I had an athlete the other day call me asking for some advice on her “three-year goals.”
She was having trouble defining exactly how much faster she wanted to be in three years.
This is a conundrum I see often. Most of us have been taught by well meaning parents or guidance counselors that we need goals.
It’s intimated (if not outright said) that “People without goals are losers!”
We’re told that not only do we need goals period, but that we need goals with very specifically measurable objectives and timelines.
But as James Clear insightfully points out in his book Atomic Habits, the difference between those who win and lose isn’t goals. Let’s use an example of two teams playing a game. They both have the goal to win. But when they play each other, one of them loses.
Those teams both had goals, hell they even had the exact same goal.
So was it their goal that influenced who won and lost? Or was it something else?
There are three parts to goal setting. One is the goal itself. A bunch of words tied to an emotion announcing your intention to get ‘there.’ The second part is the direction of the goal. This is a broad idea of “I want to get faster at running.” A goal is just the natural result of work in a direction.
The third and most important part of goal setting is to create a plan, based on the direction, of how to achieve the goal.
The REAL difference between the two teams was that one of them had a better plan of how to actually win.
Very often we get confused about the actual purpose of goal setting, which is not to come up with a GOAL, but to come up with a PLAN!
Right now this lesson is especially important because we’ve been told that nothing fucking happens unless we have a goal, and all the races are concealed, so how can we have goals?
And so we feel stuck.
The key moving forward here is that you don’t need a goal to write a plan.
You need a direction. And I bet you already have one of those. You know you want to get faster on a bike. Or you want to be able to go farther running. Or you want to be injured less.
These are directions from which you can write a plan.
Again, remember that the important part isn’t that you know exactly how far you go, but in what direction. And then you go like hell in that direction.
Action Items:
Step 1: Define a direction
Step 2: Find expert instruction
Step 3: Make a plan
Step 4: Crush the plan for 6 months.
