A Resolution Is Just a Dumb Goal

Most people don’t set great goals and then complain when they don’t succeed.

The unfortunate truth is, most people have no idea what they want; if they do ever figure it out, they have less than zero idea of how to achieve it, and when they inevitably try and fail, they lose all hope immediately.

When we think about New Years Resolutions, they often take the form of “I’m not going to do X”. As a result, we expend all our energy trying to dissuade ourselves from doing X. The logic isn’t all that complicated.

We treat resolutions as an exercise in willpower. Who can manage to white knuckle whatever achievement we’re trying to hit in the most direct way?

However, we don’t really ever ask why we don’t want to do X. We never ask how we’re going to achieve not doing X. And when treat the resolution as absolute. If we break it once, “oh well, guess we failed, time to go back to normal”.

Why don’t we look at resolutions like goals?

You can see the story I’m about to tell unfolding here.

What if we looked at the motivation for setting the goal in the first place?

What if, after we knew why we wanted to change, we focused on a simple methodology?

What if we planned for our inevitable failure and set guardrails for it?

Suddenly, our resolution becomes far easier to plan, manage, and resolve for if we fall off the wagon.

Instead of “I want to go to the gym 5x a week” —> I want to have a six pack by the end of the year.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which tells you to focus on inputs rather than outcomes.

Here’s why you should focus on outcomes:

1. You need to go deeper than the surface level of motivation.

I want to get a six-pack is reason enough, but the question is: why is that important? 

Maybe it’s because you used to look like that during college and you want a return to your heyday (my reason), perhaps it’s so that your wife looks at you like she used to when you first got married (one I’ve heard before from a lot of entrepreneurs who have lost their ways), maybe because you want to be a role model to your kids, or your family, or whoever is around you.

This understanding of your motivation, one layer deeper, now helps you to understand what the identity you’re trying to form is.

Is it an identity that says, “I’m a role model for my kids, that’s why I hit every workout I need to hit”?

Is it an identity that says “I’m not just doing this for me, I’m doing this for my wife so she gets to look at her husband and say “wow, he’s a fine piece of ass”.

Is it so that when you look in the mirror, you see the roots of integrity that shaped you into the man you really are? That you stay true to your word, and that you’re in complete control of your life.

2. You have operational freedom to make any method work.

If you could go to the gym 3x a week and still get the desired result, 5x becomes a chore and a hassle when you’re busy enough as it is. If the outcome you’re aiming for is "six-pack” and you realise you hate the gym and you actually love pickleball, you can still achieve the result by playing a shit ton of pickleball. This means that the method you choose becomes “how do I get to this outcome with the least amount of effort, stress, and hassle?”

The method you choose has to be input-focused; otherwise, “make a cake” would be suitable instructions for making a cake. The best methods are built on extremely simple instructions. Take, for example, losing weight. The simplest possible instruction for your diet: plug your information into any of the online calculators to work out your calories. Eat the exact same thing every day for 90 days. Working out: walk for 20 minutes a day, do some kind of physical activity 4x a week. The simplest possible version of this advice is to handle the objections to any issue that comes up: “I don’t have money for a gym membership” —> work out at home. “Eating healthy is expensive” —> eat smaller portions, track everything. There are ways you can make your goals very simple to achieve, but there are plenty of excuses you’ll tell yourself as to why you can’t achieve them.

3. Failing an outcome takes a lot longer to happen than failing to do a task every day or week

Most of us set goals that become binary tasks that we have to undertake.

When we categorise things as tasks, our ability to complete them is binary. Either yes, we did complete it, or no, we did not. This binary means that as soon as you fail once, it becomes far easier to throw in the towel, despite any progress you’ve made. Therefore, creating input-focused goals is actually a recipe for failure – you’re just more likely to fail once and quit forever.

The next problem this leads to is Goodhart’s Law – when a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to become a good measure – if we measure success as the number of gym sessions per week – you could go five times per week, do one set of curls and be absolutely no closer to your goal of getting a 6-pack, no matter how many long you kept up with your goal regime.

Therefore, we should only be focused on whether you’re on track to achieve the outcome you want. Set repeated milestones as check ins. Are you moving in the right direction, yes or no? If yes, great, keep doing what you’re doing.

The likelihood is, you won’t make the progress you want, and you’ll end up not reaching certain milestones on the way to your desired outcome. That’s fine, it’s more likely than you nailing it the first time. Instead of throwing in the towel at the first sign of failure, what’s the diagnosis method you’re going to take if and when you do fail? Look at what you’re doing. What are the variables that are causing you not to move closer towards your goal? Change them one by one. Likelihood is, if you know your variables before you start, you can set up contingencies that account for you not reaching the milestones.

The simple reality is, set better goals and you’re way more likely to get what you want out of life.

I wrote extensively about this in my book, Choice Psychology, where in Chapter 8 I explain how the cause of most people’s frustrations is how their language shapes their behaviour. If you haven’t already, check it out!

Best

David