[Editor's note - a different version of this post came out two years ago from Jason, but I (Darrin) have years of experience managing teams of professionals and so I've added my experience with how people can achieve their goals. So this is a pretty major rework...]
This is the time of year that many people already start to give up on their New Year’s Resolutions. Especially fitness goals. Don’t be one of those people!
Not getting to your destination? Having trouble achieving your goals? You may have a problem that you haven’t considered – how you set them in the first place.
When you are doing everything you possibly can to achieve your goals, but just can’t quite seem to reach them, the problem might be that you are setting the wrong type of goal. Here’s a real-world example that you might see in business:
My goal is to increase company sales this year.
What’s wrong with this goal?
- “This Year” is too long a timeframe to measure progress. You can easily lie to yourself each month you fail to see higher sales, by saying “I’ll make up for it next month”.
- You don’t directly control company sales. Most likely, you aren’t in a position to control company-wide sales. Even a director of sales doesn’t technically “control” sales because customers must buy something for sales to increase, and you can’t control the customers. You can only take actions that will influence their decision to purchase.
- Not measurable. How will you measure your success here? “Increase” could mean just $1 more revenue when you really meant much more.
You may have heard of SMART goals: specific, measureable, actionable, realistic, and timebound. Good advice in theory but in practice, the average person gets so confused by these 5 criteria that their goals become convoluted and dysfunctional.
MT Goals
So forget the “S”, “A”, and “R” for now and just focus on the “M” and “T” – make sure your goals are Measureable and Timebound (you do this right, and the S, A, and R will come along for the ride). And since you are the only person that you have complete, direct control over, you are the only person that your goals should ever focus on. You will only set yourself up for disappointment if you create a goal that you can try your hardest to achieve and still fail at.
[I've known this for many years, after struggling with teams and individuals going into contortions to set up goals. All that really matters is that they are measurable and timebound. But the first time I heard the phrase "MT" goals was from the guys at http://www.manager-tools.com/ . For further advice on MT goals, see Better Smart Goals.
Your Workout Goals – Outcome vs. Process
You don’t have direct control over your body composition either. If you did, you would just add 10 pounds of muscle or lose fat whenever you want.
Instead, you have to take the specific actions that influence your body to look the way you want. You don’t just lose fat… you increase your metabolism, run hard, and eat clean food, and then your body may or may not lose 10 pounds of fat.
So setting a goal to lose 10 pounds of fat is an outcome-based goal. Outcome-based goals are fine and usually the place people start. And they are an important part of goal setting. But they don’t tell you what to do – what action to take. If you don’t know what the best mix of diet and exercise is most likely to lose 10 pounds, no amount of goal setting will make it happen. You need to have some more experience before you can set outcome-based goals.
The solution to these problems is (more…)
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Continue reading about Goal Achievement For Lazy People – Start With The Right Goals
Admitting Defeat
You know, I recently wrote an article over at The Goal Triangle about how you have to fail in order to succeed. Well, here’s a case in point: the new email format. I tried to make things easier for you and for myself, and improve the look of the emails you get, but I “failed”. It was harder for me to manage, and the html codes ended up triggering more spam filters (meaning many of you never got some really good articles – check your spam folders over the past few weeks to make sure). So, I’m back to the old format.
Poll Results
You may have noticed the poll taking place on the right side of worldfitnessnetwork. The previous poll asked what your top fitness goals were. After hundreds of votes, the top 2 were: #1: build muscle and #2 shed fat. Probably not surprising given the content I write about! Be sure to take the current poll (which will be changed to a new poll in February).
The Fight For Your Fitness Wallet
If you are signed up for other fitness sites, you may have noticed a huge increase in sales hype and email volume.
I’m here to give you the straight story about why they are doing this, and how you should respond.
Since most of those guys are sending me information about how I should promote their products, I see their strategy. Here’s what’s going on… (more…)
Remember when we asked you to Take Your Worst Picture Ever? Well it’s time to take it out. If you haven’t taken it yet, or are new to World Fitness Network, we’ve got reminders at the end of this post…
What Do You See?
That old picture of yourself – is that what you still look like? Have you made any progress? Have you made enough progress? I’m not here to lecture you – I’m here to help you lecture yourself.
If you think you’ve made good progress, skip to the Take a New Picture section and then compare.
If you haven’t made progress, do these things right now:
- write down every excuse you can come up with; don’t hold back!
- now rank those excuses by their “power”; the stronger their power over you, the closer to the top of the list they go
- for each of your top 5 excuses (more if you have the gumption), write down at least one action you are going to take to eliminate it as an excuse moving forward
- take your top 5 excuses and share them with someone who cares about you; ask them for their advice on how they think you can eliminate those; don’t share the previous step with them – you want original ideas
- take the combined list of approximately 10 ideas to combat your 5 major excuses, and tape the list to your bathroom mirror
- every day (especially on your workout days) recite that list out loud; if you get embarrassed reading it out loud, good! you’ve got to break through some barriers if you want to eliminate those excuses
- now act!
And time to take a new picture:
Haven’t Taken Your Picture Yet? Or Need To Take A New Picture?
Did you fail your self-evaluation? Or are you just now planning to get in shape, but haven’t quite started yet?
Or even if you’ve made progress, you now need a new benchmark – a new picture.
Go into your room and take all your clothes off. That’s right, strip down to nothing but your briefs, your Spiderman Underoos, your boxers, your lingerie, whatever you are wearing underneath. (more…)
Join the forum discussion on this article, or comment below.
Continue reading about It’s Time to Look At Your Worst Picture Ever, And Take A New One
- Don’t delay getting in the best shape of your life…
Are you waiting until January to get serious about fitness?
I’m already starting to hear a phrase I absolutely hate: “After the holidays I will… [fill in the blank]“
For some it’s “After the holidays I’ll get serious about eating right.” For others it’s “…I’ll start lifting heavy,” or “…I’ll start on that workout program I bought last month.” You get the picture.
Are you guilty of saying this?
What in the world is so magical about “after the holidays?”
I’ll tell you what the “magic” is – it’s the dark magic of excuses and procrastination.
Because “the holidays” are a recognized calendar demarcation, it’s easy to put things off until afterward.
“I’ll be too busy until then.”
“There are too many temptations during the holidays.”
Wah wah wah.
And then you bring in the worst self-improvement lie I know of: the New Year’s Resolution.
I’m going to be sharing with you REAL strategies on goal setting in the coming weeks and let me assure you, there is nothing special about New Year’s except what’s in your head. That means it’s perception, and you can change your perception.
Your fitness is too important to wait.
You are ready now.
You are subscribed to this website (or else you landed here because you did a web search for something fitness related) and you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t considering getting serious.
There is no better time.
Some of you (thank goodness) are already well on your way to having a great physique and I’ll bet you didn’t “turn the corner” because of a New Year’s Resolution or by saying “I’ll start after the holidays.”
Sometimes it takes a life-changing event to push you into making change. Don’t wait for a life-changing event.
You are there now.
You have no excuse.
Earlier this year I was really focused on gaining strength. I set specific goals around 3 particular lifts and set a deadline. To accomplish them, I had to adjust my training plan and mental rehearsal framework. I had to read about elite deadlifters. I had to watch videos of heavy squatters. I had to increase the amount of food I was eating by a lot.
Having accomplished that, I turned my attention to shedding some of the fat I gained (it wasn’t much extra fat, but I still wanted it gone). So I set specific goals around appearance and bodyfat %.
In fact, my entire annual routine is based on the concept of periodically changing the routine to accomplish different fitness goals at different times of year.
What are YOUR most important fitness goals?
Want to shed 5 pounds of fat by New Year’s?
Want to be able to fully squat 300 pounds by your birthday?
Want to simply look good enough that you aren’t embarrassed at the beach next summer?
I’m going to be sharing more advice with you about goal setting in upcoming articles, but I want to introduce a concept first: your ultimate fitness goals (UFGs).
See, you probably want it ALL, right? You want to accomplish everything in as short a timeframe as possible. I understand. I’m ambitious and impatient, so my inclination when I set goals is to bite off wayyyy more than I can chew.
The reality is that you can’t do everything all at once.
Over time, sure, you can accomplish a tremendous amount. But for fitness, it’s best to focus on one or two goals at a time and then when you accomplish them you can move on to others.
So what are your most important fitness goals for the next 6 months – your UFGs?
The 8 Primary Fitness Areas
90% of the fitness goals you want to achieve are contained in one of the following 8 areas:
1) Lose Fat
2) Improve Endurance
3) Gain Strength
4) Increase Muscle Mass [hypertrophy]
5) Be “Healthy” And Feel Good (subjective)
6) Maintain everything at your current level
7) Recover From Injury
8) “Look Better” [body proportions, composition] (subjective)
It’s really important to focus on an area first, then set your goals. In other words, pick one of the 8 fitness areas to focus on first. Then set specific goals within that area. Maybe pick one more area and do the same. But really only work on at most 2 areas at once. And within each area, keep your specific goals to less than 5.
This is the time of year that many people already start to give up on their New Year’s Resolutions. In response, I’ve written this post:
Not getting to your destination? Having trouble achieving your goals? You may have a problem that you haven’t considered.
When you are doing everything you possibly can to achieve your goals, but just can’t quite seem to reach them, the problem might be that you are setting the wrong type of goal. Here’s a real-world example that you might see in business:
My goal is to increase department sales by 10% this year.
What’s wrong with this goal?
- You don’t control sales. Customers must buy something for sales to increase, and you can’t control the customers. You can only take actions that will influence their (more…)
Continue reading about How to Always Achieve Your Goals, 100% of the Time
Image Credit: neloqua
With the new year a few weeks behind us, now is a great time to look at our New Year’s resolutions and evaluate how we will achieve them. It’s sad, but many people set goals that they will never achieve.
But being lazy is not the only reason that people don’t achieve their goals. There’s another reason why you you’re not getting what you want: You haven’t set the right goals.
It happens all the time. Some people set a goal like: I want to lose 25 pounds in the next three months. Is this really the goal though? Maybe it is, but my guess is that most people with these kinds of goals need to dig a little bit deeper inside of themselves.
Why do you want to lose 25 pounds or increase your bench press by 30 pounds? For many people, the answer might be that they want to look better. So the true goal is to look and feel better, and increasing your bench press or losing 25 pounds is what you believe you need to do to get there, whether that’s actually the truth or not.
So, you need a goal to get you from point A [where you are right now] to point B [where you want to be]. Knowing point A is easy because you’re already there, but clearly envisioning point B will require a little more effort. Think about what you really want to achieve as your goal.
Finally, you’ll have to mentally create the road that connects point A and point B. You’ll need to have a plan that will get you where you want to go. This is a lot like looking at a map before you start driving.
Some people might say ‘Hey, I don’t have time to look at a map because I’m in a huge hurry’. The truth is, you don’t have time to drive around without looking at a map first. You could drive around all day before you find the place you’re looking for. The same is true for your goals.
So here are 5 essential tips that can help you to set your goals more effectively.
1. Simple and measurable: Your goal should be simple enough that you can easily remember it throughout the day. Simplicity and specificity can sometimes be opposites, so you will (more…)
Continue reading about 5 Essential Tips for Effective Goal Setting, Part 1
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