Setting ambitious goals for a team or organization motivates people to perform and serves as a guide for leaders to invest the time, resources, and energy necessary to achieve them.
Stretch goals, as they are often called, push team members to reach their highest potential. In many cases, even when the team doesn’t achieve what they set out to, results are amplified, and real progress is made.
As the old quote goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
But that lesson doesn’t apply to personal habits. In fact, setting audacious habit goals is the reason many people fail at them. As a rule, people underestimate the difficulty of achieving a habit goal or making a change.
Because they believe attaining their goal or forming the new habit will be easier than it is, they set unrealistically high expectations. They then commit to the false hope of attaining an ambitious goal. Ironically, by committing to an unreachable target, they often reinforce the old habit and behavior.
Think about the habit of eating and exercising differently to achieve weight loss. An ambitious goal set might be to lose 20 pounds and to exercise vigorously for 90 minutes five times a week. Sounds like a good idea, but, in fact, it will likely undermine the ability to lose any weight at all.
The reason is the goal set is too ambitious and the person pursuing it will likely give up and fail after a few setbacks. The false hope of attaining an audacious goal almost ensures the person will return to the old habit and give up on making any change at all. Once people fail, they return and reinforce the old norm or habit.
As simple as it sounds, the key is to set realistic and more easily attained habit goals and then stack the progress made on top of the next phase to achieve a desired change. In the example of weight loss, a five-pound target matched with diet differences and two days of vigorous exercise per week is more easily achievable.
Smaller habit goals receive more effort and attention and motivate people to stay the course. Once achieved, a new realistic goal (lose five more pounds) can follow.
Smaller, more realistic habit goals make it easier to track progress, accept critical feedback, and redirect efforts after a setback. They simply work more effectively to attain desired habit goals. The habit-busting fallacy of false hope by setting goals that are too ambitious needs to be avoided at all costs. Small, attainable habit goals set the best path toward success.
Whatever you are working on, is it possible your goals are too ambitious?
