Today is the final day of 2024. While tomorrow is technically just another day, the beginning of each new year has traditionally served as a time for evaluating our prior 365 days and setting intentions for the upcoming trip around the sun.
Whether you set New Year’s resolutions, regular goals, and/or have assigned work objectives, you’ve almost certainly heard of some common goal-setting jargon and acronyms like Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Key Performance Indicators/Initiatives (KPIs), and SMART goals (specific, measurable, actionable/achievable, realistic/relevant, and timely).
If you’re not familiar with any of those terms, have heard of them but are unfamiliar with their details, or have felt underwhelmingly motivated, or even demotivated, when applying their respective strategies or frameworks, that’s totally OK.
As I recently learned, their motivational and effectiveness qualities aren’t backed by any actual research. They just found their way into generally accepted practice because of being popularized by management consultants between the 1950s and early 1980s. (To be fair, they do work better than having no strategy. But that’s a low bar to clear.)
Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them if you’ve personally found them to be helpful in your goal-setting practices. After all, the point here is to achieve stuff that we individually deem important.
But if you haven’t found them helpful or are simply interested in elevating your game, it turns out that there is a framework backed by actual, replicated research. You—and I, before reading Big Goals by Caroline Adams Miller about a week ago—probably just haven’t heard of it because the two researchers who published the theory in 1990, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, have spent more time over the past 30(+) years understanding, testing, and broadening it than they have popularizing it.
It’s called Goal Setting Theory (GST). And while its basic tenets are as simple as its name, a few subtleties and key differences between them and the more popular ideas, like SMART goals, can not only make you feel more excited about your goals but also help you achieve them and understand why you may have fallen short in the past.
Goal Setting Theory
The key components of GST are as follows:
- There are two types of goals:
- Performance goals are those that target a desired level of performance. This means getting better at something you already know how to do.
- Learning goals are those that target obtaining a desired number of strategies (e.g. skills, procedures) for mastering a task. This means discovering how to do something new.
- There are three methods to set goals:
- Not setting goals or setting vague goals that promote a “do your best” attitude. This is the worst strategy.
- Setting low/easy goals. This is a mediocre strategy.
- Setting challenging, specific goals. This is the best strategy.
- There are two concepts that affect performance and degree of success:
- Mediators are actions that determine whether (or the degree to which) goals are achieved.
- Moderators are conditions that affect how well (or how poorly) those actions are performed.
Let’s run “losing weight”, a common New Year’s resolution, through the GST framework to show the concepts in action and point out the subtleties. (Even if weight loss isn’t currently important to you, it’s a simple, understandable example that will point you in the right direction for applying GST to whatever is important to you.)
Goal types
The first important subtlety is the difference between performance and learning goals. Again, a performance goal involves improving at something you already know how to do, while a learning goal involves developing strategies for mastering a skill (even though you might want to achieve a specific outcome).
For example, an experienced body builder could set a performance goal of losing ten pounds in only four weeks instead of six weeks because she already knows exactly what to do and wants to be more efficient.
But that would be a terrible goal for someone who has never lost weight before (or who has lost weight but not kept it off). Because this individual is neither knowledgeable about how to safely and effectively lose weight nor experienced in implementing the necessary actions, he’s likely to be more motivated and ultimately successful if his goal became learning three effective weight loss strategies (e.g. eating more protein, strength training, getting enough sleep), practicing them at least five days per week, and focusing on improving from week to week.
Methods for setting goals
If you’re familiar with the SMART framework, you’re probably not surprised that setting vague goals (e.g. lose some weight) or low/easy goals (e.g. lose two pounds in the next six months) are poor or mediocre strategies. You’re also probably not surprised that setting specific goals (e.g. lose ten pounds) is a better strategy.
What’s different with GST is the recommendation to set “challenging” goals instead of “achievable” goals. While you might assume that pursuing something that’s deemed to be achievable would be motivating, research shows that challenges elicit more focus, greater creativity, and, ultimately, more motivation than their “achievable” counterparts.
Of course, we still need to keep two things in mind here.
First, “challenging” should be just that: challenging but not improbable or impossible (both of which are demotivating).
Second, the concept of goal types still applies.
From a performance goal standpoint, losing ten pounds in four weeks could be appropriately challenging for our example bodybuilder while losing it in two weeks might be impossible (at least, without losing substantial amounts of muscle).
From a learning goal standpoint, figuring out how to eat an extra 40 grams of protein per day might be too stressful (i.e. “impossible”) for our other example individual’s current experience level, while eating an extra 10 grams per day might be too easy and eating an extra 25 grams could be perfectly challenging.
Performance and success
Moderators and mediators are the factors that determine whether you’ll achieve your goal. While that seems to be more related to implementation, they should also be considered during the creation phase to help you determine the optimal size and scope (i.e. degree of challenge and goal type).
Some examples of moderators, or conditions, for weight loss include:
- Possessing knowledge about how to lose weight (e.g. what to eat, what exercises to perform, how much to sleep)
- Having a high-quality gym nearby
- Having support (e.g. an effective coach, a dependable training partner, a spouse who doesn’t buy cookies and leave them on the countertop in full view)
- Having access to a scale to measure progress
Some examples of mediators, or actions, for weight loss include:
- Consistently applying knowledge (e.g. eating enough protein, training daily, going to bed on time)
- Not only going to the gym but also putting in appropriate effort instead of just going through the motions
- Listening to the coach’s advice, appreciating and being inspired by the training partner, asking the spouse for help preparing healthy meals
- Regularly stepping on the scale and adjusting other actions based on the data the scale provides
While all of these factors could help both of our example individuals, their relative importance would vary.
For example, because of her prior experience, the bodybuilder might have an easier time ignoring the cookies that her spouse buys. However, that situation might entirely derail the other individual.
Alternatively, not having access to a decent scale is more likely to affect the bodybuilder’s success because the nature of her goal involves achieving a numerical outcome as opposed to developing a skill.
Putting it into practice
This New Year consider spending an hour running your resolutions and goals through the GST framework to improve your chances for success.
And if you’d like to learn more about GST and another methodology that builds upon it, check out Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life.
Whether you consider yourself a goal-setting expert or a relative beginner, I’m sure you’ll learn something that will make you better at a skill that will pay dividends for the rest of your life.