My goals don’t work
“Setting a goal is easy, achieving it is the tricky bit.”
Every year millions of people start the new year with an ambitious fitness goal in mind (66% of all new year resolutions are health and fitness related). Many will fall back into old habits and abandon their goalposts before they see much of anything happen. However the more motivated will likely achieve a reasonable amount of results. Nearly everyone that sets out to loose weight, get healthy or eat better will fail to maintain this in the long term though.
This is a rather gloomy outlook but this article isn’t designed to dissuade you from setting a goal for yourself. Rather advise you to try a different approach to how you may have done this in the past.
So first of all the problem with most goals is that we aim too high rush to achieve them and in the process rely on unsustainable methods to facilitate fast results.
So with this approach we are going to play the long game.
Start with behaviour change.
Realise that the way you live now, your diet, exercise habits, coping mechanisms and social life they all lead to where you are now and always will. If you change your habits only to revert back to your current ones you will end up back where you started.
This is important to realise as you will need to be committed to implementing changes that will be with you for the rest of your life.
Having only shakes for breakfast and lunch while doing 2 hour long gym workouts every day is unlikely to be a life long habit!
Instead focus on gradually improving your base habits bit by bit until you end up achieving your goal, this way you will also have the lifestyle necessary to maintain the new you.
Goal types and hierarchy’s
We want to set up goals the same way we would a big project for work, we need to have a hierarchy of goals and then establish processes and systems to get the outcomes we want. So lets talk a little about goal terminology.
Goal hierarchy’s,
We can set our goals up into a hierachy, a pyramid of different levels of goals with the top of the pyramid being our superordinate goals, followed by our intermediate goals and lastly our subordinate goals. You can think of these as our why, what and how if you like.
Superordinate goals
These are high level value based goals, these are more about the type of person you want to be rather then a specific outcome, your ideal self.
Be fit and healthy, be a good parent, provide for my family, be strong, be happy, these are all examples of superordinate goals.
These are quite abstract and although hard to directly action they are important as a reminder of our why!
Why we care about getting fitter, performing better at our sport, spending more time with our family or getting a promotion at work. They help orientate us in making decisions in our day to day. When faced with the struggle of doing the work instead of taking the easy way out we can remember our why to help motivate us through the tough decisions. Like cooking dinner and meal prepping for tomorrow instead of ordering in, taking the kids out for a walk and games instead of watching soaps and handing them an iPad, getting an early night instead of scrolling social media into the early hours, you get the idea.
Ultimately they help us take actions that are aligned with our values.
Intermediate goals
These are the kind of goals you might associate with a new year resolution, they are outcome goals like lose weight, get fitter, tone up etc. They are less obscure and simpler to action than our superordinate goals. However they are still outcome focused apposed to process focused and this has its problems.
When push comes to shove we can only do so much. We don’t actually have control over the outcomes, all we can do is follow the process. You may want to hit a new bench press PR every month this year but this isn’t up to you. All you can do is have a resistance program that hopefully facilitates this and follow it diligently. You may become injured or another area of your life may take precedence. These road blocks that are out of our control can leave us feeling defeated, couple this with an all or nothing mindset and we have failed our goal and are feeling less capable, leaning into the easy options and self soothing our perceived failure away.
These goals are oten too large to tackle in one go and we need to break them down into more manageable chunks which we can easily take action on each day. This is where subordinate goals come in.
Subordinate goals
These goals are our process goals, they are the actions required to achieve our outcome goals. We want to make these as achievable as possible. These items are where the rubber meets the road and we get traction. They are also in many ways the hardest steps because although they are easy to achieve individually they often require continuous hits of motivation throughout the day/week. Constantly taking the path of more resistance over the easy route. Each step wont feel like much of a win and we feel the pain of each decision way before we reap any rewards.
We need to constantly choose the slightly less comfortable choice time and time again while delaying the gratification that comes with achieving a long term outcome goal (intermediate and superordinate goals)
Obviously the logical part of our brain knows that if we turn up again and again and keep making these choices we will achieve our goals but our emotional brain (our chimp brain to quote the chimp paradox) just wants to avoid pain and indulge in pleasure right there in that moment.
So we use our hierarchy of goals to motivate us and to guide our daily actions.
Here is an example of a the hierarchy of goals in action from the top tier to the bottom:
Superordinate (why): be a healthy person, so I can enjoy life to its fullest and can thrive in challenging scenarios.
Intermediate (what): loose weight, get fit, tone-up
Subordinate (how): do 2 resistance workouts per week, get 1 cardio session done, track my food daily, drink 6 cups of water, get 8 hours in bed… and so on.
The beauty of this system is that often each subordinate goal will feed into multiple intermediate goals. This adds value to each of those small decisions and makes leaning into the challenge of each subordinate goal more exciting and fulfilling.
Setting effective goals
In this section I’m going to outline many different approaches and considerations to have when setting your goals up. This will help you choose goals that are more likely to motivate you and help you to achieve them.
Approach vs Avoidance goals
Approach goals make us feel like we are winning while avoidance goals make us feel like we are missing out. So try to choose approach goals when possible this will greatly reduce the friction of making the habit stick. Due to this you will likely be more successful with approach goals. Here is a few examples:
APPROACH | AVOIDANCE |
- Workout 3 days a week - Eat 5 portions of fruit and veg - Hit my step target - Meal Prep | - Spend less time watching TV - Don‘t eat junk food - Spend less time sitting down - Don’t eat out |
Flexible restraint vs Rigid restraint
This one is simple, when you set a goal try to think of it as an intention. Rather than focusing on an all or nothing mindset instead focus on trying to increase completion consistency. To do this I use a habit tracker and instead of chastising myself for missing a workout or going over my calories I try to view it as a growth opportunity. My ultimate goal is to improve my consistency over time, not hit perfection.
Reflecting on why you didn’t achieve your goal that day can give you insight on how to improve moving forward. This prevents you falling at the same hurdle every week and allows you to pre-plan your solution for when that scenario comes up again.
There will be some instances where rigid restraint will be easier than flexible but when it comes to lifestyle changes flexible restraint is normally favourable.
Process vs outcome
Outcomes are what we are ultimately striving for. Although focusing purely on outcomes can be counter productive, they tend to lead us into all or nothing mindsets where we feel like we are failing, when in reality it might just be one day of overindulging or one missed workout. Yet we can let this derail us and give up.
Another problem with an outcome focus is in our mind we constantly think about how far we have to go rather then how far we have come. This focus on the outcome is draining and makes the daily habits required feel pointless, when in reality its those habits that will eventually lead to the outcome we are after.
Examples:
Process | Outcome |
- Run three days a week - Squat twice per week - Track my food daily | - Get mile time below 7 min - Squat 2 x bodyweight - Lose a stone |
Mastery vs Performance
Focusing on performance over mastery leaves us open to judging ourselves harshly when we have any decrease in performance. This can make us view this temporary setback as as a failure, making us doubt our selfves and a loose belief in our ability.
in contrast when you focus on mastery goals we tend to view mistakes as an inevitable part of the process. Small setbacks and making regressions where necessary all just add to the feeling of accomplishment when we finally master a challenging skill.
We are much more likely to approach a setback with a solution based mindset than a feeling of failure.
Examples:
Mastery | Performance |
- Improve running stride and efficiency - Improve my squat technique and control with near maximal loads - Learn how to cook flavoursome meal preps that still hit my nutritional targets | - Get mile time below 7 min - Squat 2 X bodyweight - Lose a stone |
Goal Intensity
If a goal is too easy you wont get the dopamine hit of reward when its achieved and if too challenging we will be left feeling deflated and lacking self belief whenever we fail.
Research shows that a goal success rate of 85.13% is best …. Thats not very practical for us though when trying to set goals, but a nice way to implement this is to shoot for 100% success but allow yourself some scope for missing.
For example you may set a calories target for the day of 2500 but allow yourself a further 600 calories each week to use at your discretion. This way when you go over your calories rather than feeling like you have failed and giving up “I’ve ruined it now, I'll start again next week” you can say “ok I’ve used up some of my reserve calories for the week so I’m going to have to double down for the rest of the week” this motivates rather then discourages us.
Goal Adjustment
Above we said we want to have a goal that is challenging but doable, one that we can achieve 85% of the time, this is a fine line to strike.
To keep a goal in this sweet spot we need to constantly adjust for the challenges we come across each day/week/month, for example some weeks 100% will be easy to achieve and others even a 2% success rate may be impossible. Rather than feeling overwhelmed for that week we should reframe our goals with the time commitments for that week factored in.
Stress will play a large roll in this as well, so when setting your goals and tracking your success rate each week or month, check-in with yourself and make sure that the target is still sensible. If it isn’t, rather than an all or nothing mindset of “I cant train this week as I’m working away and have a lot of time commitments” you adjust your goal to match your situation like “I’m going to do a bodyweight workout and mobility routine each night in my hotel room before jumping in the shower” This allows you to keep making progress towards your goals regardless of the challenges that come up.
Mental Contrasting
This is a tool to help check-in with where you are, the idea is to help you plan better and to self motivate.
To do this we envision our idealised self, where we have achieved all our superordinate and intermediate goals.
With this vision in mind we contrast that to our actions that day. I use a daily debriefing exercise called the 365 test where you ask yourself “if i repeat this day 365 times will I achieve my superordinate goals” I then write down all the success of the day and what lead to them and all the misses for the day, why they happened and most importantly how to prevent them moving forward.
Habit Bolting
This is attaching a habit to a time place or other habit that is already established. Here are a few examples:
Make meal prep for the next day each time I put dinner on.
When getting in bed fill out my journal.
When I go to bed pack my gym bag for tomorrow.
When leaving work go to the gym before going home.
When arriving to work check my journal.
When I have my lunch break go for a walk around the block.
You get the idea, so when you put your process goals in place try to think of a previous habit, location or time you can bolt them to, then envision doing it to cement this in place in your head.
Final Thoughts
All these considerations might feel a little overwhelming but don‘t let that put you off setting your goals. Sit down and do a first draft then read through this again and just see how well your goals align with the advice given and where necessary adapt them.
Implementing all of this can feel quite challenging but a good way to go about it is to journal.
I have many more tools like the 365 test above that I use to automate a lot of the information in this post and will make them available to you in my next post on ‘how to journal, the ultimate habit’
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it informative and practical. I would love to hear any thought or questions you have in the comments below.
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