"Just do your best" sounds kind. Coaches say it, parents say it, and most of us say it to ourselves before a big week. According to one of the most studied theories in psychology, though, it's also one of the weakest goals you can set.
The psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent more than three decades studying how goals affect what people actually do, first in workplaces and later in many other settings. Their work, known as goal-setting theory, offers a practical way to sharpen any intention, whether it's about money, health, a creative project or a relationship.
The core finding
In 2002, Locke and Latham published an article in American Psychologist that summarized 35 years of research on goals. Its central conclusion is easy to state. Specific, difficult goals led to higher performance than easy goals, vague goals, or the instruction to "do your best," as long as the person was committed to the goal and had the ability to reach it.
The finding has been tested in hundreds of studies, with tasks ranging from logging and typing to sales, study and exercise. The pattern held across many of them: when people knew exactly what they were aiming for, and the target asked something real of them, they tended to do more.
Why would "do your best" fall short? Locke and Latham's explanation is that it has no external standard. Because it's vague, people can count a wide range of results as their best, including results well below what they could reach.
How goals change what you do
Locke and Latham described four ways in which goals affect performance.
- Direction. A goal points attention toward what matters for the task and away from what doesn't. If your goal is to finish a draft by Friday, you notice the minutes you spend on the draft and the minutes you lose to other things.
- Energy. Harder goals tend to bring more effort than easier ones. People rise, within limits, to what is asked of them.
- Persistence. A clear goal encourages people to keep going longer, especially when they can see how far is left.
- Strategy. Goals push people to look for, or learn, better ways of doing the task. When the target is hard enough, the old approach often stops being enough.
These four effects are the reason a specific number on a calendar can change behavior more than a heartfelt but vague promise.
The conditions that matter
Goal-setting theory isn't "set big numbers and hope." Locke and Latham identified several conditions that strengthen or weaken the effect.
Commitment
A goal you don't care about won't pull much effort, no matter how specific it is. Commitment tends to be higher when the goal matters to you personally and when you believe you can reach it. Saying the goal out loud to someone you respect, or writing down why it matters, can help.
Feedback
People need to know how they're doing. Without feedback, a goal becomes a guess. Locke and Latham found that goals and feedback work best together: the goal sets the standard, and feedback shows the gap. A weekly check of your numbers is a simple form of feedback.
Ability
A goal far beyond your current skill won't raise performance and may lower it. "Difficult" in this research means challenging but reachable.
Task complexity
For complex tasks that are new to you, Locke and Latham noted that a hard outcome goal can sometimes backfire, because people rush to perform before they understand the task. In those cases, a learning goal, such as "find and test five ways to get new clients," often works better at first than an outcome goal such as "earn 5,000 dollars this month." Once you understand the task, outcome goals become more useful.
Turning a wish into a goal
Take a vague intention and run it through the theory.
A wish: "I want to feel more financially secure."
A specific, hard goal: "Save 1,000 dollars in the next 90 days by transferring 80 dollars to savings every Friday."
The second version tells you what to do, when to do it, and how you'll know whether it's working. It also contains its own feedback, since every Friday you can see the balance.
A few more examples:
- Wish: "I want to get healthier." Goal: "Walk 8,000 steps on at least five days a week for the next six weeks, tracked on my phone."
- Wish: "I want to write more." Goal: "Write 500 words every weekday morning before 8 a.m. until the first draft reaches 30,000 words."
- Wish: "I want to be a better friend." Goal: "Reach out to two friends by call or message every week this month, and set up one in-person plan."
When goals go wrong
Goals are powerful, which means they can cause harm as well as good. In 2009, Lisa Ordóñez and colleagues published an article in Academy of Management Perspectives with the memorable title "Goals Gone Wild." They argued that goal setting can produce side effects, including narrow focus that ignores important things not covered by the goal, a rise in unethical behavior when people fall just short of a target, and loss of intrinsic motivation. Locke and Latham replied that these risks come from poorly designed goals rather than from goals themselves.
The practical lesson from that debate is useful for anyone setting personal goals:
- Make sure your goal doesn't quietly crowd out things you also care about, like sleep or family time.
- Don't tie your self-worth to a single number.
- If you notice yourself cutting corners to hit a target, the target needs to change.
Where vague intentions still fit
None of this means broad intentions are useless. "I want a calmer life" or "I want to be more generous" gives direction and meaning, which specific goals alone can't. The research suggests treating your broad intention as the why, and setting one or two specific goals as the what underneath it.
Think of it as layers. At the top is the intention. Below it's a specific, hard goal for the next month or quarter. Below that is a weekly action and a way to check progress.
A quick worksheet
Use these five lines the next time you set a goal:
- Intention: What do you want, in one sentence?
- Specific goal: What number or clear result, by what date?
- Why it matters: One sentence on why you care.
- Feedback: How and when will you check progress each week?
- First step: What will you do in the next 24 hours?
If you can't fill in line 2 with a number or a clear result, the goal is probably still a wish.
A note on stretch
The word difficult in this research is easy to misread. Locke and Latham found that performance rose with goal difficulty up to the limits of a person's ability. Beyond that point, harder goals stop helping. A good personal goal should make you slightly nervous, but it should still be one you can picture yourself reaching if you put in steady effort.
Set one goal tonight. Make it specific, make it a stretch, and decide how you'll check it next Friday.
Then, when Friday comes, look at what happened honestly and adjust the next goal based on what you learned.
Sources
- Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705 to 717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
- Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265 to 268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00449.x
- Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., and Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6 to 16. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37007999
- Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2009). Has goal setting gone wild, or have its attackers abandoned good scholarship? Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 17 to 23. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37008000
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