The Importance of Goal Setting
Goals and goal-setting is a concept known all too well in the realm of fitness, training, self-improvement, health, and physical well-being. You can’t deny it plays a crucial role in achieving success—no matter the magnitude of your goal.
Goal setting is a powerful tool that provides direction, clarity, motivation, and a framework for continuous improvement. Some will argue that setting goals may be a waste of time or a method that creates unnecessary pressure. However, if you were to evaluate any high achiever in any domain of life, their results always seem to prove otherwise…
Why YOU should be setting goals
How do you know if you’re headed in the right direction? How will you know whether or not the sum of your efforts is bringing you closer to this vision you have for yourself?
You don’t need to be an elite athlete or big-shot CEO to set goals. Setting goals is something every single human being should be doing to satisfy basic psychological needs to feel fulfilled in life. Human nature craves autonomy, competence, self-efficacy, purpose, and a sense of belonging which goal setting can provide—granted the goals align with your core values and beliefs.
The psychology of setting goals has been studied for years to evaluate its impact on our general well-being and overall life satisfaction.
Individuals who set and achieve goals report higher levels of life satisfaction, happiness, and overall well-being compared to those who lack clear goals or aspirations. When you have clear goals to work towards, you’re more likely to feel motivated, energized, and focused, leading to greater satisfaction with your achievements and progress. This grants you a sense of accomplishment and enhances confidence. The satisfaction derived from reaching milestones and accomplishing an objective you set out to achieve can heavily contribute to your overall feelings of success and fulfillment in various areas of life. If you’re doing well in your work life, this can positively impact your home and personal life. The same applies if you’re seeing success in your physical health and training pursuits.
Now, these goals do need to bring some sort of challenge to promote continuous learning, development, and growth.
Locke and Latham’s 1990 paper "A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance" laid the foundation for the goal-setting theory. The theory suggests that setting specific and challenging goals leads to higher performance compared to vague or easy goals. They emphasized the importance of feedback, commitment, and task complexity in goal attainment. They reported that specific and challenging goals led to higher performance levels than vague or easy goals.
Setting ambitious yet achievable goals encourages you to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone, take on new challenges, and acquire new skills and knowledge. This ongoing pursuit of mastery fosters personal growth and self-improvement.
What To Consider When Setting Goals
Simply declaring what you WANT won’t provide you with the proper framework to see the potential success from your efforts.
That’s where setting SMART goals comes in:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound Goals.
Using the SMART goals framework is a sure way to help you maximize your efforts and ensure you’re headed on the right path to achieving this new vision for yourself.
Let’s break it down…
Specific
When declaring a goal, there needs to be as little room for interpretation as possible. This will help you stay on the right track as you’re pursuing it. This part of the SMART framework emphasizes clarity and precision in defining the goal.
A specific goal clearly answers the following questions:
What do you want to accomplish?
Why is it important?
Who is involved?
Where will it happen?
When will it be achieved?
For example, instead of vaguely stating you want to get stronger, a specific goal could be being able to squat double your body weight within the next 6 months, building up to 10 consecutive pull-ups before the summer, bench pressing 225lbs for reps before your next birthday—you get the idea.
Measurable
Measurable goals provide a way to track progress and determine when the goal has been achieved. How will you know you’re getting closer to your goal and whether or not you’re coming close to achieving it? Measurable goals are quantifiable and often involve numbers or specific metrics.
Let’s use the pull-up example from above. You start off with the ability to string together 5 reps so you know before you reach that magical number 10, you’ll eventually need to be able to string 6, 7, 8, and 9 reps together. You can easily measure whether or not you’re headed in the right direction based on your progress every time you train.
Achievable
An achievable goal is realistic and feasible given the resources, time, and constraints involved. Is the goal reasonable and attainable based on where you’re at in your life today? While goals should stretch individuals or organizations to improve, they should also be within the realm of possibility. The difficulty of the goal contributes heavily to the likelihood of you seeing it through. Setting overly ambitious goals can lead to frustration or burnout. An achievable goal challenges but doesn't overwhelm.
For example, you set a goal to run a marathon but you’ve never run further than 5 kilometers consecutively, perhaps setting a goal to run a 10km, 15km, half marathon, and eventually going for the full thing would be more strategic as to not discourage you and to help you see it through.
Relevant
This part emphasizes the importance of setting goals that align with broader objectives or priorities. Does this goal matter and contribute to the overall outcome you’re looking to create for yourself? It ensures that all your efforts are focused on activities that support your long-term aspirations. Everything you pour into the pursuit of this goal should be directed towards the outcome you want. Wasting your time and energy on unnecessary tasks and behaviours will only delay you from achieving your goal or prevent you from fulfilling it to your fullest potential.
For example, if your overarching goal is to get stronger, it doesn’t make sense to only strength train twice a week in the gym and go on long-distance runs for the rest of your training sessions. Work smart, not hard.
Time-Bound
This portion of SMART goals involves creating a deadline or setting a timeframe for completion. A pretty straightforward component of setting any sort of goal. When will the goal be achieved? Setting a deadline creates a sense of urgency and helps prioritize tasks. Without a timeframe, goals can linger indefinitely, and there's less accountability for making progress. For example, instead of saying "Deadlift more weight," a time-bound version of the goal would be "Improve my deadlift by 50lbs within the next 365 days".
Using the framework above is a sure way to put yourself on the right track as you begin your pursuit to achieve your goal. While there’s no “right or wrong” goal for an individual, making sure your goals align with your values and interests is the number one consideration to make before even diving into the SMART framework. If you’re engaged and motivated by your goal, you’re more likely to see it through and push past moments of adversity when they present themselves.
Set Your Goals Loud and Proud.
Hopefully, by now you’re convinced of the importance of setting goals. After using the framework of SMART goals above, the one last piece of goal setting that can boost the likeliness of your success is declaring them. Put them out there! Write them out in a journal, speak up about them to your family and friends, share them on social media—whatever feels best for you.
Publicly declaring goals has shown to:
Increased accountability
Enhanced commitment
Social support and encouragement
Clarification of intentions
Positive reinforcement
All of which contribute to higher rates of success.
With that said, start your process of setting goals TODAY.
Download the PDF below to use for your next SMART goal and share it with us by tagging @factorymethodtraining on your social media channels or print it off to put up on your fridge or wherever makes sense to you. It’s there to serve as a daily reminder of your commitment.