Why goals are bad, why you don't need them yet, how to get better in the meantime
Posted by Daniel Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:54:00 GMT
Goals are bad because very often, if not almost always, you do not reach them. Now, if you’re one of those slugabed, who cares? types, this is probably not a problem. But if actually give a hoot about the goal, if you care whether or not you reach a goal you set for yourself or your team, well then… goals can be very demotivating.
Sure, sure, I hear all the folks who think that without a goal to reach for there’s no idea how far one can go, or what one can accomplish, but I don’t find this to be true. It is a very rare thing indeed that has not been attempted by someone. Simply look and I’m you’ll find a current limit. Choose that, and you’re done. Chances are you’ll never get there, or you’ll wreck yourself trying, because goodness knows, most of us don’t have that special craziness that makes it possible for people to do things to such a high level.
This sort of thing goes on in arts schools all the time. Kids love music for example. Kid is told “you can be whatever you want”. Kid decides to be a musician. The kid has a tin ear. The kid does the same thing that other, more talented kids do, which in her case is not nearly enough. Kid is eventually be told to find another line of work, and it’s usually college before this happens. Kid is heart broken and devoid of a plan for the future. Now that’s sad.
I don’t believe that the kid had to end up being bounced at that late stage. The problem was that someone earlier didn’t suggest to the child or the parents that a lot more work would be necessary. Making a living as a musician is a set of skills that can be learned. You may never be a brilliant artist, but not everyone is Yo Yo Ma or Miles Davis. Somebody has to be third violin in the Sheboigan orchestra (and if you are, my apologies). Again talent is not how good you get, but how fast you get good. Hard work in the form of training, practicing, and performing are the necessary ingredients. But you have to really want something to enable the sacrifices it requires to do the work.
Now if your goal is to be able to play a certain piece of music, or to ride your bike a certain speed, or something, you may or may not get there. That’s bad. “I set a really great goal, which I failed to achieve for the third year running…” That’s tough. No one would write that on a resume. Only Eldon would admit it, publicly, year after year (for which he gets enormous credit from me.)
Goals don’t matter, achievements do. The first thing you need in an endeavor is *not* a goal. It’s training, practice, and performance. Once you’ve done that for a little bit then you can consider looking at what you’ve done, and saying, How can I get better? A goal is a metric nothing more, and it will probably be the wrong one. So how do you get better? One of my favorite methods is simply to do the stuff I hate the most. It’s very likely that the stuff I hate the most is stuff I’m not good at. It’s not always true, there are some things that I hate to do that I’m very good at, but it holds up as a rule of thumb. So if I do the stuff I hate, I’ll often wind up being better because everyone’s tendency is to do stuff that makes you feel good, and the stuff that feels good is usually easy for us, because we become good at it in a short period of time. The stuff we hate we’re usually we’re usually bad at *and* we don’t become better at it quickly. Sometimes we’re just fooling ourselves and applying a bit of effort is all that was required, but often that’s not the case. I accept as my premise that anything you train, practice, and perform will get better over time. Sooner or later it becomes routine, and then eventually, easy. Including the stuff “we’re not good at”. I’ve seen this time and time again. All you lose is the demotivating aspect of failing to meet a goal.
This long winded bit of bushwah explains why I have no goals for riding this season (no 1000miles, no 20mph avg ride, no three centuries or whatever). What I have is the understanding that going uphill is hard and I hate it. Going really fast is hard and it hurts (soon enough assuming I’m not going downhill). That why I do intervals of hill repeats and stomps, fast pedals and other stuff. One day, this stuff is going to be easy.
Well, Daniel, I disagree.
I do set goals, but they’re not goals to be like the superstars. They’re based on what I did in the past. I look at what I’ve done before, and decide by how much I’d like to improve on it this year.
I had a bunch of goals this year. I missed a couple of them by a mile, but others have gone quite well. Next year, when I set my goals, I’ll have learned from this year’s goals. (For example, I won’t pretend that I can drop 30 pounds by the first weekend of August just by wishing it.)
As I said in a comment here last week: you’re not competing with anybody else, only with yourself. Setting goals based on what anyone else has done *is* completely unrealistic. Setting them based on your own experience is quite realistic and helpful, though.
You even came half way to making that point on your own. You said that goals are a metric. That’s right! And the nature of metrics is that, “what is measured tends to improve.” I measure my cadence, weight, average speed, and distance. All four tend to improve throughout the season.
Also, you said that Fatty is the only guy who admits when he doesn’t reach his goals (ok, you specifically said “for three years”). But I’ve made it pretty clear on my own site which goals I missed. See the top of this page.
I’ve always believed in the importance of difficult but realistic goals. They help us to push ourselves to do better.
But that’s the real key. Don’t set unrealistic goals. If your longest ride so far was 10 miles, don’t set a goal of completing a double century this year. If you average 14 mph on a 25 miles ride (like my friend Jimmy the DJ), don’t set a goal of 20 mph this year. Keep it real.
You’re quite right that unrealistic goals are disheartening. But difficult-yet-realistic goals are exciting, and they make you feel AWESOME when you reach them. “I worked my * off for this,” is something which can only be said with pride.
Seth
Seth