Goal-setting discussion post!

[randomling]

Hi, folks, and a happy new year to you all!

It's Theme Week! And this week's theme is Goal Setting. I thought we would kick things off with a discussion post about goal-setting. It's timely, given that it's New Year, and I'm sure many of us are thinking about our goals for the coming twelve months, whether we're making resolutions or not.

So here are some questions to get discussion started. Feel free to answer (or just cogitate about) one or more of these goals. And our Just One Thing philosophy totally applies to this post - feel free to say one thing, make one point or even just one sentence. Every contribution is welcome!

* How do you set goals? Do you find the SMART framework works for you, or not? What's important to you when deciding what your goals are?
* What sorts of things do you tend to think about when you're planning how to achieve your goals?
* Do you spend any time on anticipating obstacles or figuring out how you're going to cope with problems? What do you find useful/not useful about such an approach?
* How do you decide what success will look like?
* How do you review the goals you've set? How do you decide when to review?
* Do you reward yourself for goals that you achieved? How you do treat yourself when you don't achieve a goal?

Feel free to share with us! I'll be sharing some thoughts of my own in the comments.

Comments

[cadenzamuse]

I never go look at the SMART framework, but I do try to set achievable goals that I can benchmark the way to. This is also a cognitive behavioral therapy thing, setting little goals that I can achieve and then gradually upping the goal.

Partner responds really well to punishment for failure (because he's a contrary bastard), but I really only respond well to positive reinforcement. So I usually make goals that involve a star or point or whatever for each day that I do whatever the goal is, some framework for docking points for backsliding, and then a reward at a certain number of points.

For example, I want to get back into exercising regularly this year. So I will probably start with "exercise for half an hour three days per week" as a goal, and award myself a star for every day I exercise. If I exercise less than three days in a week, I'll lose a star--so it only takes one day of exercise to make up for backsliding, which isn't too discouraging for me.

My standard starting reward number of stars is 15, 20, or 30, depending on how frequent the goal is. Given that this is only three times a week, I will probably go for 15 stars. At 15 stars, I'll give myself a reward ($5 to spend however I want, probably--we're broke and close to poor, so that's a big treat, and will get me a new e-book or a new mp3 album or a couple drinks at Starbucks).

At 15 stars, I'll also evaluate where to set the goal for next time. Depending on how much I struggled to get there, I may set my next goal/reward to 15 stars again. Or I might up the length to next reward (20 stars) but not change the goal. Or if it's going well, I'll up the goal to four days of exercise per week.

An overarching goal/guiding principle I have for myself is practicing and increasing my performance character traits: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity.

I started with grit, which I think of as "persistence" or "perseverance." A big part of learning perseverance for me has been learning to be gentle with my failures, and starting over/continuing on even after I fall off the wagon. This is hard: I am a pathological perfectionist (no really, perfectionism is what my anxiety disorder is linked to), and beating myself up for making a mistake is a really ingrained habit.

I would love, love, love suggestions for ways to treat myself kindly when I fail at a goal or make a mistake.

I have gotten better at the perseverance part of failure--if I don't achieve my goals, I am much better at just trying again. If I don't apply for two jobs today, I am much better than I used to be at being a little disappointed in myself, shrugging my shoulders, and then applying for two jobs tomorrow, instead of feeling like I've Failed Everything Ever and giving up. I've persevered at a crappy job search (even though I haven't found a job yet) and at learning games that I feel like I'm bad at. This year, in addition to consistent exercise, I would like to persevere at going to my Old Testament class even though I dislike it, reaching out to people socially/saying "yes" to more social situations even though I am depressed, and re-involving myself in a communal storytelling event, like tabletop RPGs or improv comedy.

I feel like this is a lot, but if it's not too overwhelming, I would also like to add a practice of gratitude as my next performance character trait to work on.

[randomling]

This sounds like a really useful system! I love the ideas of stars and setting up a disincentive for backsliding as well as stars for achieving goals.

I'd also never heard of "performance character traits" - I'm going to have a look at those in more detail, because they sound really interesting and I might want to adopt that for myself, so thank you for the link!

I'm also really impressed that you're getting better at failing and persevering - that's something I struggle with, and my word for the year is "resilience", so that's a thing I'll be actively working on in 2014.

Basically this sounds excellent and I would like to cheer you on! And I'm seconding the request for suggestions on how to treat yourself kindly when you fail or screw up. I'm bad at that!

[alwayswondered]

I have a few goals this year! Probably the most important one is to continue to nurture myself and work on my self-esteem and mental health. I also want to exercise more (complete both the 100 Pushups and Couch to 5K by the end of the year, and go to Pilates at least three weeks out of every four). And I want to go on at least one motorbike rideout with the Ace Café club.

The SMART framework really doesn't help me when it comes to personal goals, partly because it just feels like work. Achieving the goal is work enough; I don't need to make the goal-setting part any harder than it already is! I also have a terrible tendency to punish myself and get angry with myself if I fail at something; I don't need super specific and rigid goals in order to make meaningful progress but I will beat myself up badly if I have such a goal and don't meet it. Until I work that kink out of my personality, SMART goals are more of a hindrance than a help.

A big part of goal-setting for me is allowing for the possibility that I might fail. I don't WANT to fail and I know I can motivate myself to make little changes, but I also need to know from the outset that it's okay if I don't stick to it 100%. I've previously gone at things with an all-or-nothing mentality: if I don't exercise three times a week every week then I'll be a failure so if it gets to the end of the week and I've only exercised twice, I may as well give up. It sounds counterintuitive but leaving myself room to slack off a bit means I'm more likely to stick to the goal over the long term.

Part of my learning to nurture myself is going to be rewarding myself when I achieve interim goals along the way. Punishing myself for failure has never, ever worked; I'm like cadenzamuse. I need to be rewarded for a job well done!

[randomling]

Wow this sounds really excellent! Building in the possibility of failure to your goals sounds like a really useful thing which is another aspect I haven't really accounted for historically in my goal-setting, and I have a similar issue with perfectionism and bailing on large goals if I make just one mistake!

[ninetydegrees]

I don't have any particular system for setting goals. Actually even the idea of setting goals doesn't work for me at all; it's a guaranteed set up for failure as far as I'm concerned no matter how small, attainable or whatever the 'goal' is (I read http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/71807628556/if-there-were-a-museum-of-terrible-self-help recently and, to me, this just doesn't apply to new year's resolutions).
What I do is think about what I wanna do and about what I can do and see if that can vaguely match and that's it. No plans, no calendars --although I would recommend http://karenkavett.com/blog/2037/dont-break-the-chain-calendar-2014.php--, no apps, no systems. No pressure. Because I know there will be days, weeks, months when I won't make it. I know that. It will happen. That's who I am. So the only commitment I have for myself is to try and do my best and be happy when I achieve something and still be happy when I don't because being happy is the most important and sometimes the hardest thing for me.

[kaberett]

* Make It Smaller. I tend to decide on a big thing, then try to work out what Smaller Steps are, then write a list of smaller steps, then CROSS THEM OFF AS I GO.

* Because of Reasons, I'm worrying that I'll fail my 9-month transfer, not have money to pay rent, have to find a new housemate to replace me when I move out, etc etc etc UGH. So - trying to anticipate obstacles is frequently unhelpful for me.

* reviewing: CHECKLISTS.

I. Have more thoughts probably, but these for now.