[dasil003]

Goals are a red herring. Whether spoken or not, goals always exist for every productive thing that happens in the short-term. The high-level nebulous goals aren't goals that make things happen directly, they're more like a vision that allows you to set more focused goals, which is why they don't do much by themselves.

The real issue at hand is motivation. If you are consistently motivated to do something to better yourself, then chances are it will lead you somewhere. High levels of motivation for non-essential self-development is not the human norm, so if you can find a way to harness and apply it I think you stand a good chance of being above average. As a computer geek I think there's a very obvious answer for me and a lot of people here, but I wouldn't describe it as the route to success because there are probably as many ways to find focused motivation as there are successful people.