Setting Effective Goals

Just in case you need additional motivation at this point, here’s a “Pep Talk” from Kid President:

Now that you’re in the right mindset for growth, let’s talk about how to set effective goals.

But first, a caveat related to goals that might sound almost blasphemous in Western culture: Most of us probably spend way too much time worrying about achievement and productivity. Does that sound like crazy talk? Consider the enormous personal productivity industry: all the books, seminars, online courses, personal coaching, mobile apps, etc. designed to help us “get more done!” “make more money!” “achieve more success!” This industry is valued in the billions of dollars. One of the most cherished values of Western culture is high productivity, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem is that too often these efforts are directed toward pursuits that are fairly inconsequential in contributing to our wellbeing. The belief that more is always better (more money made, more widgets produced, more success achieved) ends up being a treadmill that gives the illusion of progress while feeding an underlying insecurity of never having enough or ever being enough. Countless people on their deathbeds have looked back on their lives and lamented that they spent too much time at work.

Stepping off that soapbox, the process of setting and achieving goals can be extremely rewarding and contribute immensely to our wellbeing when we are working toward things that really matter. This entire website is devoted to what positive psychology research and the wisdom traditions have identified as the things that will make the greatest difference in our wellbeing. For example, setting and achieving goals to nurture relationships, cultivate gratitude, or strengthen physical and mental health definitely contribute to a life of flourishing. If our efforts are deliberately guided by our values and focused on areas that are likely to make a meaningful difference in our wellbeing, consistent goal achievement increases our power to thrive.

Why do Goals Matter?

There are many reasons why it’s important to get good at setting and achieving meaningful goals:

• Achieving goals contributes to a purposeful life; we can look back on a string of accomplishments and it starts to form a kind of story arc for our lives that adds to a sense of coherence and meaning, and brings great satisfaction.

• Goal achievement is important for increasing self-efficacy--our confidence in our ability to be successful in a given area. It feels good to make progress toward the things we value, and this increases our confidence to set and achieve future goals. Thus, setting and achieving goals creates a positive feedback loop toward more effective action, and we can ride this momentum to new heights of wellbeing.

• Pursuing goals helps us learn to use our time more effectively. Similarly, goals contribute to organizational skills as we identify and pursue subgoals, develop schedules, and keep track of progress.

• Meaningful goals aligned with our purpose and values can be particularly helpful during challenging times, as they give us a healthy target to shoot for and provide motivation to push forward in spite of setbacks. Viktor Frankl wrote: “Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.” Sometimes it’s the motivation generated by a highly valued goal that pulls us through challenging times.

• Goal achievement helps turn our good intentions into meaningful progress for all the other topics discussed on this website. Matching effective goal setting and achievement with any of the other strategies that you’ve identified for improvement places you on a faster track to flourishing.

What Makes for a Good Goal?

You can maximize your chances for growth by starting with well-conceived goals. A few key principles will help you craft goals that really pull you toward becoming your best self. Specifically, the best goals are:

• Informed by your authentic values and interests. The goal should be based on what’s really important to you, not what you think others may want from you. You need to really own this goal; is it really you? What if no one else knew you achieved this goal? Would it still be important to you? Working toward this goal, do you feel as if you’re more the person that you want to be? Explicitly identifying the values that underlie your goals—the “why” behind the “what”—can also provide the motivation needed to work through the inevitable obstacles that will arise.

• Intrinsically rewarding. Working on this goal should feel inherently satisfying and meaningful to you. That doesn’t mean it won’t be challenging; it should be, but you should feel some satisfaction with every step in the right direction. What if you never actually achieved the specific goal you’ve set? Would it still be rewarding to pursue? Could you look back on your best efforts and feel satisfied that it was still time well spent? (More on flexibility with goals in just a bit).

In contrast, extrinsic goals—those that are just a means to some other end—are much less effective and less rewarding. Examples of extrinsically-motivated goals could be making more money, working to increase social status, or avoiding embarrassment. Typically, extrinsic goals are things that are based more on looking better to others. It’s ok to have a great intrinsically-rewarding goal that also carries some extrinsic benefits like social recognition or increased income, but bring some real introspection and self-awareness to this process and evaluate whether your efforts will be valuable and rewarding in their own right. If so, you’re on the right track.

• Approach-oriented. An approach-oriented goal is framed as approaching a desirable outcome as opposed to avoiding an undesirable outcome. For example, “I will eat three healthy meals per day” is an approach goal; “I will not gain five pounds this winter” is an avoidance goal. Notice how the same general idea behind a goal can often be framed in terms of approach or avoidance. Another way to think about this is to avoid setting what we might call a “dead person’s goal.” A dead person’s goal is one which a corpse is able to do better than (or at least as well as) a living person. If you set the goal “I will not yell at my kids this week,” and you’re competing against a corpse, the best you can hope for is to end in a tie (because the corpse will absolutely not be yelling at your kids this week). Framing it as an approach goal, you could say, “I will use kind and respectful speech with my kids this week” (now you’ve got a chance to beat that corpse!).

• Activity-based. Research indicates that pursuing activity goals (e.g., learning how to paint, strengthening a relationship, joining a book club) leads to more happiness than goals aimed at changing a life circumstance (e.g., buying a new house, getting a promotion at work). This is likely due to the natural experience of hedonic adaptation to new positive circumstances (quickly adapting to the “new normal” of the change in circumstance). Activity goals tend to offer more opportunities for ongoing challenges, recurrent positive events, meeting new people, and other varied experiences that are less subject to hedonic adaptation.       

This variation of the “SMART goals” acronym summarizes these and other helpful principles. You want your goals to be:

• Specific: Have you clearly specified the actions you will take, framed as an approach-based goal? (no dead person’s goals). For example: “I will read a nonfiction book for 30 minutes per day” is specific; much better than the vague/nonspecific “I will read more.”

• Meaningful: Is this goal genuinely guided by your values (what’s really important to you)? Is the goal authentic and intrinsically rewarding?

• Adaptive: Does this goal contribute to you becoming the person you want to be? Is this goal likely to lead you in a direction that improves and enriches your life? A goal like “I will play video games for 20 hours per week” may be specific, activity-based, etc., but it’s probably not adaptive for enriching your life.

• Realistic: This is a big one. Is the goal realistically achievable, based on your current skills, health, circumstances, financial status, and the current demands on your time? According to authors Denis Waitley and Reni Witt, “Your goal should be just out of reach, but not out of sight.”

• Time-framed: If possible, have you set a specific day, date, or time for working on and/or accomplishing the goal? This helps with accountability and evaluating your success.

Ultimately, good goals are motivating, energizing, and highly meaningful targets to aim for that help organize your behavior and maximize your opportunities for growth. If purpose and values are like a compass for setting your direction in life, effective goals are like landmarks or guideposts that are aligned with your chosen direction that give you visible targets to move toward. If you were using an actual compass while hiking/orienteering in a remote backcountry area, you would likely use the compass to establish the direction you wanted to travel, and then identify a physical landmark in line with that direction toward which you would then hike. Keeping your eye on the landmark and moving toward it, you know you’re headed in the right direction. It provides you with motivation, a gauge of your progress, and a sense of accomplishment once you reach it.

Parenthetically, the orienteering analogy also emphasizes the importance of flexibility in working with goals. Sometimes unforeseen obstacles appear (like a river, crevasse, or other barrier in the terrain) that require re-routing. That’s not a big deal; you just keep working with the compass and the realities of the terrain around you to find the best route forward, and sometimes that means picking a new landmark. Ultimately what’s most important is that you’re headed in the right direction, and enjoying the journey at the same time. The great thing about setting goals that follow the principles outlined above is that every step forward can be rewarding. Still, if disappointing rough terrain precludes reaching a specific goal you’ve set, consider this wisdom from Bruce Lee: “A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Keeping in mind the ideas of flexibility, enjoying the journey, and the emphasis on simply moving in the right (valued) direction, would you like to know possibly the most important “secret” to actually achieving the goals you set for yourself?! Then you’re ready to learn about mental contrasting!