New Year: Are You Setting Goals The Right Way?

A New Year means a lot of things for different people. In business you may be starting your next fiscal year. This may be the end of an annual visit with loved ones. For others, this is the perfect time and living, breathing, motivational moment you need to be able to start that new fitness journey. Starting anything is exciting but are you setting yourself up for success after the shiny new year becomes a distant memory? Take a sneak peak at the easy to use tricks that the experts do not usually teach you.

Summary Outline:

• How Smart Is Smart?
• Prepare to Prepare
• Know Your Why 
• Stacking The Deck In Your Favor
• Flexibility In More Than Your Joints 
• Staying Motivated
• Just Keep Showing Up

How Smart Is SMART?

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Usually when you get told to set a goal the most common framework is the S.M.A.R.T. Model which aims to keep you on track for the task or goal you are setting out to complete. For those less familiar with this framework it stands for:

Specific - This means your goal should be clear and specific, kind of like telling your GPS exactly where you want to go. Instead of saying "I want to do better in school," you'd say "I want to get an A in Math."

Measurable - You need to be able to track your progress. Think of it like a video game where you can see your score or progress bar. If your goal is to get an A in Math, then measurable means defining what scores you need on tests and assignments to reach that A.

Achievable - This is about setting a goal that you can actually reach. It's like choosing a level in a game that's challenging but not impossible. If you're currently getting a C in Math, setting a goal for a B might be more achievable than jumping straight to an A.

Relevant - Your goal should be important to you and fit with your other plans. For example, if you're planning to study engineering in college, then getting better at Math is a relevant goal.

Timely - This means setting a deadline. It’s like knowing you have to defeat the game boss before the timer runs out. If you want to get an A in Math, you might set a goal to improve your test scores by the next semester.

While this is a good roadmap for getting through a specific task that fits into a specific streamlined box, this framework lacks the reality of human components - like motivation, obstacles, flexibility, and higher order meaning beyond the goal itself.

If we don’t want to use a ‘SMART’ goal, than what framework should you consider?

Prepare to Prepare

Höchli et al 2018.

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Research shows that whether you’re looking for long term goals or short term goals, the pursuit of either is best approached when a goal is stretched into a system that facilitates both.  The following framework aims to do just that:

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Superordinate Goals (Goal That Impacts Self)

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‍This is your ultimate, big-picture goal. For a New Year's running resolution, this might be something like "Be Healthy" or “Optimize My Running Performance.” The goal becomes a little more abstract. Notice how there is an identification to self in how the goal is written.

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Intermediate Goals (Check-Points/Typical New Year's Resolutions)

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These are smaller goals that help you progress towards your superordinate goal. They're like milestones along the journey. In the context of running a marathon, intermediate goals could be things like "Run a 5K", “Join a community run club,” or “Finish a Marathon by the end of the year.” Each of these is a step towards your ultimate goal of running a marathon. Notice how these are milestones that you can achieve that require additional steps but also are a step in their own right.

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Subordinate Goals (Objectives and Tasks)

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These are the smallest, most specific goals that will help you achieve your intermediate goals. They're the daily or weekly tasks you need to complete. For your running resolution, subordinate goals might include "Run three times a week," "Increase running distance by 10% each week," or "Go to practice 5 times a week."

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By aligning yourself with a larger schematic of goals you can be more systematic throughout the process and help get to where you truly want to be – your vision of your best self.

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Know Your Why

Who we want to become and why can be more important than how we got thereMy advisor in college always liked to quote Fredrich Nietzsche,

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’.” 

One of the top reasons that goals fall apart is that motivation begins to wane as soon as the newness of the goal is gone. Knowing why the journey began is going to be an anchor point for every action helping to reinforce the behavioral goals.

Forming new habits and breaking old ones can take months or even years to accomplish so having a goal embedded in your true identity is crucial to buying into your vision.

Stacking The Deck In Your Favor

Having a ‘why’ in and of itself is important, but without an appropriate foundation of action items or intermediate goals, it becomes hard to bridge the gap from the day to day to your end goal.

By having a series of intermediate goals, it becomes easier to approach the many facets that inevitably come with, for the sake of our New Year’s Resolution example, ‘Optimizing Your Performance or Being A Person Optimized For Performance.’

As a runner this includes larger actions that will fuel your motivation and sense of personal fulfillment while setting you up for an optimal path for fulfilling your ‘why.’ A great rule of thumb for these intermediate goals is that if they are not helping you with your ‘why’ then they should not necessarily be a goal.

If the intermediate goal you are thinking of is working against your higher vision of yourself, then definitely avoid or reconsider if your ‘why’ is accurate.

Your daily or weekly actions can be broken down into smaller habits or trends that are more like tasks that fulfill those intermediate goals. This could be taking 2 days off a week to stay healthy during the spring months when you know you might be more stressed and tired from life and work. Or it could be showing up to at least 2 weekly meetups for the local running club you joined to fulfill the goal of joining a local running club. These smaller actions should feel more bite sized and tangible.

Flexibility In More Than Your Joints

Life is going to happen and when it does it is important to remember that you can be flexible in how you approach your larger goal version of yourself and why you are pursuing this larger vision. 

Missing a week of going to your local running club is not going to mean that you are no longer a part of your local running club; you can go again next week when you are not on vacation.

And while you might not be at the local running club you might still be hitting your goal of running at least 4 days a week because being a person who is optimizing their performance, your larger goal, is not a byproduct of consistently being perfect but rather being consistently good enough. Aim for 60% of the time hitting your daily and weekly goals and you will set yourself up for success.

Staying Motivated

Think about the kids who study because they inherently want to learn and the students who study because their parents made them. The ones who inherently wanted to learn are more likely to have developed the skills to overcome adversity in the absence of rewards and external pressures than those who were forced to engage in best practices.

Embracing the process and tying back to your ideal self and why is an exercise in intrinsic, or self propelled motivation, rather than extrinsic, or reward propelled motivation. This is crucial since again life is not always going to be rewarding and distractions are aplenty.

Just Keep Showing Up

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After Des Linden won the 2018 marathon after having run the race five times prior and crediting the idea of “keep showing up” to find success in her pursuit of a World Marathon Major, the term has almost become a running cliche. 

However, there is something to be said for this ideal when it comes to goals, especially goals involving behavioral change. Running is an endurance sport and once you get past the first few months it could be several more months before improvements occur. 

What habits your work towards today can be the difference in optimal performance 5 years from now even if today it seems negligible. If you take the time to really flesh out your goals using these principles and trust your why, the rest will follow

References

Höchli, B., Brügger, A., & Messner, C. (2018). How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 01879. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01879