7 Goal Setting Mistakes (To Avoid)
Why Reaching Goals Is Dependent on Your Goal-Setting Strategies
Most people set personal and professional goals in a way that hinders their ability to achieve them (and even predestines them for failure). That’s because they often set goals that:
- Are glorified New Year’s resolutions (with little thought or specificity),
- Aren’t meaningful enough (making it difficult to stay motivated and leading to unhappy results), or
- Are unrealistic or can’t be achieved within a reasonable time-frame (leading them to give up).
Goal-setting isn’t just about deciding that you want to achieve something. It’s the foundation to successful goal-achievement.
And success isn’t just about reaching your goal. It’s also about enjoying yourself along the way and being happy with where you end up. For that to occur, you need to be intentional about how you set your goals and avoid some common goal-setting mistakes.
Before we get into the 10 goal-setting mistakes below, a friendly reminder to grab your free copy of the ACHIEVE BIG Workbook. The workbook will take you step-by-step through an easy framework for setting meaningful goals (that avoid all of the mistakes below) and then taking action to achieve them.
Goal-Setting Mistake #1: Not Knowing Your Why
One of the worst goal-setting mistakes you can make is to set goals that don’t align with who you are or what you want out of your life.
Goal-achievement is a marathon, and you’ll want to stay motivated along the way. Knowing your deeper why is what keeps you motivated to keep going when things get hard (because they will).
Goal-Setting Mistake #2: Letting Your Ego Get In the Way
An ego-based goal is one that’s set primarily to feed your ego. And (as a human being with an ego), it’s easy to sometimes let your ego take over and create a goal that’s primarily ego-based.
There are two big problems with ego-based goals. First, any positive feelings upon achievement are fleeting. You’re left wanting something more because the goal isn’t meaningful enough.
Second, your happiness becomes dependent on your success, which means that you’re likely to feel like a complete failure as a person if you’re unable to fully achieve your goal.
I don’t know about you, but any goal that makes me feel like a failure if I don’t achieve it and doesn’t provide complete satisfaction upon achieving it isn’t worth my time or effort!
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that you can’t have goals that make you feel good about yourself. What I’m saying is that goals shouldn’t be purely ego-based. They need to connect to something that’s more meaningful than that and be framed accordingly.
If you can’t re-frame an ego-based goal by giving it deeper meaning, then it’s not connected to anything you truly value. Drop it.
Goal-Setting Mistake #3: Going Too Big
Don’t set goals so large that they aren’t achievable within a reasonable time frame.
Why Going Too Big Is a Mistake
Here’s the thing: your goals must be realistic. You need to be able to believe that you can achieve them. When goals are too big, your mind won’t believe that it’s possible (even if it is possible somewhere in the distant future).
Goal-Setting Mistake #4: Setting Too Many Goals
How many goals do you work toward at once? In my experience, most people set 3-5 work goals and another 3-5 personal life goals. And that’s too many!
The problem is that when you have so many goals, you end up multitasking them (and your time and attention ends up being pulled in so many directions that you can’t effectively achieve all of your goals).
Multitasking is bad for your brain and your mental health (so stop doing it, especially when it comes to your goals!). Limit yourself to 5 goals at a time. That’s an all-inclusive number (5 total work and personal goals).
Goal-Setting Mistake #5: Setting Vague, Non-Specific Goals
Reaching goals requires that you know exactly where you’re going. Otherwise, it’s difficult to determine how to get there. And that means setting specific goals, with clear points of measurement for achievement.
Want to lose weight? Set a specific weight that you want to reach.
Interested in being healthier? Define what healthier means to you and exactly how you’ll achieve it (because it could mean cutting back on fat, exercising more, getting more sleep or all of the above).
The reason most people aren’t specific enough is because it gives you a target to measure yourself by, making it obvious when you’ve missed it. And failure is scary!
But the truth is that you WILL fail if you don’t get specific. Setting goals with specificity makes them more actionable. It helps you to better determine what to do (and your first, and then next step).
Goal-Setting Mistake #6: Going Too Small
Many people set goals that are easy to achieve. But if you’re already likely to achieve something, what’s the point for setting the goal?
The purpose of goal-setting is to help you grow and develop as a person. And to do that, you need to stretch yourself. Besides, you’re more likely to get excited about something that challenges you and to stay motivated (you certainly won’t be bored).
Goal-Setting Mistake #7: Underestimating Time and Distractions
If you want to successfully reach goals, then you need to be realistic about time constraints, real-life and your abilities. For example, don’t expect that you’ll be able to deprive yourself of sleep for most of a year (or that unexpected events won’t throw you off track).
That means that you need to (1) consider how much work will be involved to achieve your goal, (2) think through how long it will likely take, assuming interruptions and that things won’t always go as planned, and (3) build wiggle room into your plan for unexpected events and contingencies.
I’m not telling you to go through every potential pitfall that could possible occur (or to get stuck in “what if” mode). However, you do need to take some time to account for the fact that life happens (and you’re only human).
For this reason, I recommend setting goals with 3 achievement levels: good, better and best. This allows for flexibility without getting caught up in thinking that you’re a failure if you don’t reach your top-level goal.