Setting-goals is an important aspect of monitoring and accomplishing an individual’s believed potential.
“The issue with goal-setting is not that the average person doesn’t have goals, it is that they do not create a plan to make effective improvement on their goals every day” – Orlick, 2016
Goal-setting done correctly can provide a detailed plan, sense of direction, increase motivation and step-by-step instructions to making progress to the desired goal. Goal-setting takes an abstract dream and formulates a realistic plan to get close to that result. When exploring goal-setting an athlete must use a combination of different styles of goals. There are three different types of goals to examine; outcome, performance, and process goals.
Outcome Goals
This is the most common type of goal and it readily comes to mind when thinking about what we want to achieve. An outcome goal that is typically focused on the result of an event, such as winning a race, earning a medal, or scoring more points than an opponent. These goals are motivating, and we know when we get there because we have achieved a specific result.
However, relying on these types of goals alone can hurt your performance.
This type of goal typically relies on aspects outside of the athlete’s control. This means in order to win the competition this goal also depends on the skill of your teammates, the skill of your opponents, the calls the referees decide to make that day, and environment, it could be raining, early morning game, unfamiliar away field. There are many factors that go into winning an event, some of which you can control and others you cannot.
- Examples of outcome goals: “I want to win the next game,” “I want to win a gold medal”
Takeaway Point: Outcome goals are motivating but they are just a piece to the puzzle
Performance Goals
A performance goal is (you guessed it) focused on improving your personal performance. This type of goal is designed to be independent of other competitors, you set goals based on your past performances. This type of goal tends to be within your control and allows you to make progress measurable towards achieving it.
- Examples of performance goals: “I want to run a mile 10 seconds faster,” “I want to improve my passing accuracy”
By improving your performance, you are putting yourself in a better position in achieving those outcome goals. If you can focus on placing effort and attention on the factors within your control you can minimize the impact of factors outside of your control.
Takeaway Point: Competing against yourself leads to success
Process Goals
A process goal is focused on the actions needed to execute a task and perform it well. The point of this type of goal is to find the small actions necessary to compete your performance goal. This goal provides an athlete the steps to make incremental improvement through the technical aspects of an overall performance.
- Examples: “I will square up to the basket,” “I will plant my feet before passing”
Since process goals are such a small part of an overall performance it can take some creativity come up with process goals that match your personal performance and outcome goals. The idea is to understand how to improve in every aspect of your performance, from the positioning of your hands when you catch to how your knees are bent to take off running.
Takeaway Point: Improving the small things leads to great rewards
7 Tips for Goal Setting
With these three types of goals in mind you can begin to understand how a combination of these goals may be most beneficial to your personal improvement. The following are several guidelines to help athletes and coaches create effective goals:
1. Set specific goals
All too often when setting goals, I hear phrases like “I want to be fit,” or “I want to win a championship.” I think those goals are great! However, we need to break it down in order to understand what we are talking about.
“I want to be fit” is great, but are you looking to lose weight? gain muscle? improve endurance? Also, what is your timeline like? Do you want this in 2 months, 6 months, by next year?
Same can be said with winning a championship, do you want this on your travel team? high school team? athletic team? bingo team? this year? next year?
I think you get my point, making goals specific provides you a rough timeline and idea in what areas specifically you want to improve.
A personal example for me is that I typically set goals for each month and try to make them specific like “Go to the gym and complete a challenging workout 16 times this month.” You can see by my example, I have outlined what I expect to do within a timeline.
2. Moderately difficult but realistic goals
In creating goals, the point is in order to push ourselves to a new level of performance or achieve something that we did not have before. Therefore, our goals must find the balance between being too easy and too difficult. If a goal is too difficult and unrealistic it is very likely we will lose motivation and give up on the goal entirely.
Therefore, we want to challenge ourselves with a goal that is just on the edge of too difficult, then balance out a combination of different types of goals to bring that goal within reach.
3. Both long- and short-term goals
Setting both long term and short-term goals keeps motivation up and improves the feeling of accomplishment. A long-term goal can be difficult to keep up high levels of motivation, especially if it’s a goal set for the end of the season. Short-term goals help keep the motivation up by keeping focus on smaller goals that lead towards to the long-term.
My example of my short-term and long-term goals is setting yearly goals, so what I want to see accomplished in 2018. I break it down into personal goals, professional goals, fitness goals, and community goals categories. Then each month I set goals for what I would like to have done by the end of the month for each category. Lastly, I set goals for each week to build into the monthly goal.
This is just my example and I encourage you to test out and see what pattern of short-term and long-term goals.
4. Setting all three types of goals
Similar to why long- and short-term goals are important, goals need to be a mix of outcome, performance, and process goals. In going through the definitions of each type of goal you can see how one builds into the other. Having goals with different purposes helps keep up motivation, build confidence, and improve your performance overall.
Setting a process goal to improve your performance leads to you meeting your performance goals. As you consistently meet your performance goals, in increase your chances of meeting the outcome goals despite certain uncontrollable factors involved.
5. Practice and competition goals
Many times, athletes set goals for competition, like winning the game, taking more shots on net, improving starts and stops, quicker accelerations. However, goals are equally beneficial in practice as well. Both practice and competition goals allow for an athlete to focus on a task and work towards it. This not only leads to improvement but enhanced performance.
6. Recording goals
WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS
This was a huge game changer for me. I would always have goals in my head of things I wanted to accomplish, and I had many different plans on how I wanted to achieve them. However, I did not reach my goals as quickly or efficiently because my plans were never written down.
7. Evaluation and feedback of goals
Reflect on your goals. Look back and see what was achieved and what did not get done in the time you thought. This process allows you to improve in your ability to set goals and reach them. Taking time to evaluate your goals can be difficult but setting a consistent time can help make the process easier.
As mentioned previously, I set goals every month which allows me to reflect on last month’s goals. I can either carry over certain goals to the next month and modify goals that make more sense for me.
5 Common Mistakes with Goal Setting
In setting goals, there are some issues that may get in the way of properly creating an effective goal plan. This is an outline of the common problems with goal-setting that both athletes and coaches should be aware of:
1. Failing to set specific goals
As previously mentioned, without specific goals you may be wasting valuable time and energy recreating plans to reach your overall goal. A specific goal will hold you accountable, without specific goals you may be inclined to keep pushing the goals off (something I have been guilty of).
2. Setting too many goals
This is common since we often have many areas in life we want to improve in and succeed however placing energy and time across too many goals can lead to none of them actually being achieved. At times having too many goals can lead to the possibility of burnout which can harm your current performance.
3. Failing to adjust goals
Writing down or deciding a goal can feel like it set in stone. We commit to the goal and feel like the goal cannot change after that. However, goals may need to be adjusted if they are too difficult. You will be able to keep up motivation if goals are reasonable and feel achievable. Consistently failing to meet a short-term goal is a sign that goals are too difficult.
4. Setting group goals/ignoring individual differences
This one is for team leaders, coaches, and even parents. When setting goals, it is key to understand each athlete has specific strengths and areas for growth. For each athlete to experience personal development and improvement then each athlete needs specific goals.
Group goals can be helpful, such as wanting to improve together, reaching playoffs, or playing for a championship but these cannot be the only goals. Individual goals must be designed for each athlete to connect with the overall goal.
5. No follow up or evaluation
This may be the most common issue, I see with athletes and coaches. We set goals but fail to come back to them to learn, discuss, improve, and celebrate! The short-term goals, process, and performance goals often go under the radar when they deserve to be recognized. Meeting goals is a challenge therefore in evaluations, it is key to pay attention when those goals are met.
On the other hand, not looking back at goals at all send a message to yourself and the entire time. These goals don’t actually matter. Athletes and teams recognize the activity, understand the value but if there is no follow up then there is less accountability. The purpose of the exercise is lost, motivation decreases, and the efficiency of improved performance is gone.
Final points
These key elements are vital in setting and achieving goals. If you find yourself ready to start implementing goals into your daily living, I encourage you to start with a few of these tips listed above. Get more comfortable with the skills of creating different types of goals. Then bring in more skills to help make the goals setting process valuable to you.
