My Barbell Goal-Setting Method

There are a million different opinions on setting goals. I’m going to share the one method that finally worked for me after years of trial and error.

If I had to pinpoint a single reason why my goal setting failed in the past, I’d say it was because my goals were squeezing the fun out of things I once enjoyed. My goals became another responsibility rather than a source of motivation.

I’m not arguing that everything in life needs to be fun. I think we’ve spilled enough ink on the value of doing hard things and engaging in hard work to prove we aren’t just repackaging a brand of hedonism.

But goals themselves are just a tool, and I say, why use a tool unless you actually like using it? Why not find a version of the tool that is a pleasure to use, and makes you more likely to do the work, and do it well?

Success Through Contrast

The goal-setting method I like best is a near perfect example of a barbell strategy. 

A barbell strategy is a concept that suggests, in many areas of life, especially those involving risk and reward, that the best path is to stick towards the extremes and avoid the middle-ground.

One real life example from my own experience is long-distance running. Many novice runners assume that the best way to improve at running is to do most of their runs over a moderate distance that feels uncomfortable but not painful. 

But that intuition goes against what really works, which is lots of long, slow runs mixed with occasional days of short, intense workouts. You pretty much avoid everything in the middle. Or as my coach used to say: “keep your easy days easy, and your hard days hard.”

The Role of Progress and Ambition

In my own life, this means I avoid all moderate goals over any medium time horizon. My goals are either very achievable and very immediate or wildly ambitious and far out in the future.

Let me get practical for a minute, and stick with the running theme.

If I was going to start running again, I would ask myself two questions in regards to my goals:

1. What action do I want to take on a daily basis that feels sustainable?
2. What would my dream outcome be in the next 5 or 10 years? 

The answer to my first question is my short-term goal. In many cases it’s something closer to a habit or inout than a goal, but it nonetheless functions in the same way.

For the first several months, that goal might be as simple as going for a 10-minute run for 4 days each week. And after a while, I would bump up the distance or frequency. Progression is key, but it’s never supposed to feel hard on a particular day. The hard part is sustaining the habit over the long-term, not the daily effort.

The second question is more like a dream than a goal, but I call it a goal anyway. In this case, an example might be winning a local race for my age-group.

I use this ambitious goal purely to focus my broad efforts and provide the spark of motivation to get myself out the front door on the run. I tell myself a story that involves maintaining my daily habit for 5 straight years, and slowly getting better and better as a runner until my big ambitious goal is just within reach.

Finding the Sweet Spots

As simple as it sounds, that is exactly the goal setting method that has worked for me. You might be wondering the reason why I avoid medium-length and medium-difficulty goals. 

The main reason, as mentioned above, is that they just aren’t fun. 

My very short-term goals feel easy and can be knocked-out in about a day. I feel motivated by a sense of progress when I get them done. And my long-term goals are just vague and far-enough down the road to be energizing, but not anxiety-producing. They give me a direction to aim, without demanding much emotional costs.

Medium-length goals, in my experience, are like looming deadlines. Too close for comfort, but not close enough for action. They feel too big to bite off in one chunk, but not big enough to be excited about. They are lukewarm, and so I spit them out.

Just Get Started

The important thing with goal-setting is just to get started, and through trial-and-error, figure out what works best for you. A 2004 research review in Educational Psychology Review concluded that students who set positive, self-regulated goals were more motivated in the classroom. This rather unsurprising result shows just how robust the power of goal-setting can be. While there’s always a better way, don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough.