Some strange goal-setting advice
It’s a New Year, and for a lot of us that means taking some time to set goals or aspirations (and maybe make resolutions) for the year ahead. As we kickoff 2024, I thought I’d share a new way I’m looking at not setting goals and what the approach can do for us all.
As one would assume, I’m a fan of setting goals, and I’m naturally pretty motivated to achieve the things I set out to do. After all, I spent 20 years of life making no money explicitly focused on chasing a massive goal that I had a less than .01% chance of achieving.
So I’ve learned first-hand about some of the benefits and pitfalls that can come with chasing goals. As someone who was and is still a relentless goal chaser, as I get older (and learn from some of the wiser people in my life), my approach to goal setting and day-to-day life has changed a lot. Here are some of my thoughts.
Delaying satisfaction when chasing a goal is a double-edged sword.
One thing I learned from my big win is that no matter how big and satisfying the achievement, there is always going to be the question of: what happens next? (Dave Epstein and I dove deep on that topic in this episode of Slate’s “How To”: Congrats, You Won the Olympics. Now What?)
As an athlete, I fully believed that if I won Gold I’d be happy for the rest of my life. I once actually said in an interview that if we win, I’ll be happy sitting on the curb with the gold medal next to me and be completely content until the day I die. Sometimes I look back to that time and think that I was obviously misguided or a bit naive, but I’ve come to learn that many high performers/achievers think like that — the personal value placed on the goal is often what drives them to their success.
To maintain in one’s mind that the accomplishment of the goal at hand will deliver a zen-like satisfaction is such a fantastic intrinsic motivation technique I have a hard time telling people not to use it. The fact of the matter is that it works. It’s powerful and it can help you get the job done.
The challenge is that it’s a little-known trap and though it can be a powerful motivator, it is also a terribly learned lesson by some high-performers as it creates an emptiness after the achievement.
It’s why, from high-performing students all the way to CEOs, the rate of depression is 2-3x the national average. Psychology Today dives in here. Personally, this one hits close to home as two of the six men I’ve competed with in the Olympic Games died of mental health-related circumstances.
Even when I retired from sport, I had become so used to delaying my own happiness and joy, with the goal of motivating myself or others, that contentment was not a thing for me. I thought I had to achieve the goals before I could even begin to let myself feel good. When I learned that the good feeling that came with accomplishing the biggest goal of my life had a pretty short shelf life, I was able to reconsider the approach… even if I do still slip into this mode regularly. (old and partially successful habits are hard to break)
Chasing a goal and delaying gratification can be the easy parts. Do the hard thing for no other purpose than it’s good for you or it’s the kind of person you want to be, and you will get my, and your own, attention.
Two interesting things happened during my 2023 marathon training and since the race.
The first was that people asked me if the training was difficult, if it was hard. Truthfully, for me, the hardest part was making the decision to do it because once the goal is set, I simply move through my process to accomplish a goal and things take care of themselves. Or more specifically, I take care of the things I need to do. My personal system for accomplishing goals kicks in and the actual process is easy — even if the individual pieces are challenging.
The second thing is that people ask when my next one is. Or if I’ll be moving up to an ultra (I’m looking at you, KP!) with the assumption that I am a goal-chasing junky.
They’re not wrong. But like any junky, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery!
For a few weeks, I took the bait. I started looking up half marathons and marathons for the spring. I started thinking about how much time I’d take before starting back-up training.
And then I stopped myself. That was too easy. Moving on to the next goal — the next marathon —was going to be too easy. And I didn’t train for a marathon to do something easy; I wanted to challenge myself to do something hard.
Pushing yourself without a short-term purpose is good for your decision-making and self-control.
If you’re like me and, at times, setting and pursuing a goal can be the easy thing for you, then you’ll want to consider this…
To step back, a handful of years ago I started running for the benefit of my health and wellbeing, and that remains my primary motivation. I learned the number one indicator of longevity — both living longer and living better longer — was aerobic fitness.
In fact, the difference between those with low fitness (bottom 25%) and elite fitness (top 5%) creates a 5-FOLD POSITIVE DIFFERENCE IN ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY over a decade! But don’t fret, because simply moving from that bottom group to the next quartile leads to a 50% decline in mortality. Dr. Peter Attia outlines all of this and more in a post on his own blog, here.
That’s the reason I began running.
That reason — that goal — will hopefully, pay off 20, 30, or 40 years from now. But an outcome that far in the distance is not particularly motivating at 5am when no part of me wants to get out of bed.
And that is precisely why it’s important for me to get out of bed at 5am tomorrow. Because I’ve learned, when I get up and get after it tomorrow morning, and then the next day, and then the next day — everything else in my daily life will be better, simpler, and smoother.
I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t like it. I don’t like running. I don’t like running far.
And that is why I do it.
According to our favorite neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman, there’s a part of our brains relevant to this called the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). The aMCC “plays a role in decision-making and self-control. So, whether it’s tackling a new task or stepping out of your comfort zone, remember: every effort shapes your brain’s amazing ability to adapt!” As we do hard things that we don’t want to do, the aMCC actually grows.
Watch him talk about it below:
The punch line of the whole thing is this: doing hard things is good for us. So go ahead, do the thing you don’t particularly want to do… simply because it’s good for you. But if you connect it to a goal, sometimes it becomes something you want to do and the magic of growing the aMCC can be lost.
With that, good luck kicking off your 2024. Set some big goals for yourself to pursue this year… and at the same time, don’t!
- Steve
