How To Avoid Goals From Falling Into The Trap Of Mediocrity

A brief history of goals

The American psychologist Edwin Locke was an early pioneer in goal-setting theory publishing his first article on the subject Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives in 1968. Management guru Peter Drucker brought goals into the corporation in 1954 with the introduction of Management by Objectives (MBOs). And while there are countless goal-setting frameworks, a few of the most popular ones are SMART, FAST,OKRs, and BHAGs.

S.M.A.R.T goals

SMART goals introduced in the early 80s and stand for:

S- Specific, M- Measurable, A- Achievable, R- Relevant and T- Timebound.

F.A.S.T. Goals

In the 2018 The MIT Sloan Review put out the article With Goals, FAST Beats SMART sought to address some of the criticisms of its earlier brethren. They defined F.A.S.T goals as:

F- Frequently discussed , A - Ambitious , S- Specific and T - Transparent.

OKRs

OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results and are generally attributed to the late Andy Grove.

The venture capitalist John Doerr reportedly introduced the OKR framework to Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page and calls them a “vaccine against fuzzy thinking.” Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of OKRs:

OKRs comprise an objective—a clearly defined goal—and 3–5 key results—specific measures used to track the achievement of that goal. The goal of OKR is to define how to achieve objectives through concrete, specific and measurable actions

BHAGs (aka Big Hairy Audacious Goals)

We’d be remiss if we didn’t include the famous BHAGs (pronounced bee-hags) from Jim Collins’ 1991 business school classic Good to Great. 

So now what?

Going through these various goal-setting frameworks, you see a wide range of diverging principles and irreconcilable dualities, including:

Still confused? So am I. So what does the research say?

The case FOR goals

The academic research gives goals a resounding hell yeah as they significantly improve individual performance. In the paper titled Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation a 35 year meta-study of shows how goals help you:

We intuitively see this in action when we sign up for a 10k race. Surely we’ll splurge on some expensive running shoes and a wearable device like Garmin watch. But as soon as the race date gets added to your calendar, the progress kicks in:

That 10k race delivers your future self a great win. Does that mean mission accomplished?

The case AGAINST goals

But goals don't always work. In fact, the evidence against them is also quite strong.

Goals are at odds with long-term progress

In his post Forget about Setting Goals, the author (and habits expert) James Clear points out that goals are at odds with long-term progress because they create a “yoyo effect of motivation:

• Many runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training. The race is no longer there to motivate them.

What happens once the race is over? Without an extrinsic source of motivation, the progress fades:

When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it? This is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal.

Goals restrict your happiness

But Clear’s not done, launching another shot against goals: they restrict your happiness. He points to the when-then trap, which mistakenly says “Once I achieve [X] then I’ll be happy.”

Making happiness contingent on future success is one of the devastating effects of the hedonic treadmill. It’s the underlying force behind the striving that makes so many high-performers really unhappy.

Why? It turns out that our baseline happiness (aka happiness set point) is quite fixed. When something really bad happens, our happiness reverts back to this set point. Likewise, when something good happens, the happiness set point remains stubbornly fixed.

Goals rob you of the present moment

In Dan Harris’ memoir 10% Happier, the news anchor discusses how difficult it was to be calm in the present moment. As an ultimate career striver (in the competitive world of news casting) Harris was always looking for the next goal. Until it brought him to his knees with crippling (on-the-air) panic attacks.

His meditation practice taught him to center himself in the present and he summarized his prior state of mind so eloquently:

When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.

And while in our heart of hearts, we know that happiness comes from the journey not the destination, goals can easily make us forget that. And instead, we end up subconsciously pissing on the present.

Goals set you up for self judgement

Goals also set you up for self-judgement. In the talk How to Set Goals the Smart Way, Jordan Petersen describes the Razor’s Edge of goal setting. Goals (and particularly stretch ones like becoming the president) are an idealized version of your future self. So they make for a great source of motivation. But when you fail to achieve them (and by definition, you’ll miss some stretch goals), you risk blaming yourself with hurtful self-judgement.

Goals are arbitrary

Lastly, goals are arbitrary. Allow me to present two commonly-held goals:

In both instances, the punishment for failing to achieve the goal doesn’t fit the crime. If you ran a 4:01 marathon, should you really beat yourself up for that extra minute? (We are, after all, hobbyist runners at best.)

And with Inbox Zero, consider the angst and agitation when you have 9 unread messages chilling in your inbox. While those 9 messages have zero impact on your life’s trajectory, they are likely to be accompanied by a heavy dose of cognitive load and anxiety.

Focus on process over outcomes

Clear’s remedy is to pick systems over goals, arguing that:

Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.

Citing the legendary 49er’s coach Bill Walsh, Clear adds:

The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day.

Said differently, if you trust your inputs (focus, kindness, self-accountability, habits, a growth mindset) the outputs should take care of themselves.

The danger of the “systems only” approach

If only it was that easy. You don’t need to have read Thinking Fast and Slow to know that human beings are quite good at getting in their own way and self-sabotaging. And for many high performers, throwing your hands in the air and saying “I trust my system” can be a sneaky way of absconding one’s self-accountability.

So if there’s only a system – chances are we’ll find a way to game it.

Goal-Setting: Is there a right way?

How can you combine the efficacy of systems with the intentionality of goals? One approach is to separate outcome goals and process goals. 

An outcome goal is binary, measurable and time-bound.

A process goal is non-binary, iterative, ongoing and hard to measure.

Step 1: Pick 3 to 6 goals for the upcoming year

Pick 3 to 6 goals that you will target over a one year period. The small number helps avoid the diffusion of effort and the one-year period provides enough of a runway for meaningful progress.

Step 2: Convert them into process goals (if possible)

Once you’ve identified your goals, try as hard as you can to convert them all into process goals. Here’s how you might convert the outcome goals above:

It might make sense to keep an occasional outcome goal (like a revenue target) but be very careful about the associated dangers (arbitrariness, self-judgement, hedonic treadmill) listed earlier.

Step 3: Regularly review your progress

Now that you’re armed with some outcome goals, you can easily incorporate a check-in with your weekly review. If you’re quantitatively minded you can go through each input (eg. Did I send a weekly report?) or the right-brainers can answer a few reflection questions related to each goal.

Don’t feel daunted by these questions. If your weekly review is tight, these questions will only add a few minutes to the process.