How to target your goals effectively? Leverage your willpower!

10 min readApr 2, 2016

<#TL;DR: How to support consistent progress towards your goals? By leveraging the three kinds of willpower into a Goal Attainment Matrix! Action steps: (1)Pick a domain or goal, (2) select 3 aims,(3) prioritize and (4) track your progress! >

How would you feel if…

… you would be more in control of your goal attainment? What could help you to inch forwards consistently with some of your most challenging goals? In what domains would you like your actions and intentions to be more in sync? What would it feel like, if you could harness your willpower to make consistent progress?

When pondering these difficult questions — and undoubtedly you already did this some day — a few more questions will pop up. All the five W-s may pass by: “How? What? When? Why? With what? Who?”

Over the last four months, I went through the same process of optimising my goals and targets to make more effective progress. I tried to parse all my aspirations into one framework (a matrix), which now supports me in making consistent (slow but steady) progress! Based on this learning experience, the “goal attainment matrix (GAM)” was born, implemented and perfected.

Let’s find out what it’s all about, shall we?

The Goal Attainment Matrix explained (GAMe):

Don’t worry, it’s very simple! It’s just a 2D-matrix (a table):

The rows of this matrix are formed by the domains you want to make progress in (for example “Health”). Personally, I selected 8 domains: Meta, Spirit, Mental, Excercise, Social, Nutrition, Work and Sleep.
The columns of this matrix are formed by the (three) flavours of willpower: WANT, WILL and WONT. These were (I believe) first coined by Kelly McGonigal (More details in the Background section of this article).
On each resulting crossroads or cell, there is “one aim” that can support you to make progress that domain, leveraging one willpower type.

With the three flavours, if you have 8 domains or goals, there are 24 (8x3) crossroads, as shown in the table below. Most of my aims are quite personal, but have an important meaning to me (and probably only to me).

A snapshot of my (personal) Goal Attainment Matrix.

In the remainder of this post, these two concepts (domains and flavours) are explained in more detail. Also, the process to generate your personal GAM is discussed step by step. I’d suggest you take these insights and try to design your own!

How to get started on making your own matrix and taking control of your goal attainment? Read on!

1. Select your focus domains!

Where would it make sense to place your focus? Any domain where you have long-term goals and that you’d like to advance could be suitable. Ideally, in order to be holistic, the domains should be spread over all main areas of life. To accomplish that, we can borrow insights from a series of motivational speakers, who have shared their ideas on this topic.

For example, Michael Hyatt describes 9 “accounts”, grouped into 3 “circles of Life”:

The Circle of being: this includes spiritual, mental and physical
The Circle of belonging: this includes family, friends and parents
The Circle of doing: this includes financial, hobby and career aspects

Also, James Altucher mentions 4 crucial areas of life, in his book “Choose yourself”: Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Health. He leverages these to chase his 7 definitions of success: Entertainment, freedom, being loved, charity, satisfaction, luxury and health.

If you are into quantified-self, — like me — you can use your own historic tracking data to select the domains in your life you’d like to target… As I have over a year worth of goal-tracking data and did 3 months of time tracking earlier this year, I combined insights from this quantified-self viz and existing life domain frameworks to develop my own structure. I personally choose 8 domains (as shown in the example matrix). For you, depending on your interest, any number of domains between 1 and 42 may be suitable!

< If you are familiar with the 3 types of willpower and the Bonzai model, you can skip to section “2. Pick 3 aims per goal”>

Background: Flavours of Willpower

To reach your long-term goals, you may need to apply willpower. But what is this elusive concept “Willpower”? It is often defined as:

“Willpower: the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals.”

Recent research suggests that willpower can be compared to a muscle, as it can be strengthened with deliberate practice and seems to get tired after intensive use. But on the other hand, it isn’t really a muscle, as unlike with muscles, WILLpower can be recharged during the day!
According to Colin Robertson and Kelly McGonigal, there are three types of willpower: WONT, WILL and WANT-power, which each corresponds to different regions in the brain:
WONT power corresponds to the deliberate choice of not doing something that you know you shouldn’t, but part of you does want. A typical example is quit drinking/eating/smoking something unhealthy. This power is mostly linked to self-restraint, pre-commitment and altering your environment. WONT power is the easiest to convert to habits, as we can use reframing to make it the new default behavior. Practicing this skill allows you to take the hard, steep path instead of living on some-day-isle.
WILL power corresponds to the deliberate choice to force ourselves to do something we dread by sheer self-discipline. The amount of WILL power we can exercise during the day depends on our energy level and our choice depletion. Therefore, it varies (mainly declines) a lot during the day. The quantity of willpower you have to your disposal can be increased by training.
WANT power corresponds to the deliberate power applied when we are driven, enthusiastic about something challenging. This WANT power is linked to your drives and desires and depends on your motivation. In order to become motivated and enthusiastic, it helps to start with the Why! This WANT power is the most powerful and energizing driver of the three, but also the fastest to be depleted.

Background: the Bonzai model!

How can we apply this knowledge on willpower flavours for goal supporting target (aim) design? If you keep these “flavours of willpower” in mind, it may make sense to select three regions or aims, to involve all of your willpower types, which each helps you towards a single goal you’d like to achieve.
The Bonzai model brings these three aims into one scheme, comparable to the concentric circles on a shooting target board. If we place WONT power as the outer edge of the target, WILL power a bit more to the middle of the target and WANT power as the Bonzai point, we get this layout:

The Bonzai model: A target board with three circular “aims”, each around one goal: The target edge (the red circle) is a WONT power target, the middle circle (the white disk) is a WILL power target and the smallest inner circle (the bonzai) is a WANT target. Hitting either region helps you to attain your goal.

2. Pick 3 aims per goal

How can we use this Bonzai model scheme?

WONT power: Pick an easy, baseline boundary aim, which supports your goal and that lands you in the neighbourhood (The edge of the disk).
WILL power: Pick a moderate baseline aim (The middle of the disk, but not bonzai), that needs a bit of self-discipline to complete.
WANT power: Pick a challenging aim (the bonzai of the disk) that really motivates you, but which takes a lot of effort!

For example, if (one of) your goal(s) is to lose weight, a possible “aim trio” (target scheme) could consist of these three regions, which each support progress towards this goal:

The edge of the disk (WONT): No fried meals (or max 1 every X weeks).
The middle of the disk (WILL): Eat at least 2 pieces of fruit and vegetables per day
The bonzai of the disk (WANT): Exercise for at least 30 minutes Y times per week

3. Track your progress!

This step is often neglected, but it is crucial to a successful implementation: You’ll have to track and get direct feedback on your goal progress. I suggest using the (free to use) Coach.Me app/website for goal setting and tracking, but even keeping score on a simple calendar or piece of paper or involving an accountability buddy can help.

Why? It helps you to keep in mind the big picture. It does not make sense to stop chasing the rest of the aims, if you e.g. “eat fruit” consistently (but neglect other, less healthy habits). Hitting some of your aims consistently is not something good per se and therefore, it is not a valid excuse to start slacking in other domains or aims, as the prime goal is not just nailing (one of) the aims, but progressing in the overall domains… If you lose sight of that goal, the counter-intuitive, devastating effect (called Moral Licencing) may cause you to indulge in goal sabotaging behaviour.

Also, the opposite is true: Eating e.g. a fried meal every now and then will not ban you to Hell forever. It is acceptable and only human to (mindfully) indulge sometimes if it stays within acceptable limits. This “within limits or not?” can only be checked if you have data, hence the need for tracking. Realising this and practicing self-forgiveness whenever you slip up now and then, is key in stopping the “What The Hell” effect.

Personally, I currently track exactly 24 aims (8 domains, 3 aims each) on Coach.me, some on a daily basis, others on a weekly basis. I use the feedback from this tracking tool to review my progress weekly and to mix things up. Also, the social support from the Coach.me community is a great motivator.

4. Prioritize

Ideally, you would like to work on all your goals (domains) simultaneously, all the time, starting ASAP. But that’s infeasible, as there are only 24 hours in a day and every minute you lived so far was spent in some way, either constructive or not. It’s notoriously hard to clear time in our busy schedules…

Thus, one day you will find yourself in a pinch and you’ll be forced to choose between one or more alternative aims, not able to complete all of them.

To support you in these strenuous tradeoffs, it helps a lot to make an importance ranking of aims in advance, to know instantly what option is preferred over the other, even when decision fatigue has kicked in. Imho, it’s more effective to improve and be resilient on your worse days, than counting on your performance on an ideal day.

The most obvious ranking to me, is to assign priorities to the aims by average time spent on actions in each domain (measured using time tracking). In my Goal Attainment Matrix:

The lower rows trump any aims or domains higher in the table. When faced with a choice, I (mostly) favour sleep over work or social activities, social over exercise, spirit over meta, etc.
In the other dimension (columns of the table), I personally favour WONT over WILL over WANT aims, as WONT goals are often prerequisites for the other two.

But of course, this priority ranking is not written in stone! Unique opportunities, events or situations in life should not be ignored.

Conclusions:

It is feasible to design and live towards your goals effectively, with minimal effort, by leveraging the three types of willpower. If you select just a few domains and design a trio of SMART aims, you’ll make progress in no time!

It’s easy to implement. Selecting domains and aims for the goal attainment matrix does not take long (I’d estimate about 25 minutes or one Pomodoro). However, implementing it and perfecting your aims may take a bit longer (a lifetime).

It is possible, both in theory and in practice, to apply this structure to your main areas of life. I tested and fine-tuned it over the last two months (and still continue tracking it) with very satisfactory results!

It’s helpful, as this technique lowers the threshold to get started and stimulates you to keep going. Hits “On the edge” and “on the centre” of the disk are very motivating and bring you closer to your goal faster than if you only aim for the hard-to-reach-“‘bonzai”s. This matrix has helped me to prioritize, pace my efforts and progress, and considerably increased my aim and goal consistency.

It’s robust, as it provides feedback on your goal progression from different angles, brings you closer to your global goals, despite random temporary setbacks in some of the aims. I found that it increased the level of clarity, as it revealed bottlenecks that impeded progress and that needed extra attention.

It’s scalable. Life and unforeseen events do happen, every week! Therefore, it’s often better to start small. Pick just one or two domains, each with three aims that you can finish in 30 minutes per session during 5 evenings per week. Once you master these, feel free to add more. Or, invite the Chaos Monkey!

Who? You… Yes, You!

Now that you have the ingredients and the knowledge, why don’t you test it out yourself? I hereby challenge you to design and prioritize your own Goal Attainment Matrix (GAM), Hydra style!

Remember:

Goals cannot be acchieved without dicipline and consistency ~Denzel Washington

If you liked this article, a 💚 is appreciated! — Especially as this is my first blog-post ever… —

If you have constructive comments on this article or if you implement this framework yourself, feel free to drop me a message!