Goal Setting + Progress Celebration = Success

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Jay Rooke, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

Your ability to set goals—and how you measure your progress towards them—determines the likelihood of your success. If you want to get “unstuck” and turn a motivational headwind into a tailwind, consider this approach on re-evaluating how you set and measure your goals.

The Brain Prefers Shorter Project Milestones
Humans are meant to be productive. If a lengthy time gap exists between the beginning of a task and creating a sense of progress towards the goal, we are likely to lose motivation and become unproductive. Conversely, the brain is hard-wired to repeat behavior that does produce desirable results. When you’ve taken action but don’t feel you’ve produced results, your hard-wiring wants you to stop acting, and for many of us, that means underperforming and feeling “stuck.”

Here’s the perspective shift to get you back on track—break larger projects into smaller milestones, and identify and celebrate the desirable behaviors that resulted in progress.

The Brain Prefers Specific Feedback
Caveat: the shorter-milestone approach only works when the brain knows which actions produced the positive results.

Humans are hard-wired to cease behavior that doesn’t produce positive results. For example, if your caveman neighbor poked a sleeping bear with a stick, you probably won’t ever poke a sleeping bear. Similarly, if you plant your crops in sand, the next season you probably won’t repeat the behavior. If we cannot deduce that action “A” resulted in effect “B,” we are unlikely to replicate that behavior because, as far as our brain is concerned, the action was unproductive.

Thus, when celebrating project milestones emphasize the specific actions that produced the positive result. For example, “congratulations on working out daily and reducing your dinner portions to lose ten pounds!” is preferable to “way to lose ten pounds!” (hint: the sooner in the process the feedback is provided, the better—no need to wait until the goal is achieved here—remember, it’s the behavior that is being celebrated).

Conclusion
During the evolutionary periods, those that honed the skill of ceasing non-productive behavior did better at surviving; in the modern world, those that excel at honing this skill are better at succeeding. If you want to increase your chances of success, re-examine your project timelines (focus on the length between milestone celebrations), and ensure that you comprehend which specific actions are propelling you towards your goals.