How To Succeed At Setting Goals

By Elyse Ball

Whether you’re a leader of a small business who wants to drive organizational growth or an individual who wants to live a more healthy and fulfilling life (or both), setting effective goals can be a daunting task. Luckily, I dug deep into goal setting best practices and can share some useful key takeaways. 

First of all, why are we discussing goal setting in May, instead of right after New Year’s Day? Some really smart psychologists have found that setting goals in the spring is more effective than setting goals in January. This is because people often come into the new year feeling exhausted and spring’s warmer temperatures and longer days give people a greater sense of optimism. 

So if you’re ready to dive in on some spring goal setting, we’ll look at a few overarching features of “good goals” and the pros and cons of some specific goal setting systems.

What makes for good goals?

• Challenging goals are good. While it can seem daunting and counter intuitive, setting a challenging, but attainable, goal is the best way to drive yourself to achieve. As with most things in life, balance is important. Goals that are too easy almost always lead to underperformance, so a goal that you think is a piece of cake won’t help you much. On the other end of the spectrum, goals that feel completely insurmountable can be demoralizing. In general, goals that scare you a little are ideal – just remember to cut yourself some slack if you fall a little bit short of a challenging goal.
  
• Be clear and specific. Goals that don’t have numbers in them typically aren’t very helpful. As one psychologist pithily put it, “when people are asked to do their best, they do not.” One trick is to look at your written goal and ask, “Could I figure out in 2 minutes or less whether I achieved this?” Goals with a performance metric and a number have the added benefit of allowing you to judge very quickly whether you are on track. 
  
• Learning-related goals are okay, too. Most of us think of goals as being based solely on what we produce, but goals that focus us on learning specific skills we want to acquire are also valuable. In fact, in some studies, people who set specific learning goals did a better job of paying attention and retaining information than those who did not have goals. As with other kinds of goals, learning goals should be specific, measurable and challenging. For example, a good learning goal might be developing 5 new strategies for tackling a complex task.
  
• Use short-term goals to tackle long-term ones. In fancy terms, “distal goals” are complex goals that will take a while to achieve. Setting short-term goals can help you achieve better results, especially in environments that are rapidly changing or uncertain. It makes sense that short-term goals would provide a motivating boost on overarching goals that will take a long time. And short-term goals are also proven to help us to more quickly spot errors in our thinking and better recognize when our actions are not aligned with what needs to be done to achieve our long-term goals. 
  

What specific goal setting systems can you use?

• SMART Goals are a trendy acronym for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This type of goal can be applied to individuals or organizations, and to your personal life. While there are a ton of peer reviewed papers that support setting goals that are measurable and time-bound, there is some debate about whether goals need to be attainable. Remember, more challenging goals tend to yield better performance, so goals that are too attainable can hold you back. To learn more about SMART goals, check out this short video or the University of California’s detailed “how to” guide on setting SMART goals.
  
• OKRs are a system of goal setting based on Objectives and Key Results. Objectives are inspirational and descriptive. Under each objective are 3-4 key results that memorialize the quantitative indicators that show you are moving in the right direction. Key results are always measurable and challenging, while the mix of objectives and key results reflects short- and long-term goals. Further, key results are focused on outcomes, rather than activity, which encourages creativity. OKRs are extremely popular among startups and entrepreneurial teams. However, some people caution that setting individual OKRs rarely works well in practice, particularly for those who are new to the OKR process. They instead encourage setting team or organization-wide OKRs. To learn more about OKRs, check out this Startup Lab video on how Google sets OKRs or John Doerr’s epic TED Talk on setting the right goals. 
  

I’ve resolved to set some spring goals that are challenging, clear and will drive me to learn and achieve. Hopefully, you will, too.