Are Your Goals Challenging Enough?

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, psychology professors and pioneers of goal-setting theory, produced conclusive validation that “people who set or are given difficult goals achieve much greater performance levels than do people who set or are given weaker goals that send a message of ‘Just do your best’.”

Why - Because difficult goals demand our attention and engage the brain.

The challenge is in finding your personal “sweet spot” of difficulty when setting goals. You don’t want your goals to create fear and be too difficult – you will give up and not succeed in achieving them. However, you also don’t want the goals to be too easy – you will to feel so unchallenged & unmotivated that you stop trying, learning and growing.

Here’s a quick way to test whether your goals are challenging enough to inspire optimal performance. Write down a goal and determine whether the following three statements apply:

• I’m really going to have to learn new skills before I’ll be able to accomplish this goal.
• My goal is pushing me outside my comfort zone; I’m not frozen with terror, but I’m definitely on “pins and needles” and wide-awake for this goal.
• When I think about the biggest and most significant accomplishments throughout my life, this current goal is as difficult as those were.

Leslie Forbes
April 26, 2011