Do Goals Work?
One goal at a time? Nahhhhh.
Since I graduated college, I’ve planned my personal and professional moves down to the day. I’ve had a running “development plan” where I check off boxes month after month. I even raced an IRONMAN because I put it on this document. For those of you who are smart enough to avoid an IRONMAN, it is a REALLY LONG exercise event. Too long really.
Point being, my life has been goal-setting. I’ve worked in health and fitness and got my degree there as well. I played sports competitively in high school and college which led to more goal-setting and train people every day to do the same. Set a goal, achieve it, move on.
I remember selling my first house in real estate, getting my first check for a few thousand dollars thinking that I was king of the world. I rolled into our brokerage office full of confidence and smiles only to have my principal broker shake me back to reality with a simple sentence.
“Nice work, now go do it again”
Goal-setting! Is it about the process? The accomplishment? The growth mindset (buzzword alert)? Who knows. I do know this: goal-setting leads to some impressive accomplishments.
A coworker of mine, Emma, asked a really good question today.
“Is it possible to be successful with multiple goals? Or do you need just one?”
This one got me thinking, as the last few years I’ve been feeling more and more averse to goal-setting due to its tendency to pigeon-hole both myself and those that I work with into one-dimensional thinking and action. Still, the idea was an interesting one. Can we pursue multiple goals at once?
For example, one who smokes, drinks, accrues debt, avoids exercise and throws their relationships into a burning building may want to stop smoking, quit drinking, obtain financial freedom, get six-pack abs and spend more time on the phone with their mother. This person MIGHT struggle to accomplish that many goals at once. I get that, but is it that unrealistic?
If goals are interrelated, the sky's the limit for us peasant humans. Quit drinking and those six pack abs might start to show. Call your mom and she might buy you a christmas sweater next year that you can return for $60 at Macy’s to help pay down that credit card debt.
The latter example may be a stretch but the fact is that the goal-setting naysayers have a ton of good reason to rag on goals. They can lead to frustration, lack of self-efficacy, single-track thinking, unfulfilled potential and night after night of crying listening to Chris Stapleton’s latest album.
What they’re good for is nudging folks towards the life they want to lead. Small goals that interrelate are more effective than big goals that lie alone and unreachable. When someone walks into the gym and wants to deadlift 600 pounds, they may want to start by sleeping 8 hours, eating breakfast more days than not and mixing in a water with dinner between the red wine. Those are all little goals that will lead to far more success than pursuing that 600 pound deadlift with reckless abandon waiting for their body to break.
I don’t know if goals are good or bad. They’ve done a lot of good for me but I can see the dark side as well. What I do know is that if goal-setting is going to be a thing, we could benefit from the idea of small, interrelated goals that we can check off on our way to whoever or wherever we aim to be.
What do you think?