Sharpen your pencils and dust off the journal – it’s time for the annual goal fest. Time to get ready for the impending New Year (or not). Corbett reminds us in a blog entry this week that sometimes setting goals can work against us.
So why do we do it? For decades now, goal setting has been a cornerstone of personal development. I first got a taste of it back in 1990(ish) when my wife and I had a brief Amway moment. Back then Zig Ziglar was the hero of the hour and his books and tapes were key tools of the trade. He, and thousands of others since, touted a now well worn story of a university study on goal achievement.
‘The study’ reportedly originates from Yale (Harvard in some versions) and focusses on the class of 1953 (’79 in some versions). It apparently found that 10 years after graduation, the 3% of graduates who wrote down their goals when they finished university had accumulated more wealth than the other 97% combined.
The study has been offered up time and again as compelling evidence that writing down your goals produces results and has thus inspired millions to do so.
But Is It Real?
It turns out that the study probably never happened and no-one seems to know who actually started the apparent myth.
Let’s assume for a moment though that the study did actually happen and the conclusions are generally as reported:
- The conclusion implies that writing/setting the goal is the primary cause and achieving the goal is the effect. Would that particular 3% have achieved the outcome even if they hadn’t written them down? In other words, was goal achievement already a characteristic of those people and writing down goals simply an expression of that trait?
- The results simply say the top 3% were wealthier than the rest but don’t actually reference the goals themselves. Were the goals only financial? Were there any goals that they didn’t achieve? If so, what percentage? And though they were wealthy, was that the only measure of success? Were they happy? What was the quality of their relationships, health, personal and spiritual fulfilment?
- Though the 97% wasn’t as wealthy as the 3%, does it necessarily mean that the 97% didn’t achieve any of their goals in life or were less fulfilled than that 3%?
We tend to overlook these flaws because the conclusion matches we want to believe – that there really is a simple key to achieving what we want (the same thing that made The Secret tremendously successful in more recent years).
There has however, been a subsequent study from Dominican University that concludes “writing one’s goal enhances goal achievement.” The study claims to be ‘sound scientific research’ but is flawed on a number of counts, including that it only ran for four weeks and that the ‘success’ of the participants was assessed subjectively by the participants themselves, some of whom would have had a natural bias to talk themselves up to relieve ‘performance anxiety’.
No doubt if someone was sufficiently motivated, they could compile a study that shows 97% of all written goals are never achieved (wouldn’t surprise me if it was more than 99%). From that, a university researcher could conclude that goal setting doesn’t work. But again, they’d be wrong, because goal setting does work – most of us have some experience of this. Most of us also have some experience that it doesn’t work. Therein lies the problem.
Results May Vary
Surveys and studies on such things are meaningless. Even personal past experience can be meaningless because it’s variable to the point that we can’t even predict our own outcomes reliably. It’s like using a survey to decide what type of ice cream we want. It depends on a number of factors, all of which are personal, circumstantial and even how we are feeling in that particular moment.
If goal setting is working for you, it’s working for you. If it’s not, it’s not. If it’s making you go crazy, causes anguish, or is tiresome and boring, it’s probably not working. It doesn’t mean that it won’t work in another case though.
Sometimes it works to be detailed, sometimes it works to be vague. Sometimes we’re active and creative, sometimes we’re passive. And sometimes we just go with the flow of life and achieve outcomes we never even considered.
What doesn’t work though is goal setting for the sake of goal setting. Corbett sums it up nicely in his post,
“Goal setting can be useful, but it can also be taken to extremes that become counter-productive.“
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How about you? Are you setting goals for next year or going “no goal”?
image: tworubies
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I get side tracked all the time and have probably lost many hours/days/weeks/months? chasing my own tail so I find that setting goals and revisiting them on a weekly basis helps me stay in line with my dreams. Yeah I’ve got a few goals for 2012, but I’m not a sticky note everywhere obsessed goal setter, I use them for guidelines like I said to keep my adult onset ADD in check. Great article, love the critique of the studies b/c it keeps everything in check.
I’m definitely a planner, but more in the “here’s our vision as it stands now” sense than in the “new year’s resolution” one.
My husband and I have some pretty concrete goals regarding our family finances and some other areas, so we’re pretty detailed about writing those down, as we find the time spent focusing on them does make us more likely to achieve them.
But in some other areas, we just have kind of a written “vision” about what we do and don’t want, and we check in on it every so often.
Joan. It’s a good distinction you make between ‘here’s our vision as it stands now’ and resolutions.
Robert Fritz has written two excellent books that cover this – “The Path of Least Resistance” and “Creating”. They are among a handful of books I re-read every few years. By reviewing where you are now vs where you want to be, you are creating what Fritz calls ‘structural tension’.
He wrote an excellent blog post on it just this week. http://bit.ly/vXU2Ga.
I decided to go completely resolutionless this year. I will treat everything on a first-come, first-serve. When I think of something I want to accomplish, I will go ahead and do it. Nothing pre-planned.
Thank you for this interesting post, Brett! I’m definetly a planner, too. I’m using a mind map to structure my goals and I review this mind map – at least – on a monthly basis.
This structured approach helps me to stay focused and it provides orientation throughout the year.
Reviewing this year’s goals showed that I was able to fulfill most of my goals from all the different areas like family, finance, sport, and business. I did my review already a few days before chrismas and created a new mind map for 2012. – Most of my goals are SMART because I’m living in a goal-oriented business environment. Some other goals are more general, but I’m definetly not going without goals.
By the way, I wrote a post about how I performed my review and my planning based on my professional experince in the area of quality and process management:
http://smartselfmanagement.com/2011/12/21/4-simple-steps-to-position-yourself-for-getting-it-done-in-2012/
Best regards and “Einen guten Rutsch ins Jahr 2012!” from Hamburg!
Mirko
Mirko
I’m a Mindmap fan myself (just noticed that Mindjet have released an Android app so am about to start playing with that).
The methods in Fritz’ books I mentioned in an earlier comment lend themselves well to mind maps as they are hierarchical so to speak. He talks about Fundamental choices being supported by Primary and Secondary choices.
Sounds interesting. Thanks for recommending the books. I’ve just added them to my wish list.
I don’t know if writing my goals down actually helped me achieve more this year, but they kept me on track. I knew what I was aiming for.
I made a decision I was going to share the results publicly at the end of the year, I think that motivated me more then the simple act of writing. You can see how my year turned out here http://www.roundpeg.biz/2011/12/what-did-your-letter-say/
Lorraine
If they kept you on track it sounds like it helped.
Nice thought-provoking article sir! Achieving goals should not be a goal in my opinion, but using goals to focus is incredibly helpful in making a life you believe in. There’s almost nothing more motivating than being close to achieving a goal you care about deeply, but actually achieving it can be disappointing, especially if we think achieving it will make us happy.
You mention ‘going with the flow.’ How about achieving Flow? Now there’s a goal!
http://pilotfire.com/category/goals/
Great article Brett, anything that challenges “the way things are done” is right up my alley.
I’ve downloaded all kinds of mind-mapping note-taking apps for my phone and computer and I tried to plan out my every move. It drove me nuts.
I’m taking more of the approach that @David Delp is taking, I’m going to use goals as a guideline. Something that I want to get close to and if I need to improvise I will. But I wont’ HAVE TO achieve the goal I wrote down.
Way less pressure that way…
David
Achieving flow works for me.
(Nice work with the graphics on your site. Looks like you go to a bit of effort there)
I’m not throwing away the idea of setting goals yet…but I have simplified the process.
I now just set 30 day goals – but within those 30 days I’m only focusing on 2 things.
Two specific things that will move my business to the next level.
Less confusion that way – I can only do this or that……
I do think that it helps to writte down your goals.. My door in the bedroom is posted with Goals and pictures of what i like to achive..
Thanks for a great article..
You just gave me a great idea for a blog post! My version of goal setting is kind of meditative. I used to write goals down. Even accomplished some of them. But they weren’t what I wanted, really. So, I tried a new approach:
Working in the subtle energy field, I have an agreement with personal entities/guides. They do their part and I do mine to get things done.
The key is allowing them to get things lined up on their end and not allowing the ego to interfere or sabotage things on your end. Most of the time it looks like nothing is happening then a bunch of stuff happens all at once. My job is to take action and implement given what gets set up.
Hmm, writing goals down works for me, but that might be more to do with the sort of planning maniac I am anyway. Four years ago I told friends that in April 2011 I would leave Scotland for Spain, and I remember writing it down in my diary too. Then that’s exactly what I did, down to the exact month. Of course a huge amount of planning had got me there…but the imperative in written form seems to function as an additional commitment. Even sign it, if you really want to get there…
We know the logic of goal setting and successful people credit setting goals with paving the way to manifesting their dreams. The key is to have goals and learn a system that works. If you have a framework, a system for guiding you, one that works for others, then you can run your goal through the framework and take the steps to move towards it.
There are so many variables that cause a person to achieve or not achieve a goal, planning, mindset, time management, resource management, etc but the most important factor is the ‘goal setter.’
Goal Setting works. It’s usually the goal setter that doesn’t. They either fail to follow through on the fundamentals necessary to achieve it, sabotage their results, or fail to make adjustments to their plan throughout the journey.
Don’t give up on your goals and dreams. They determine the quality of your life. Aim high for things that really matter to you and give it your very best.
Live Your Dreams,
Jill Koenig
http://www.goalguru.com
It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with ‘n’ independent random steps will, on the average, end about [Square Root of 'n'] steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to ‘n’.
In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision and a goal will get you a distance proportional to ‘n’, while no vision will get you only the distance [Square Root of 'n'].”