Setting Goals that Last: Outcome and Process Goals
How you can enhance your ability to stick to and achieve your goals with intention
If you’re like me, you have a love-hate relationship with goals. You set goals because you’re motivated to becoming a better version of yourself, but you hate that a majority of them either don’t pan out or get lost in the shuffle of your busy life.
If you’ve tried the SMART goal setting framework and felt the motivation slip right from your fingertips as you were following the steps, you’re not alone. As detailed as this framework is, it can be daunting, overwhelming and time consuming to create goals using this tool.
A simpler method of goal setting that’s helped me significantly is by setting two different types of goals: outcome goals and process goals.
Outcome goals and process goals compliment each other to help you clearly define what you want to achieve, and how you plan to achieve it.
An outcome goal defines your destination
An outcome goal defines what it is you want to achieve. It establishes the desired end result. It paints the image of your future self, and the ideal state that you want to be in.
An outcome goal is the answer to the question: “What do you want your future self to have achieved?”
Without an outcome goal, it’s impossible to visualize what you’re striving towards, and what to invest your time and energy in. An outcome goal acts as the North Star, the future ideal version of yourself that inspires and motivates you to start embarking on your journey.
Specificity breeds clarity
The more clear and specific your outcome goal is (the destination), the easier it’ll be to define a set of process goals that will establish how you plan to achieve that goal (the journey).
Often times, goals are set with too much ambiguity that it’s difficult to picture what success of that goal actually looks and feels like. Goals such as “become more fit”, “learn new skills”, or “develop more positivity” looks nice on paper, but are far too broad and vague in nature to visualize what the future, improved version of yourself looks like on the other side of that goal.
Some examples of more clear and tangible outcomes goals are:
- Complete my first half marathon in under 2 hours
- Find a new job for a company that aligns with my values & principles
- Learn to play 3 John Mayer songs on the acoustic guitar
- Read and understand a foreign book in another language
- Be self-employed while making positive impact to people’s lives
- Build a mobile app using no-code
Process goals define your journey
Process goals define the actions you need to take, and the habits you need to build in order to take steps forward to reaching your outcome goal.
A process goal answers the question: “How will you achieve your outcome goal?”
Process goals paint a clear, tangible picture of the different sets of actions that are necessary to implement in your day-to-day to help reach your outcome goal.
By establishing process goals, you are putting a tactical plan in place that you can follow. It helps you to connect the dots from your future, ideal self who has achieved the outcome goal, back to your present self who has yet to embark on the journey.
Without setting any process goals to your outcome goal, it’ll be very easy (and almost natural) to remain stagnant and fail to make progress towards your outcome goal. After all, how can you expect to reach a destination if you have no idea what the journey looks like? You’ll quickly become lost, overwhelmed, and discouraged because of the lack of clarity and guide of how to reach your destination.
Some examples of process goals are:
- Run 4 times a week, increasing distance by 2km every week
- Practice the acoustic guitar for 30 minutes every other day
- Make a short list of 20 companies I want to work for, and make an introduction to 3 companies every week
- Spend 1 hour everyday for 2 months brainstorming user pain points, business ideas and assessing product-market fit
- Spend 30 minutes on Duolingo everyday and read the foreign book for 1 hour twice a week
Intention is at the heart of worthwhile goals
While setting goals is an admirable step towards self improvement, I believe it’s crucial to set goals that are uniquely and intentionally relevant to you, and the future version of yourself that you want to become (notice the emphasis on “you”).
Browsing online for a list of goal ideas is a great place to start, however I encourage you to craft goals that truly and accurately reflect your image of yourself that you want to become in the future.
Rather than adopting a set of goals that your favourite celebrity or blog has posted, I suggest taking the time to contemplate and reflect into your own passions, interests and curiosities, and create goals that complement the person you want to see in the mirror (as opposed to merely copying what’s popular or trending in society today).
The closer and more intentional your goals are to your unique individuality, the more clarity, drive, and fulfillment you’ll have defining your outcome and process goals that last, and increasing your chance of reaching your destination.
In Conclusion
Next time you’re motivated to create new goals, or revise existing ones, don’t hesitate to take your time (given we have lots of it in the moment). Reflect deeply upon your unique motivations and drivers, and revise until you are clear and confident on your destination and the journey to get there. After all, this is for no one else’s benefit but yours, so why not invest the time and energy to empower positive change and growth?
In the upcoming posts, I’ll look to address the role and importance of patience, persistence, adaptability, consistency, and perspective (among others) around goals and the journey to get there. If there’s an area that interests you in particular, feel free to write your comments in the response section below.
With that being said, I hope you all stay safe and stay hungry (metaphorically of course).
