Having Trouble Reaching Your Goals? Double Down and Make Them Harder
It sounds crazy but it works
You set what seemed like a perfectly good goal. You made it specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time limited. Or whatever adjectives your version of the SMART goal process call for.
Yet, when it comes time to actually take the steps required to make it happen…
There’s no motivation. No excitement. No juice.
You struggle along with willpower for a while, then even that peters out.
You have something that should be well within your grasp if you only applied yourself. And you can’t make yourself do it.
Your timeline is ticking away, and you’re getting more and more discouraged.
Should you just give up? Find a different goal? Think of some way to finesse the measurements so it sounds like you achieved your goal, when you know you didn’t?
I’ve been there. I’ve had goals that looked so simple, like drink water when I wake up every day for a month. And I failed.
Yet the big goals, the hard goals, like write a book and launch it to best-seller status on Amazon? Those went off like clockwork.
Weird as it sounds, it’s exactly because the goal is big and hard that you’re more likely to achieve it.
Work harder versus work different
A small goal, one chosen because it’s “attainable” or “realistic”, is often one that is not inspiring. You know exactly what’s required to reach it.
There’s a reason you’re not reaching it already, though. You don’t want to do whatever it is that’s required.
How many people want to lose 5 or 10 pounds? They know exactly how to do it. Eat less and exercise more. Except they don’t want to.
Or what about a salesperson, who wants to increase his sales by 10%? He knows exactly how to do that. More sales calls. If he increases his closing opportunities by 10%, he should increase his sales by 10% as well. Except that would mean longer hours, and he doesn’t want to do that.
A big goal, though, may not be “realistic”. You’ve never done it before. You may not even be sure how to do it.
You can’t reach a big goal by simply working harder. You have to find a whole new way of working, and perhaps of thinking.
The effort of trying to find that magical key to open the lock of your big goal revitalizes you. We cast ourselves as the hero who struggles against all odds to achieve the impossible. We become mythic creatures in our own minds.
Tapping into that kind of power can go a long way toward success.
Two key factors in success
There has been much discussion of the transformational power of setting big goals. In business, these are known as stretch goals, because the business will need to stretch to meet them.
One of the most famous is Southwest Airlines’ goal to have a 10-minute gate turnaround. At the time, gate turnarounds were about an hour. They had to completely reinvent many processes, often in the face of disbelief. Yet they achieved it.
Other companies were not so lucky. They missed stretch goal after stretch goal, and ended up being acquired or failing.
The Harvard Business Review discussed this in an article, The Stretch Goal Paradox. In it, the authors identify two factors that can predict the success of a stretch goal. Will it be an inspiring success or an abject failure?
Recent performance
Your ability to be inspired by a big goal is directly impacted by your most recent performance.
Did you meet or exceed your last goal? Then you’re likely primed to take on a tough challenge.
Your recent success puts you in an optimistic mindset. You make strategies and systems to locate the information and resources you need. You search for opportunities, and remain flexible in the face of change.
If you failed at your last goal, a big goal will only inspire you with fear.
You’re much more likely to doubt yourself or your reasoning. This often makes you try to adopt someone else’s solution. If it doesn’t immediately succeed, you’ll fire off scattershot replacement proposals. There is no coherent strategy, only an escalating sense of desperation.
In other words, nothing breeds success like success. And nothing breeds failure like failure.
Availability of resources
If you’re pressed for time or money, you don’t have the freedom to experiment. You won’t be able to try many things to see which ones work.
Instead, if you have a strict deadline or few resources, you’re likely to fixate on a solution. You only have the time and resources to try one thing.
Toyota gave its Prius development team a year to develop a concept car. But they also gave it plenty of people and other resources. The team tried out 80 possible technologies for a hybrid engine. From that, they took the 4 best for further development. The winner of that competition became the final technology.
Imagine if, instead, they’d only had the time and resources to develop one technology. They’d have had a 1 in 80 chance of picking the right one.
Can you still dream big?
What if you’re coming off a recent failure? Or you’re seriously strapped for time or resources? Are you doomed to failure? Should you not even try for a big, audacious goal?
You don’t have to be relegated to the minor leagues forever. It’s possible to engineer a turnaround first, then tackle a big goal when you’re more likely to be able to achieve it.
If your issue is that you’re coming off a recent failure, change your momentum. Create small, significant wins. Those wins may not be in a direct line toward your goal. But they can get you headed in the general direction. More importantly, they will change your mindset and attitude.
If your issue is that you don’t have time or other resources to spare, reassess. What are you doing now that you can stop doing, delegate, or outsource?
For example, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Americans watch an average of 2–3 hours of TV per day. What could you do with that extra 2–3 hours?
How much do you pay for that television? You might want to join the 20% of US households that have stopped paying for cable television. What could you do with that extra money?
Conclusion
If you’re having trouble reaching your goals, it may be that they’re too small. They lack the power to inspire you.
A bigger goal forces you to invent a new way of doing something. That’s far more interesting than just working harder at what you already do.
There are two key factors that predict if you are likely to succeed in meeting a big, challenging goal. The first is if you have succeeded at your previous goals. The second is the availability of resources, since experimentation takes time and resources.
Even if you failed at previous goals or have no resources you have options. You just have to take some intermediate steps before you’re ready to take on the big goal.
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!
