“Do Your Best” Is a Bad Goal: How to Set Goals That Actually Work

Ask most people what their goal is, and you’ll hear something like this.

“I want to get healthier.”

“I want to grow the business.”

“I’m just going to do my best.”

Those sound fine. They are not goals. They are hopes. And the research on this is about as clear as psychology research gets.

What Decades of Research Say

Psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent decades studying goal-setting. In 2002 they summarized the findings from hundreds of studies, across labs, factories, sales floors, and sports fields.

The core result was simple. Specific, challenging goals led to better performance than vague goals or “do your best.”

Not a little better. Consistently better.

Why? Because “do your best” has no finish line. You can’t tell if you are on track. You can’t tell when you’ve done enough. So most people stop short without realizing it.

A specific goal fixes that. It tells you exactly what “done” looks like.

The Four Things a Good Goal Needs

Locke and Latham’s work points to four ingredients.

1. It’s specific. Not “read more.” Twelve books this year. Not “lose weight.” Fifteen pounds by June.

2. It’s challenging. Easy goals get easy effort. A goal should stretch you a bit.

3. You’re committed to it. A goal someone else handed you, that you don’t really care about, won’t do much. It has to be yours.

4. You get feedback. You need to know how you’re doing along the way. A number you can check. A scoreboard. Without feedback, even a good goal drifts.

Yes, You Can Set a Goal Too High

Here is the part most goal-setting advice skips.

Challenging goals work — up to the edge of your ability. Past that edge, performance does not keep climbing. It levels off, and it can drop. You stop believing the goal is possible, and your effort falls with it.

There’s more. In 2009, a group of researchers from Harvard, Wharton, Northwestern, and the University of Arizona published a paper with a memorable title: Goals Gone Wild. They warned that goals pushed too hard or too narrowly can backfire:

• Tunnel vision. You hit the number and neglect everything the number doesn’t measure.
• Cutting corners. People under heavy goal pressure are more likely to cheat or fudge.
• Burnout of interest. When the goal is all that matters, the work itself stops being enjoyable.

So the target is not “as high as possible.” The target is hard but believable.

How to Set a Goal the Right Way

1. Write it as a number and a date. “Walk 10,000 steps a day, five days a week, starting Monday.” If you can’t measure it, rewrite it.

2. Stretch it — then check it. Ask: is this hard? Then ask: do I honestly believe I can do it if I work at it? You want “yes” to both.

3. Break big goals into short ones. A one-year goal is hard to feel today. A this-week goal isn’t. Set the big one, then set the next seven days.

4. Build in feedback. Decide now how you’ll track it. A calendar mark. A spreadsheet. A weekly check-in with someone. Check it every week.

5. Watch what the goal leaves out. If your goal is a number, ask what else matters that the number doesn’t count. Health while you chase the sales target. Family while you chase the promotion. Don’t let one measure swallow the rest.

6. Adjust without quitting. If the goal turns out to be past your current ability, lower it a notch and keep going. Adjusting is not failing. Quitting is.

Setting the Goal Is Only Step One

A well-set goal tells you where you’re going. It doesn’t get you there.

For turning the goal into daily action, read Wanting Isn’t Deciding: How to Turn the Intention to Improve Into Action. And for how long it takes before the new behavior sticks, read Day 22 Is Where Most People Quit.

The Bottom Line

“Do your best” feels safe. It is also the reason a lot of good intentions go nowhere.

Make it specific. Make it hard but believable. Track it. Keep an eye on what it leaves out.

Then go after it.

Sources

• Locke, E.A., & Latham, G.P. (2002). “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey.” American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12237980/
• Ordóñez, L.D., Schweitzer, M.E., Galinsky, A.D., & Bazerman, M.H. (2009). “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting.” Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6–16. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amp.2009.37007999