3 Questions Emotionally Intelligent People Ask to Keep Making Progress Toward Their Biggest Goals, Backed by Psychological Research

 

  Imagine your goal is to lose ten pounds in 30 days. (Sounds tough, but it can be done). You step on the scale on the last day of the month to find you've lost eight pounds.

At that moment, how do you feel?

Hold that thought.

Concrete Goals Can Be a Problem...

In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers who evaluated how people respond to relative progress – think making progress towards, but not actually achieving a concrete goal – found a significant "negative-lumping" effect.

Achieving 80 percent of a goal was perceived to be just as "bad" as only achieving 40 percent of the target. Checking off four items on a five-item to-do list seemed just as bad as only checking off two.

Losing eight pounds? Feels just as defeating as only losing five.

As the researchers write:

Calling for very concrete changes (as opposed to "just do better") should help motivate the target to actually do something about the problem.

However, the present research revealed an unintended backfiring effect of this strategy: It reduces people's appreciation for critical improvements that were or could still be made but happen to fall short (people may dismiss a "mere" 40 percent reduction or a "mere" four reforms as inconsequential – and so settle for no changes instead).

People's motivation... might be increased by helping them appreciate that relative progress is, in fact, progress.

... Unless You Remember That Progress is Progress...

Several things happen when you make progress towards but don't actually achieve a goal.

One is negative lumping: Any degree of failure still feels like failure... which tends to make us quit trying, since after all, we "failed".

Another is that other people don't think you tried very hard to achieve your goal. If you told a few friends you were going to lose ten pounds in a month and only lost eight, they'll typically assume you didn't give it your all.

If your employee's sales target was $100,000 and they only hit $90,000, clearly they left some effort on the table.

To make things worse, other people are likely to under-reward and under-invest in efforts toward "merely" relative progress, even when absolute progress requires step-by-step support.

Your friends may stop encouraging you and you may stop – or at least limit – the mentoring, training and development you provide to your "didn't hit the target" salesperson. 

Even though progress is progress. Eight pounds is pretty darned good. Four items on a five-item to-do list is solid work. $90,000 in sales is a significant achievement. 

Progress shows you and they, are on the right track.

... and Do This Instead

The key is to ask yourself three questions:

1. What worked?
2. What didn't work as well?
3. What adjustments can I make?

Take your ten pounds goal. You changed your diet. You started an exercise regimen. You got more sleep. Great stuff.

But you did slip in a few extra cheat meals, you didn't exercise as often as you planned and in a few cases you put yourself in a position where eating healthy was really tough. Fine: You know what to keep doing and what to fix.

Or your five-item to-do list. You clearly knocked out some major tasks.

But maybe you prioritized your to-do list wrong; instead of managing attention fatigue by working on the most challenging item first thing and the second most challenging thing right after lunch, you saved the tough stuff for late in the day when your energy was low. Fine: You know what to keep doing and what to fix.

Or your salesperson; clearly they generated significant revenue. But maybe they spent a little too much time trying to land a huge (yet highly unlikely) sale instead of working leads that fit ideal prospect profile. Fine: Praise their effort, but do a little coaching to better focus and guide future effort.

See relative progress for what it is: an opportunity to double down on what is working, fix what isn't working as well, make even more progress... and eventually hit your goal. 

Because it often doesn't matter how long achieving an important goal takes; what matters is that you get there.

Which you will never do if you view relative progress as a reason to give up.