Today, I spoke to Heidi Grant Halvorson, who is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. In this interview, Heidi goes over how to define and commit to a goal, why it’s important to have short-term and long-term goals, why people fail at their goals, and more.
What is the process of defining and committing to a goal?
There are a few key steps you can take when setting a goal that will significantly increase your chances of reaching it. By far the most important step is being specific. Too often we set goals for ourselves like lose weight or be more assertive at work, but when our goals are vague we leave ourselves way too much wiggle room. We tend to settle for small changes in the right direction, rather than the big changes we really need to make. When our goals are more specific, like lose 15 pounds, or ask my boss for a pay raise, we know exactly what success looks like, and we don’t stop working toward it until we reach it.
Should you have short-term and long-term goals? What’s the best way of keeping track of them and making sure they get accomplished?
Breaking your long-term goals down into shorter-term goals is a really effective strategy. Usually, longer-term goals are more abstract or vague, like wanting to have a successful career, or to adopt and maintain a healthier lifestyle.
By thinking more about the shorter-term goals we need to reach to make those long term goals happen (like wanting to get promoted this year, or to lose 10 pounds and exercise three times a week), we are able to focus on the immediate, concrete steps we need to take, and that is far more motivating.
Also, long-term goals can sometimes seem so far off that if we dwell on them too much, we lose confidence in our ability to reach them. I remember years ago a fellow graduate student lamenting that the number of papers he had published was pathetic compared to our advisor, who had been working in the field for 35 years. I tried pointing out to him that he was making an insane comparison, since he had only been doing research for three years. But he ignored me, and remained totally focused on his long-term goal of becoming a “big shot,” and depressed by how far he had to go. It was completely de-motivating. His story did not end well.
How you keep track of your goals is intensely personal – some of us are list-makers, some of us live and die by our leather-bound planners, and some of us keep journals. Whatever method appeals to you, you need to make sure you are using it to regularly monitor your progress – daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever makes sense depending on the goal. Without a clear sense of where you are today with respect to your goal, it’s hard to stay motivated, or to know when a change of strategy is needed.
Why do people fail at their goals? Can you give an example?
There are several reasons – and for the record, “not having what it takes” is never one of them. It’s about what you do, not who you are.
More often than not, we fail to reach our goals simply because we miss opportunities to act on them. Throughout the day, we are constantly making choices about what to do with our time (often unconsciously). Which goal should I work on in this situation? Is this a good situation for that goal? Which action should I take? What do I feel like doing? Having to decide when, where, and how to act on your goal is hard to do swiftly, and opportunities may pass by while you’re trying to figure it all out.
I think exercising regularly is a great example, because I constantly hear people saying they want to exercise but “don’t have time,” which is almost never literally true. I speak from experience here, because exercising more has been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember, and for most of my life I never actually managed to do it. I made excuses for my failure, and my favorite one to trot out was “I’m too busy. I didn’t have time today.”
It felt like it was honest, but looking back, it clearly wasn’t. It wasn’t really true that I didn’t have any opportunities to exercise. What is true is that every time one arose, I chose to do something else, like sleep in, take a long lunch, stay late at work, or unwind with a drink in the evening with friends. Every time I could have acted on my goal, I decided to act on another goal. These decisions weren’t usually conscious – I just (conveniently) forgot about exercising until it was too late. The other, less important but far more pleasurable goal pursuits got all of my energy and attention. (Yes, I would much rather work late than exercise. That’s how much I hate it.)
The good news is that there are very effective solutions for this problem, and I spend a lot of time describing how and why they work in the book. There are, for example, simple plans you can make that spell out when and where you will act on your goal (e.g., I’ll work out Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 30 minute before work) that increase your likelihood of reaching your goal by about 300%.
How can we avoid the kind of positive thinking that makes us fail?
There is a big difference between believing you will succeed, and believing you will succeed easily. Having confidence that you will reach your goal is essential – and incredibly motivating. But any goal truly worth achieving requires effort, persistence, and the right strategies. When we assume that getting there will be a breeze, we don’t adequately prepare – we don’t plan, we don’t put in enough effort, and we give up as soon as things become too difficult.
Just to give you one example: in one study of overweight women enrolled in a weight loss program, researchers found that the women who were confident they could lose the weight lost 24 pounds more on average than those who didn’t believe in themselves. No surprises there. But women who believed that it would be easy to lose the weight – that they would have no trouble resisting high calorie foods and sticking to their exercise program – lost 26 pounds less than those who embraced the fact that weight loss is hard work.
If you want to succeed, it’s important to be optimistic about your chances of success, while being realistic about what it takes to get there.
What got you into social psychology in the first place?
Actually, I started out studying chemistry. I switched to psychology when I realized that a science about people was much more interesting to me than a science about molecules. Then I started studying achievement and motivation, because I was intrigued to learn how surprisingly bad people are when it comes to understanding why we succeed or fail. Recently, I’ve shifted gears again, and gone from someone who spends most of her time conducting research to one who spends all her time talking and writing about it, and trying to help people understand how they can use the science of motivation in their own lives.
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Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson.
