Ep. #184: Motivation Monday: The Simple Science of Effective (and Ineffective) Goal Setting

[00:00:00] By telling your goals to other people and then receiving acknowledgement, you are given a premature sense of completion and satisfaction.

Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and welcome to another episode of my podcast. This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed Motivation Monday. Yes, I know. So creative of me. What can I say? I’m just a genius. Seriously though, the idea here is simple. Every Monday morning, I am going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.

Because it’s one thing to know what you want. Want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it. And I hope that this series gives you a jolt of energy and encouragement [00:01:00] to go ahead and do all of those things that you want to do. So if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.

This week’s quote is short. But sweet, and it comes from Jersey Gregorick, who is an old school Olympic weightlifter who won four world championships and also set one world record. And he said, hard choices, easy life, easy choices. When you set a goal, what is your first instinct? What’s the first thing that you feel you want to do once you decide that you want to do something?

It’s probably to start telling people about it. Start telling people about your goal. Either to get motivated or maybe to be admired or maybe a bit of both. Both, and you’re not alone here. Of course, if you attend any type of social gathering, or if you just go and [00:02:00] scroll through your Facebook feed, chances are you are going to hear a lot of prognostications of grandeur and whether this impulse to talk ourselves up and talk our dreams up is more a product of our culture or more a manifestation of some deeper, more innate, Human desire to be loved and admired doesn’t really matter because the practical reality is it directly impedes our ability to actually make our goals a reality.

And yes, this is backed up by scientific research studies have shown that merely discussing our goals can set us up for failure. And the evidence for this scientifically speaking stretches actually all the way back to the 19. 30s, and these studies have been successfully replicated dozens of times throughout the last 80 years or so, and have conclusively shown that people who keep their goals to [00:03:00] themselves are more likely to successfully accomplish them than those who broadcast their plans to the world.

Now, this isn’t the case with everybody, of course, but it just follows the standard bell curve distribution. For most people, this remains true. And the reason why is simple, and agrees at least with my perception of myself, and that is, By telling your goals to other people and then receiving acknowledgement, you are given a premature sense of completion and satisfaction.

In effect, what you’re doing is you are mentally short cutting the work that it should take to receive that acknowledgement, and this in turn can take the wind out of your sails. So for example, let’s imagine that you have decided to run a marathon. Once you start telling everyone, your friends, your family about your goal to run the marathon and you start liking the different [00:04:00] pages on Facebook and you start updating your various social media statuses to indicate that you are indeed starting your training for the marathon.

You’ve created a public image of yourself as someone who runs marathons. Now you can think of this as creating that social reality for yourself as a. Sub goal that you’ve completed on the route to your bigger and larger goal of actually running a marathon and this feeling that you have artificially generated of making progress toward that goal can actually make you less motivated to pursue the rest of the sub goals like actually getting out there and training because one, you’ll probably feel like you’ve done enough for now and you can go do something else and get back to it.

And two. Actually training for a marathon is a lot harder than updating social media statuses, writing blog posts and chatting with friends. And interestingly enough, the psychological mechanisms [00:05:00] in play here can happen even when you are not telling your goals to other people. So for example, in one study, they found that success on one sub goal of getting fit, which was just eating healthily.

can actually make people less likely to pursue the other sub goals, like going to the gym, that are required for the achievement of that overall goal of getting into great shape. Now, all this is one of the reasons why I rarely talk about my goals, and I also deliberately ignore chances of success. To brag about what I’m doing or what I plan on doing and even though I know for a fact that I can do whatever is necessary to see things through, I’d prefer to make it as easy on myself as I can.

I’d prefer to stay as highly motivated throughout the entire process as possible and not have to struggle against flagging enthusiasm that, could be caused by me blabbering about my plans for the future. So what [00:06:00] then are we supposed to do when someone specifically asks what we’re up to, or what’s on the horizon, maybe about certain projects that they know we’re working on?

And we can find a simple answer to that in some research conducted on this entire topic. And that is Interesting enough, it’s also been my normal way of replying to these types of questions because let’s face it, simply never talking about what you’re up to is a bit extreme and probably unnecessary.

We’re not going to do that with everybody. We’re not going to do that with our close friends. We’re not going to do it with our family. We’re not going to do that under all circumstances, like Networking events and business meetings and so forth. So here is a simple science based approach that we can use to talking about our goals while also preserving their vitality.

And it comes from a paper, which I’m quoting quote third recent research by Fishback and her colleagues Suggests that interpreting a behavioral performance in terms of [00:07:00] indicating commitment to a goal enhances further goal striving, whereas conceiving of a performance in terms of progress toward a goal reduces further goal striving.

This implies that a behavioral intention worded to indicate a strong commitment to the identity goal, E. g., or for example, I want to write a paper to become a great scientist, should be less negatively affected by social reality than a behavioral intention that implies progress toward the identity goal, e.

g., I intend to write a paper as is done by great scientists. Now, nobody talks exactly like that, of course, but you get the point here. The point is if you answer in such a way that indicates you are working on it with no implication of having arrived or achieved anything, or even made any progress per se, then it is much less likely to negatively impact you and may actually positively impact you.

By making you more likely to stay the course and remain consistent with what you have told [00:08:00] people. So for example, you want to say, I’m working on losing 20 pounds and not, I’ve joined a gym and I go every morning. You want to say something like, I’d like my business to be profitable by the end of the year and not, we’ve already made so and so many sales.

Or, I want to become fluent in another language, and not, I’ve already put in 100 hours of language learning. In other words, don’t go for approval, just go for a lukewarm response of, oh, okay, cool. When people are responding, when they ask you, What you’re up to. And then you give them that kind of statement.

And they’re like, Oh, that’s cool. That’s when you know, you have it. And similarly, I think that you should do other people a favor and don’t fawn over their goals and intentions. When people tell me about something that they intend on doing or achieving my standard response is usually along the lines of, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

You should do it. I reserve my praise for Dunn’s not [00:09:00] going to dues. And there’s actually another reason why I don’t offer much information about my personal dreams and intentions and plans. And that is I really don’t care what people think about them. And I don’t really care whether I get recognized for doing things.

As the old cliche goes, I do most of what I do because it’s just what I like to do. to do, and it’s not because of what it gets me financially or interpersonally or socially or anything else. Also, I really do value my own praise most living up to my own standards and producing products and services that meet my standards is more important to me than receiving praise from other people or living up to their standards.

And this is an attitude that some people that don’t really know me, they mistake for aloofness or elitism. And that’s really not it. It’s something that just gives me a huge advantage in my work because when you let go of the need for external [00:10:00] approval, you also let go of the need for external motivation.

You don’t feel the need to turn to others for pep talks. You don’t feel the need to write those status updates about the latest and greatest developments in your journey. You simply keep to yourself, you do your work, and eventually One day, people start to notice that you’re actually making things happen, that you have done the work.

That’s how I keep myself motivated, or one of the ways I keep myself motivated and on track. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can [00:11:00] find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. But that’s not all there is to effective goal setting. So let’s talk about goal setting and scheduling, because many people make the very fatal goal setting mistake of working out deadlines for things, but not schedules.

In other words, we often focus on the end result that we want and when we want it by without really. Getting down to the details and considering how much effort it is really going to require, how much time it’s going to require, and how we are going to insert that into our lives, how we’re going to break all that effort down into a repeatable routine that will ultimately get us to where we want to be.

And ideally when we want to be there, but that rarely happens. So at least within a reasonable margin of error time wise. [00:12:00] What happens then is When we don’t meet these arbitrary target dates, we will often come down hard on ourselves as failures. And I think that approach is completely backwards.

How are we supposed to achieve something within a certain time frame without giving any thought to how much work it will actually require and how we are going to do that work? When we are going to do that work? Very specifically, when? That’s why I think that when you want to achieve something, you should first think about your schedule.

Think about your time, how much time can you give to it? When, how consistently can you give that time? And then think about the deadline because you only get so many hours to do whatever you want to do every day. And of course, the better you organize and spend those hours, the more and bigger goals you can accomplish.

For example, I myself have a very specific schedule worked out. It actually, I rotate through four different weeks because my [00:13:00] work has a repeating rhythm. Not every week is the same, but I have it. laid out very specifically in terms of time blocks. I’m looking at usually 30 minute time blocks.

And, I have every day scheduled from the moment that I’m going to be in the office to the moment I’m going to be leaving. And if I’m going to be working at home, when that’s going to start, when that’s going to end in exactly what things I will be working on in each of those time blocks. And this is what I’ve done since the beginning.

And it has helped me write multiple best selling books that have sold over a million copies. I’ve built a couple blogs now muscle for life and Legion that gets over 2 million visits a month. Legion, the supplement company is now an eight figure company. And of course, I didn’t do all these things alone.

I have a team of very smart, capable, hardworking people, but for my part, for what I have contributed to all of that, which is quite a lot, that’s how I’ve done it. I’ve been very specific with my time and very [00:14:00] conscientious in my Scheduling, and I’ve also done those things without losing my wife, which counts for something, although it might be more due to her strength of character than my virtue, but that’s a different discussion.

So anyways, my point here is that, of course, life can get in the way, and sometimes we don’t have a choice, but to deviate from our schedules, and that’s That’s just the way it is and that’s fine. And for me, what I do is when things change, it usually just means that I have to play catch up by sacrificing certain time slots that I had laid out for whatever to do more important things that have to get done.

So for example, I may skip reading one night, which I have scheduled in to make sure that an article gets done on time or something like that. Another big benefit of being this rigorous with your scheduling is it allows you to keep a lot of plates spinning. It allows you to juggle a lot of projects because you know that each will get the time that they need, [00:15:00] which allows you to one focus.

Exclusively on what you’re doing when you’re doing it, because you don’t have to be worrying about whether you should be doing something else or not. And two, it allows you to be realistic with what you take on. I myself, I say no to many more things these days. Then yes, because as much as I would like to do many other things, when I look at my schedule and I get down to the specifics and I go, okay, if I’m going to commit to this, when am I actually going to do it?

How much time is it going to take approximately? And how am I going to fit that into my schedule? And. And what that really means is what am I going to bump? What am I willing to work less on or not work on to do this other thing? And in most cases, that’s when I just choose not to do the other things because they’re just not as important as what I am currently giving my time to.

It also helps you get creative with your time and how to get more value out of your time. So for example, if you have time allotted for meal prepping, maybe it’s [00:16:00] a Sunday meal prep, or maybe it’s even a daily meal prep, right? Just like for me, it’s prepping my dinner every night, or maybe it’s walking your dogs or driving to work.

What else can you do in that time that makes it more valuable? For me, it is listening to audio books. I’m not big on podcasts, but I’m big on audio books. And That alone allows me to get through probably an additional hundred pages per week that otherwise would just be downtime, maybe listening to music or something, which is fine, but not all that productive.

So that’s it for today’s tips. Obviously I could go on and on about goal setting. It is a deep and nuanced topic. Topic, but I want to keep these motivation Monday episodes short and sweet. So if you want to hear more about goal setting, just let me know and I can do some more episodes on it because I have a lot more that I could say.

Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this [00:17:00] the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick comment review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

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