The Science of Setting (and Achieving) Goals
Responsibility is severely underrated. Adults desperately need responsibility, especially in a year where young adults often lead lives void of it. Men and women alike are “settling down” at continuously later stages of life, and it’s astoundingly common to see depression arise from a lack of meaningful pursuits in life within this generation. So how does one go about cultivating meaningful responsibility and subsequently bring about fulfillment in their adult life? By being goal-oriented.
There is no such thing as a successful professional who does not know how to set and reach goals. In fact there is no such thing as a happy, fulfilled human being who does not know how to set and reach goals. Responsibility (and thus true happiness) does not exist without a series of goals being set and met, so let’s discuss how optimal goal-setting and meeting works.
This is Your Brain on Goals
There are layers to goal-related behavior. There is the psychology behind the pursuit of goals, and there is intrinsic motivation on a cellular level. We all know how the structure of the brain operates on a reward system to motivate further action rather than complacency, using the neurotransmitter dopamine to control the brain’s balance of reward and motivation. With that being said, the chemical supply is only as valuable as the mentality and personal awareness of the individual.
Eva Monsma, Ph.D. writes about the importance of setting specific, measurable, and observable goals. It’s a waste of time to set vague, lofty goals that don’t provide any means to achievement or outline for what success and failure would look like. According to the Roehampton University Department of Psychology, “Research indicates that psychological wellbeing is associated with the actualisation of goals: having important goals in one’s life, believing that they are attainable, progressing towards them (at an appropriate pace), and achieving them. These processes, however, are mediated by several significant goal dimensions, such as how important the goals are, whether the goals are ‘approach’ or ‘avoidance’, and the extent to which the goals are conscious.”
Don't Be Your Own Goaltender
As in hockey or any sport with an end zone, don’t stand in your own way of getting to the goal. One major psychological block in reaching goals is by relying on immediate results to provide continued motivation. Many worthwhile goals do not deliver the instant gratification this generation has come to know and love, but instead offer profound extended rewards. So you want to be goal-oriented, not results motivated.
I began this piece by saying that responsibility is underrated, and that’s because goals and responsibility go hand-in-hand. The field of psychology has long been mystified by the Pareto distribution, which is the natural law that those with more will inevitably get more and those with less will inevitably get less. When we apply this law to responsibility, it only makes sense that attaining goals and therefore setting more difficult goals and attaining those as well will garner increasingly heavier responsibility. But don’t be afraid of the greater responsibility that will come when you surpass goals, because it will balance out with the greater rewards.
Another point to keep in mind is to be clear on the time constraints of your goals. As a writer, I can attest to the weighty motivation that deadlines have to offer. One in depth study concluded that, “When participants are allowed to control the time they spend on a task, hard goals prolong effort” (LaPorte & Nath, 1976). There is often, however, a trade-off in work between time and intensity of effort. Faced with a difficult goal, it is possible to work faster and more intensely for a short period or to work more slowly and less intensely for a long period. “Tight deadlines lead to a more rapid work pace than loose deadlines”. Anyone who values the work they do will not let an impending deadline result in lower quality work, so there is no use in fearing deadlines – they are your friends.
Take Charge of Your Goals!
Owning your goals will create a pathway for you to own your life. In today’s postmodern society, many young adults experience a lack of ownership over their lives, and much of that seems to go back to lack of goals. This is a detriment to people individually and a detriment to society. Doctor Jordan Peterson often talks about the importance of being able to distinguish between order and chaos. Being able to look around yourself and decide what in your life is “in need of repair” will allow you to mold your goals, simple and difficult, in a way so as to improve your quality of life. You can’t be the master of your profession if you are not first the master of yourself, and being able to set and attain goals is a principal aspect of that.
