Goal setting
Goal setting is deciding what you want to achieve and how you'll get there. Decades of research by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found that specific, hard goals lead to better performance than vague "do your best" ones.1 Writing the goal down is the easy part. It works when it's yours, planned for the obstacle and tracked.
Five things a working goal has
Each comes with one goal written twice: first the way most of us write it, then rewritten to fit.
1. Specific and hard
"Do your best" sounds kind and gives you nothing to aim at. Specific, difficult goals led to higher performance than easy goals or "do your best" instructions in the goal-setting studies.1,2 Hard means a stretch you could still reach.
Before: "Get fitter." After: "Walk 8,000 steps a day, five days a week, by the end of March."
2. Yours
Goals that fit people's own interests and values got more sustained effort, and were reached more often, than goals pursued out of pressure or guilt.3 Reaching them also left people happier.3
A "should" goal tends to run on borrowed fuel.
Before: "Lose weight because everyone at work is doing it." After: "Get strong enough to hike the trail my dad and I used to do."
3. Planned for the obstacle
Name what's likely to get in the way, then write an if-then plan for that exact moment. Across 94 tests, people who made if-then plans reached their goals more often than people who only set the goal, with a medium to large effect.4 Contrasting the goal with the obstacle before you commit also helps people commit to goals they can reach.5
Before: "Study Spanish every day." After: "If I get home and want to watch TV, then I'll do one 15-minute Spanish lesson first."
4. Written down and checked
Monitoring progress helped people reach their goals, and it helped more when the progress was physically recorded or shared; that's the finding from 138 experiments with 19,951 people.6
Before: "I'll keep it in my head." After: "Every Sunday I mark my week on a calendar on the fridge: done, partly, or missed."
5. About learning, while the task is new
A hard result goal can backfire on a new, complex task, because you don't yet know how to do it. At that stage a goal to learn, such as finding several strategies, works better.2
Before: "Make $2,000 from my side business this month." After: "This month, test three ways to find customers and note which one gets replies."
- Choose: Pick one goal that matters to you, not one you feel you should have.
- Make it specific: Name what, how much and by when. Make it a stretch you can reach.
- Find the obstacle: Name the main thing inside you that's likely to get in the way.
- Plan for it: Write one if-then plan for the moment the obstacle shows up.
- Track it: Write your progress down once a week.
- Review: Every month, keep the goal, change the plan, or let the goal go.
SMART came from a management magazine
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable (or assignable, in the original), realistic and time-bound. George Doran proposed it in a 1981 article in Management Review, as a checklist for writing objectives.7 It's a handy checklist and was never a research finding.
The trouble is in the A and the R. Read too cautiously, "achievable" and "realistic" pull you toward easy goals, and easy goals led to lower performance than hard ones in Locke and Latham's studies.1
SMART is also silent on whether the goal is yours and on what you'll do when you hit the obstacle, which are points 2 and 3 above.
The lift, the missed day, and telling people
Writing a goal down often feels good, a small lift, as if part of the work is done. It isn't. That's the moment to add the obstacle and the plan, while you're still keen.
Then comes the first missed day, and plenty of people take it as proof the whole thing is ruined. When researchers followed people forming new habits, missing one opportunity did not materially affect the process.8
One missed day is one missed day.
Then there's telling everyone. Some goals are about becoming a certain kind of person, like a lawyer, and when other people noticed that kind of intention, people in one set of studies acted on it less, as if being seen had already given them the feeling of arriving.9 Sharing progress points the other way.6 Tell people what you did this week, and keep who you're going to be to yourself for now.
When goals backfire
Hard goals can narrow your focus, and a review of goal setting in organizations listed what falls outside it: people can neglect everything the goal doesn't measure, take bad risks, cut ethical corners and lose interest in the work itself.10
At home, that looks like hitting a step count by skipping sleep, or meeting a savings goal by cutting the things that keep you well. If a goal is making the rest of your life worse, change the goal.
If you set goals and then feel crushed when you miss them, week after week, that pattern deserves more than a better plan.
What is one goal you've been carrying around without writing down? Write it as a specific goal, then write the obstacle most likely to stop you and your if-then plan for it.
Answer this with JoyGoal examples by area
Starting points. Change them until they're yours.
- Health: "Cook dinner at home four nights a week this month. If I get home late, then I'll make the 15-minute pasta."
- Work: "Finish the certification by June 30 by studying 30 minutes before work on weekdays."
- Relationships: "Call one friend each Sunday. If I don't feel like it, then I'll send a voice note instead."
- Money: "Save $100 a month by moving it automatically on payday."
- Learning: "Read 12 books this year, one a month, 20 pages before bed."
- Wellbeing: "Journal for five minutes three nights a week, right after brushing my teeth."
Not sure which area needs a goal? The wheel of life shows where you'd like more balance. In the Joyful app, you can keep your goals next to your journal and talk them through with Joy.
Questions people ask
What are the 5 steps in goal setting?
There's no single official list. The six-step strip above is our version, and if you want five, drop the monthly review, though that's the step that lets you quit a goal on purpose instead of by drift.
What are the 5 C's of goal setting?
Many summaries of Locke and Latham's work list five principles: clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback and task complexity.1 They match points 1, 2, 4 and 5 above.
What is the difference between a goal and an intention?
A goal is an outcome with a date on it. An intention is how you want to act along the way, such as "I'll be patient today." Plenty of people keep both: the goal for the quarter, the intention for the morning.
How many goals should I have at once?
Fewer than you think. Every goal needs its own obstacle and its own if-then plan, and writing those properly for more than three at a time is hard to keep up.
Related
- Vision board: a picture of your goal, with the obstacle and plan added.
- How to manifest, and what holds up from it.
- Affirmations for motivation and affirmations for success.