On Goals: Having Them, Setting Them

For a long time, I've been a big believer in goal setting. I was at a training at school in which someone introduced me to the concept of writing down your goals for the year, and it's a practice that I've been keeping up more or less consistently since. Generally speaking, I've found setting goals to be extremely helpful in keeping myself organized.

When I was doing research for this post, though, I discovered that there is at least something of a controversy around this issue. First of all, there is a huge volume of material on goal setting on the internets--just do a Google search. But almost all of it comes back to the same basic idea, namely, the SMART goal acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). That ubiquitous acronym, as far as I can tell, is the popularization of the work of one Edwin A. Locke.

A disciple of Ayn Rand, Edwin A. Locke began studying what he dubbed "goal setting theory," and through his research sought to prove that, in order to accomplish anything, one must set goals that have:

1. Clarity
2. Challenge
3. Commitment
4. Feedback
5. Task Complexity

I don't want to spend too much time defining these terms (look at this page to read more), but I think you can see how at least some of the SMART jargon comes into play here--the Specific, Measurable, and Time-bound aspects provide clarity, Relevance is supposed to provide you with commitment (though I think it may be debatable how that works), Challenge comes from the encouragement that all SMART goal advocates provide you when they tell you to aim big.

What's interesting to me about these ideas is the extent which goal-setting in general and SMART goals in particular seem to be almost gospel truth for those who promote them. The research is certainly interesting and does seem at least somewhat compelling--but I have to say that there seems to be a relatively small number of serious researchers who share Locke's ideas about goal setting. Last night, I encountered an especially interesting article that cataloged numerous instances of too-narrow focus on goals resulting in disaster.

When it comes to individual productivity, which is what I'm really most interested in, it seems like the jury is still out. I know I've found goal setting to be useful--but there is always the danger of becoming myopically obsessed with your goals in a way that can cause you to lose the ability to savor the moment. Or, almost worse, having too rigid a plan in mind can cause you to lose opportunities that come up or to be unable to adjust when your life circumstances change in unpredictable ways.

As always, this leaves me with more questions than answers. I wonder: can you really set goals for creative tasks? Does setting goals and then forgetting about them work? Is it better to have a number in mind when setting a goal or to adopt a wait-and-see approach? If you know of research on these questions, please let me know.

A Coaching Manifesto

Hello.

I've decided to get into the self-help business. I've decided to do this for multiple reasons, listed conveniently below:

1) I really enjoy helping people solve problems.

2) I've been a high school teacher for almost a decade, and in that time have learned a lot about how to help people effectively reach their goals. In other words, I think I'd be good at it.

3) I deeply believe that you're never too old to grow as a human being. There's something quintessentially American about always trying to get better, about believing your life is infinitely improvable. I like that idea.

4) I feel like most of the self-help world is dominated by hucksters, salesmen, and (worst of all) jargon. Many people are turned off from self-improvement because of the copious amounts of utter bullshit out there in the self-help world. Any lover of the English language cringes at the manifold abuses of it present in most self-help documentation, and I think that's a shame.

I think that gives you a pretty good sense of what this manifesto is meant to be about. An enormous amount of the material out there in the life coaching world eschews science and psychological research in exchange for jargon--and I aim to do the opposite of that. I would like to base as much of what I do as I can on current research, communicated in language we all can understand. In other words, I aim to make a "real difference." Hence the catchy name for the company.