Goal planning: Part 2 - If goal planning doesn't work for us, how do we effect change?

Back in October I recorded an off-the-cuff video explaining how I struggle with goal planning, and wrote a short blog post summarising it: Goal planning: Part 1 - Why is it a struggle?. I got a bunch of great responses, and also did some extensive research (I asked Google and ChatGPT). This post and video is a follow-up. It looks at a few possible reasons for goal planning being a struggle, and suggests some next steps to try.

My thanks to Kate helping clarify the key question: if conventional goal planning doesn't work for us, how do we effect change in our lives?

Methods from the world of work can conflict with personal life

My original video was about goal planners and goal planning systems. These usually focus on measurable goals and structured routes to success, and frequently draw on methods used in the work world. Let's start with a couple of points of view on why this can be a struggle and how to fix it.

Option 1: You're doing it wrong, try one of these systems

If goal planning is a struggle, is it possible you just need to . . . goal plan better?

Are your goals unrealistic?
Or too vague?
Maybe you're taking on too much at once?

So before ditching goal planning altogether, it's worth trying a couple of planning systems.

SMART goals

SMART goals are a popular approach. SMART stands for:

Specific: what you want to do. It should be a concrete goal: instead of going "I want to get fit", try something like: > Improve my fitness by increasing the distance I can run.
Measurable: have measurable, trackable benchmarks. Something like: > Improve my fitness by increasing the distance I can run to 10k. You now have a clear measure of success, and create milestones along the way.
Achievable: can you actually do it? If you already go running occasionally, and can do 5k comfortable, then maybe building up to 10k as the next goal is viable. If you're a couch potato who never exercises, maybe adjust the goal down.
Relevant: why are you setting this goal? > Improve my fitness by increasing the distance I can run to 10k. Increasing my fitness will be good for my physical health and mental well-being.
Timebound: what's the deadline? > Improve my fitness by increasing the distance I can run to 10k within three months. Increasing my fitness will be good for my physical health and mental well-being.

OGSM

OGSM is a framework for defining objectives and goals. It's a personal favourite: although I found the nitty-gritty of the goal-setting conterproductive (more on this below), starting from the objectives was a useful reflection exercise.

OGSM stands for objective, goals, strategies, and measures. Starting with the objective lets you think about the big picture, then break down how to get there, in gradually more detail.

Option 2: Applying business methods to personal life is icky, so stop it

I am fine with goal planning at work. It's when I try to apply it to my personal life that I get a bit queasy. Several people made comments along this line.

Goal setting in business often comes down to the bottom line. This is fine in when the aim is maximum productivity and profit! But using the same approach in our personal life risks trying to fit our nuanced, emotional, complex selves into something commodified. Our self-worth is more than money or productivity:

The anti-capitalist in me thinks that goal-setting conceptually is tainted by concepts of productivity and worth and it's probably not awful to reject that in our personal lives. Kate

Goal setting aims at specific outcomes. In our personal lives, we don't always need (or want) such a rigid focus. It can be good to live in a more intuitive way:

I understand the importance of [goal setting] for work, but I don’t want to approach my personal life the way I do work. I have tried it, because I’m someone who loves structure. What I found is that in a personal setting, goal can be misconstrued for motivation or discipline - and usually it’s the latter(s) I'm seeking, not goals. Also work-related goals are to achieve results. What I strive for on a personal level ebbs and flows with seasons/health/energy levels/interests/environment - trying to make that fit into a "goal" is fitting a square peg into a hole. A friend who preferred to remain anonymous

Goal planning can be counterproductive

Goal planning is meant to help us achieve things we want, and improve our lives. But it can have the opposite effect.

Removing intrinsic motivation

Goal planning provides external rewards, from the satisfaction of ticking off a task, to material rewards that you plan for yourself when reaching a goal, to the pressure to maintain a habit streak. However, this can undermine your intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from inside us. It's the opposite of extrinsic motivation, which is driven by external rewards. Compare participating in sport for the joy of it, to participating in sport due to parental pressure.

Extrinsic motivation is not always a bad thing: it can be especially helpful if you need to do something you find unpleasant (where you don't have any intrinsic motivation). And some forms of extrinsic rewards, such as praise from other people, can actually improve intrinsic motivation.

However, extrinsic motivation often reduces overall motivation. This is called the overjustification effect:

Most kids simply love to draw. Leave a child with a stack of blank papers and a coloring set, and they're all set. Some will draw for hours on end, without interruption and without any need for prodding. . . . How can you get a child to stop drawing? Tell them you'll give them a dollar for every picture they make. The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

I love this passage by Thomas Merton and Chuang Tzu, as a more elegant way of describing the destructive effects of external motivations:

The Need to Win

When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets –
He is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed, But the prize
Divides him. He cares,
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting –
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

If you already have intrinsic motivation to do something, think carefully before setting up an extrinsic reward system. And keep in mind that something as simple as a habit tracker can provide the dopamine hit of an extrinsic reward.

If you want to read more on this subject (I find it fascinating!) check out Drive by Daniel H Pink.

Adding to the overwhelm

Heather at Sprouted Planner talks about goal planners in the origin story for her company. During an exceptionally tough period in her life, she describes how her planner failed her:

The planner I had during that time did not serve me well since I wasn't goal setting, or tracking habits, or keeping count of how much water I consumed in the day. There is nothing wrong with those things, but I had zero capacity to do them.

Even having them on the page added to the overwhelm.

When we're already under stress, adding structured goals, with milestones to tick off, and detailed tracking, can actually make our lives worse.

Heather's solution was a different approach to planning, based on reflection and values, and with an emphasis on flexibility. This is one of many reasons I'm relying heavily on Sprouted Planner for my 2024 setup.

Consistency doesn't work for everyone's brain

A lot of goal planning assumes consistency: daily and weekly habits, gradual improvement, the famous Atomic Habits.

This simply doesn't work for everone. In her YouTube video You're Not Lazy: How to Live a Chaotically Organised Life Elizabeth Filips describes how her brain can't create this type of long term structure.

If your brain is freaking out when faced with a habit tracker or the pressure of improving 1% every day, consider just . . . giving yourself a break.

Growing without goal planning

So far I've talked about some of the problems with goal planning, and suggested a few individual solutions. Now I want to outline some experiments to try. Some of these are things I've already done, and some are my own next steps for the coming year.

Find your core values

Take the time to reflect. Ask yourself what you really want from life, what you truly value. Try gradually stepping back, to really dig down to your core values. I did this at the end of 2022, and it was helpful.

I started with a massive list of possible goals: I want to learn x, create y, achieve z. Then I took a step back, and asked why I wanted those things. I got a variety of answers, from personal satisfaction to financial security and physical health. So I stepped back even further. This process of repeatedly asking myself "why do I want this?" eventually led me to the core desire: I want to live a good life.

Once I'd found a way to express that core urge, I was able to start working out from it, asking myself what a "good life" means to me. I came up with two key words, joyfulness and truthfulness, and expanded on those in turn.

If you like, feel free to start from "I want to live a good life" and work out from there. But I'd recommend going through the full process. Start with a massive list or mind map of things you want to do/achieve/have, and dig into the "why".

One word of caution: this process sounds easy, but it requires radical honesty. In my case, there are things that aren't mentioned anywhere in my values which I feel guilty about leaving out. But if I'd allowed the guilt to push me into adding things I thought should be in there, the values would no longer be my values.

Visioning

Visioning is a technique for choosing direction, solving problems, and planning your future, which focuses on what the outcome looks like, rather than getting bogged down in the details and nitty gritty of the problems. It's a journaling exercise, picturing yourself at a specific point in the future, and exploring what that looks like and how it feels.

Allow yourself to play

Give yourself the chance to see what you do when you root yourself in intrinsic motivation.

For me, Spacious Planning is part of this: I am creating content on topics I'm interested in because I enjoy creating it. I have no business plan, no posting schedule, no viewer or reader count goal. Another way I do this is chess: I love playing, my brain feels great when I play. But I'm really bad at it. I'm never going to win prizes, or make anything of it. I do it because it makes my brain happy.

If you were to do something purely for the joy of it, what would it be?

Move away from 'should' and towards 'want'

I once heard the wonderful expression "should is could with shame". Let's try letting go of the "shoulds". Remove the external pressures, the extrinsic motivations, and the external measures of value (such as money, or particular metrics).

What happens if you start from "What do I want to focus on?". I urge you to make your answers selfish: listen to what your gut is asking for, and set aside what you think you ought to want.

This is my main experiment for 2024. I have listed out projects I'm drawn to doing, checking in with myself as I go: do I genuinely want to do this? What is my motivation? Coming up with these projects was also a good opportunity to check in with my keywords of "joyfulness" and "truthfulness". Do these projects support those, or do they suggest I also have other values, and maybe need to revisit my core value work?

The fun thing about this latest round of reflection and project-picking? It happened very easily, everything on the list feels like it belongs there, and it all fits well with previous reflection work. I'm taking this as a sign that the reflection work was good work: that I got at things that were really important to me.

I think at this point some people would reintroduce structured goal planning. Some of you are probably yelling at me that I've gone a really long way round just to choose some goals.

Instead, I'm going to try resist the urge to plan. I'll make sure I have a clear list of things I want to do, and will use my planners to ensure I'm making time for them. But I'm going to avoid the goal systems and goal planning:

No strict schedule
No deadline
No success metrics or milestones

I have a strong sense that taking one of these exciting projects and telling myself "you must spend five hours a week on this" or "you must produce something by February" would be a really quick way to ruin the joy - and destroy any chance of reaching the goal.

Wrap up

If you're still here, thank you for reading to the end! I'd love to know what you think. Will you try any of the experiments? What works for you? If you want to chat, go comment on the YouTube video.