will. Feeling bad about them doing what we refuse to do is not morality. It is latency.

But this is where the chapter on goal obsession begins to clash with my lived reality. There is one question that keeps circling in my mind that the chapter does not fully interrogate:

Is the problem the goal, or the environment around it?

Because the same behavior is not interpreted the same way everywhere.

When you speak clearly about your outcomes in a self-assured setting, they register it as professionalism. You are seen as someone with clarity. People nod. They may even be relieved that someone is willing to do the uncomfortable work of narrating impact in a world where so much work goes unseen.

But place the same behavior in a younger, less anchored setting where people are still trying to understand their true edge in the new setting, and suddenly, it acquires moral color.

The room hears volume instead of clarity. Intent is guessed rather than understood. And the question floating quietly above everyone’s head is no longer “What was achieved?” but “Why are they taking so much of the spotlight?”

This is where lived reality becomes a far better textbook than Marshall.

When I first moved from India to the US, I arrived with the belief that good work naturally reveals itself. That talent glows in the dark.

Then I met people who grew faster simply because they moved faster. They narrated faster. They claimed space faster. Their ascent was not dishonesty. It was speed. And I had to confront an uncomfortable truth:

If you do not use your agency to speak, someone else will use theirs.

I’ve chosen speed as a key thing to optimize in every aspect of life.

By the time I learned to articulate my impact without apology, the environment had changed again. Newer folks around. People still finding their footing. People still trying to understand who they are in the room. And among them, the same clarity I had finally built for myself could feel louder, sharper, or even competitive.

So then, what is the real problem here?

My goals?

Or the unevenness of environments where one person’s articulation reads as confidence and another person’s reads as intrusion?

That is the part the book does not fully resolve. Goal obsession is not merely a psychological flaw. It interacts with context. With hierarchy. With uneven maturity. With the complicated sociology of who is allowed to be ambitious without being misunderstood.

So yes, Marshall is right. Goals can distort you.

But setting can distort you much faster.

And now I suspect the book returned to me not because I am obsessed with goals, but because I am finally learning how to speak clearly in rooms that are not yet prepared to hear clarity without translating it into something else.

So I’ll treat this chapter recommendation the way I treat the book itself — like an air ticket that keeps sending me back and forth between who I was in India and who I am expected to be in the US.

I’ll run a small experiment: same clarity, different calibration. If it works, wonderful. If it doesn’t, at least I’ll know the turbulence came from the cabin, not the passenger.