The Psychology of Goals
How you construct your goal influences your success
Wednesday, December 27, 2023
Quiz time. Between A or B, which goal do you think would be more effective, resolution-wise?
- Resolving to go to the gym five days out of the week
- Resolving to go to the gym seven days out of the week with two emergency reserves.
(An emergency reserve is a free pass for use when something comes up that makes getting to the gym difficult.)
Here’s another one to try out:
In constructing a goal, would it be more effective to say you will cook at home three times over the course of the week or more effective to say you will cook at home between one – five times over the course of the week?
According to Hal Hershfield, a behavioral psychologist and the author of
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, you’re better off working in some room for flexibility in your goal while still establishing a framework for consistency. Shooting for seven days a week at the gym allows for the possibility of doing more but none of the guilt if something interferes because you’ve got a legitimate pass. Now you can avoid all that discouraging chatter about how hopeless your schedule is or how bad you are which will unravel your resolution faster than fast food.
Same goes for establishing a range. If we aim to cook at home between one – five times a week, the high end drives us forward in our quest to achieve while the low end keeps us involved when a week gets complicated.
How we construct our goal is pivotal. One of the primary reasons our goals break down is because they haven’t been defined in a way that will carry us forward when our motivation drops off or life gets complicated. That’s why it’s so important to map out a SMART goal. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Based.
For instance, let’s say our goal is to be able to easily get up and down off the floor so we can play with our children or grandchildren. Is that
SPECIFIC? Not yet. But we can make it specific by saying that
every morning before brushing our teeth (with two emergency reserves in our back pocket) we are going to do 10 – 15 squats for strength and 10 – 15 jumping toe touches for agility.
Is it
MEASURABLE? Yes. 10 – 15 squats? Check. 10 – 15 toe touches? Check.
Is it
ACHIEVABLE? Probably, at least timewise. It will only take us three minutes or less to do 10 - 15 squats and 10 - 15 toe touches.
Is it
RELEVANT? Absolutely because it’s vitally important to us to be able to interact with our children and grandchildren on their level.
Is it
TIME-BASED? It’s partway there. We can make it completely time-based if it we establish a deadline. So, let’s say that by March 1, we will have the strength and agility to easily get up and down off the ground so we can play with our children and grandchildren. Three minutes a day, check done.
But what happens if by February things are falling apart and now we’re dreading brushing our teeth?
That’s when it’s time to investigate the construction of the goal.
The glitch is with the goal construction, not with us. Upon investigation, maybe we find that the jumping toe touches are making us dizzy. No wonder we’re dreading it. Okay, fine. We’ll try doing the cat-like toe touches with our feet still on the ground. If that doesn’t solve the problem, we’ll figure out a different exercise to help us develop agility.
When you consider the certainty that at some point we’re going to hit a rough patch in our resolution, investigating and refining the original SMART goal is probably 50% of the game. After all, we are not the exact same person who constructed the original goal and our lives are not the exact same lives. Nothing stays nailed down. Therefore, we may need to refine the goal 5 times before we get it right and accomplish what we aimed to accomplish. Ultimately, SMART goals are all about being reasonable, incremental, and sustainable so that a year from now we’re still with them. That’s why they are so smart.
To crafting well-constructed goals,
E