“Every result or goal you want to achieve is preceded by a process. The secret to success is to remain unconditionally committed to your (day-to-day) process without being emotionally attached to your (day-to-day) results. Be emotionally engaged but not emotionally attached.” — Hal Elrod

Updated February 1 2026

This is Part 1 of a series on how to set goals and achieve them. In this part, we will look at what makes it so difficult to achieve goals, even though goal-setting has been with us for many decades and has become the most popular topic in the helping and self-improvement industry. In Part 2, we will review goals and put them in their proper context. Then we will discuss related key terms such as objectives, outcomes, and intentions, which are sometimes used interchangeably with goals. In Part 3, we will discuss goal-setting theory and the most popular method of setting goals today, the SMART method, while Part 4 will examine the science and types of goals. Part 5 will examine the scientific approach to goals and the key concepts.  and finally, in Part 6, the concluding part, we will put it all together and present how to set goals and attain them based on science.

Common Reasons People Fail to Attain Goals

Goals are central to human nature and motivation. They give us something to focus on and a direction. Consequently, goals can help you stay motivated, especially if you are working on something valuable to you. In addition, achieving goals increases our well-being, for example, improving our performance and productivity, competence, health, etc. Some people want to change their diets, while others even want to change their sleeping patterns or quit smoking. Every New Year, many people make resolutions and set goals such as becoming healthier, losing weight, starting a business, keeping fit, etc., but eventually give up.

It is generally agreed that setting goals themselves is easier than achieving them. There are many reasons for this. According to Harvard Business Review, the following are the reasons for failure to attain goals (Yang, et al, 2021):

• Not knowing how to pursue the goal.
• Lack of sufficient willpower
• Choosing vague goals
• Encountering unexpected adverse conditions such as illness, economic downturn, loss of job etc.
• Setting goals that are too high for our skills, energy or resources required to make them happen.

Why the 8% Succeed While 92% Fail

Here is a summary of the reasons given that enable the 8% to succeed while 92% fail:

• Starting with the end in mind. The people who succeed have a clear and written plan detailing what they want. In addition, they translate the goals into the tasks to get there, including the resources required and the obstacles that they might face.
• Building a support system around them.  A goal is not a journey that should be undertaken alone. Connection with others is needed in every aspect of life, especially to have support when difficulties arise. For example, high performers like sports stars and celebrities recognise that they can achieve more if they engage the help of mentors, coaches, etc., to help them stay motivated, especially when things are not going as expected.
• Setting specific and challenging goals. Laboratory and field studies on the effects of goal setting on performance have shown that, in 90% of the studies, specific and difficult goals led to higher performance than easy goals (Locke et al, 1981).
• Recognising procrastination. Procrastination reduces productivity and quality of work as people ignore or delay work. If procrastination is a habit, it can make things worse as people find the work unimportant, difficult or uninteresting. A goal involves striving because it requires the learning of new skills. For this reason, a goal must be related to your values and what is important to you to maintain motivation and commitment.
• Practising the productivity ratio of 52 and 17, now 112/26. Research reveals that the most productive people work for 52 minutes at a time, then take a 17-minute break before getting back to work. The most recent study shows that this ratio is now 112/26 (Gifford, 2021).
• Listening to music for focus. A BBC article estimates that about 1,000 Britons regularly listen to music while working, with two out of five believing that it helps them to get more done (Gorvett, 2020). Although it is generally thought that music can increase the body’s dopamine levels and that the right or familiar music can make work feel more enjoyable and boost productivity, research is inconclusive about the effects of sound on productivity. However, in clinical settings, music is used to promote physical and psychological health and well-being (Chanda and Levitin, 2013).
• Don’t do task switching. What people normally call “multitasking” is “task switching.” According to Weinschenk (2012), there has been a lot of research on task switching and the findings are summarised below:
  • Switching tasks takes more time to get tasks completed
  • It causes more errors when you switch rather than handlingone task at a time.
  • These errors and penalties can increase for complex tasks.
  • Each task you switch might only waste 1/10th of a second, but if you switch more in a day, the loss of productivity may add up to a 40%.
  • Task switching uses more brain resources because it involves many parts of the brain. Brain scans during task switching show activity in four major areas; the pre-frontal cortex is involved in shifting and focusing your attention, and selecting which task to do and when. The posterior parietal lobe activates rules for each task switched to, the anterior cingulate gyrus monitors errors, and the pre-motor cortex prepares for you to move in some way.par1-pic3

Other Reasons for Goal Failure According to Research

According to Koestner et al. (2002), studies on self-regulation and self-change have revealed that the following are the three major reasons why people fail in their goal pursuits:

• They lack clear, specific goals
• They fail to monitor their progress toward the goal
• They lack sufficient self-regulatory strength to maintain goal pursuit when they encounter obstacles and distractions.

They observed that many people set ambiguous or conflicting goals, which makes it difficult for them to maintain focus. Also, people often fail to monitor their behaviour in relation to their goals. The traditional way of assessing goal performance is to monitor the outcome, rather than the behaviour. Goals drive behavioural change that leads to goal attainment. So, without close monitoring of behaviour, correction cannot be made when things go off course to produce the expected outcome.

Failure of Self-Regulatory Strength

Self-regulation will be discussed in subsequent articles, but in its simplest sense and in relation to goals, it is a way of controlling one’s behaviour, emotions, and thoughts while pursuing goals. Self-regulatory strength is defined as “a person’s capacity to exercise self-control so as to alter their typical way of responding.” (Koestner et al, 2002). Research has shown that self-regulatory strength is a limited resource that can be depleted quickly. This has been identified as the reason people fail to make progress in pursuing their goals and resolutions.

Successful goal pursuit requires altering one’s habits. Studies have shown that effortful self-regulation is needed to maintain progress on goals. But it is not uncommon for attempts to exert more self-control and direct our efforts on activities that promote our goals to be hampered by this depletion of self-regulation.

For long-term goals, distractions and obstacles may occur that negatively affect self-regulation. For this reason, it is important to consider the effect of self-regulation depletion and how to replenish it when setting long-term goals.  A perceived discrepancy between current performance and the goal may create dissatisfaction, which can lead to quitting. To avoid this, changing strategy or seeking assistance may help to prevent this problem. In addition, goal attainment builds self-efficacy and leads people to select new, challenging goals. So, it may be better to break long-term goals into proximal goals.

Preserving Self-Regulatory Strength

Research has also shown that to preserve self-regulatory strength, it is helpful to have a well-prepared implementation plan to change conscious goals into habits. We will examine implementation intentions and plans in detail in future articles. Implementation intentions prompt and activate responses to anticipated situations. An implementation intention is an automatic self-regulatory response strategy in the form of an “if-then plan” that can lead to better goal attainment, as well as help in habit formation. By creating strong mental links between an anticipated situation and a planned response, they help people to work toward their goals automatically, like a habit formed through the pairing of situations and responses repeatedly in daily life.

Research demonstrates that implementation intentions facilitate goal attainment by revealing the underlying processes and actions to be taken.

Goals Are More Than SMART Goals and Outcomes

Today, when we mention goals, the first thing that comes to mind is the SMART method of pursuing goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The SMART method has some good features, but treating it as the solution to all the challenges arising from goal pursuit is also its downfall. Setting goals and achieving them requires a method that reflects human nature and all the dynamics that drive human actions.

Many studies have been published on how to set goals to facilitate attainment. However, most of the scientific literature on goal pursuits has been largely overlooked. Not that chasing outcomes is bad, but not all goals are outcome-oriented. As we shall see in subsequent articles, there are different types of goals, according to research. They require a different approach to pursuing and achieving such goals. For example, there are learning goals, process goals, performance goals, behavioural goals, etc. For example, outcome goals focus on the result, e.g., losing 20 pounds a month, but not on what happens between now and then. By contrast, behavioural goals focus on the actions and small changes that take place, e.g., three cups of water every morning before breakfast, not eating one hour before going to bed.

An outcome-focused approach can be counterintuitive and make it more difficult to achieve your goals. Many successful people recognise this. For example, Oprah Winfrey was ranked by Forbes as the 12th most successful woman entrepreneur and executive in the US with a net worth of about $3 billion in 2021. She is quoted as saying, “The key to realising a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.” If she had got the SMART goals mindset, she would not be where she is now because she would have focused on what is specific, achievable, measurable and time-bound!

SMART Goals: Ignore Scientific Evidence

For the origin of the SMART acronym, refer to Part 2 of these articles. The SMART method originates from the business environment, where it was initially introduced to managers as a more consistent formula for communicating business objectives. Since the term “smart” is trendy, like working “smart and not hard”. SMART goals began to spread from the business sector to the health and self-help sectors.

According to Psychology Today (Rutledge, 2019), though the SMART method of goal setting may produce better results for managers, it does not give such results for individuals. Despite its popularity and use for decades, there is little or no scientific evidence showing its effectiveness. For example, has it caused many people to set and achieve goals? Has it motivated more people to set goals, and has it caused changes in behaviour to promote better well-being, which goals are supposed to cause? Has the SMART goal formula produced better results than other goal-setting methods?

Some writers and experts have observed that the components of the SMART goal formula could backfire by preventing people from setting exciting and inspiring goals because of the requirement to set realistic goals. Besides, the SMART goal formula omits goal-setting strategies supported by research evidence, while promoting strategies that have not been proven to work.

One of the criticisms of the SMART method is that even in organisations, it does not ensure successful strategy execution. For this reason, in an article in Sloan Management Review, Sull and Sull, (2018), observe that some leading companies, such as Google, Intel, and Anheuser-Busch InBev, have now created and refined an alternative approach to goal pursuits to harness the power of goals to align with strategy. Google uses the “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs) method of goal-setting and has been using it since 1999, when it was introduced by John Doerr, an investor and venture capitalist who backed Google. It is also the method used by Intel. The success of these two companies makes one wonder if they would be where they are now if they had adopted the SMART goals method.

SMART Goals May Even Lower Performance

Studies by Leadership IQ (Murphy, 2021) have shown that SMART goal-setting actually leads to lower performance. According to Murphy, (2021), SMART goals were originally designed for the slow-moving command-and-control management of the 1950s. While some features of the SMART Goals model remain relevant, the achievable and realistic requirements cause conflicts in today’s uncertain and fast-changing world, where constant innovation is the norm and a pandemic environment of frequent stress and threats.

Goals by their nature should be inspiring and motivate behaviour, especially long-term goals. Consequently, research has shown that by setting challenging goals, people are driven to leave their comfort zones to work harder to achieve them. Goals that challenge people are more likely to give them a deeper sense of accomplishment and pride. This doesn’t mean people should try to do what they are not capable of doing. What is implied is that people should set goals that engage their full potential.

An article on LinkedIn (Wolffe, 2019) also cites some of the limitations of SMART goals. The requirement for a goal to be specific can be understood as it is to specify the boundaries of a goal so that it is not too broad and vague, especially for abstract goals. Locke reviewed over a decade of research on laboratory and field studies on the effects of goal setting and performance and found that over 90% of the time, goals that were specific and challenging, but not too difficult, led to higher performance when compared to easy goals or goals that were too generic (Locke, E. and Latham, G., 2002).

The Harmful Side Effects of Goal Setting

In a Harvard Business School Working Paper entitled “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting” (Ordóñez, et al, 2009), the authors argue that some characteristics of goal-setting methods, particularly the requirements for goals to be specific and challenging, can cause things to go wrong in organisations. The requirement for goals to be specific is one of the features of the SMART goal-setting model.

According to the authors, too little attention or consideration is paid to the adverse side effects of goal-setting. They argue that the requirement for a goal to be specific and difficult may lead to unethical behaviour, distorted attention and cause a decrease in intrinsic motivation, and worsen the organisational culture.

They particularly point out the following:

The harmful side effects of goal setting are far more serious and systematic than prior work has acknowledged

Goal setting harms organisations in systematic and predictable ways:

• Goal-setting can degrade employee performance by shifting focus away from important but non-specified goals. It can also harm interpersonal relationships, corrode organisational culture, and motivate risky and unethical behaviours.
• In many situations, the damaging effects of goal setting outweigh its benefits.
• Managers should ask specific questions to ascertain whether the harmful effects of goal setting outweigh the potential benefits.

The intention of this article is not to attack SMART goals, but to show that they are not as smart as publicised by the champions of this model. Some writers even call it “dump”. However, if you are a fan and have used it successfully, that is great! You can continue to use it since it has worked for you. The SMART acronym sounds great in theory and for small, short-term goals, but it is not suitable for ambitious, long-term ones. The SMART method ignores the reality that pursuing goals involves emotions, motivation, passion and purpose.

References

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Chanda, M. and Levitin, D., 2013. The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, [online] 17(4), pp.179-193. Available at: <http://www.downloads.imune.net/medicalbooks/Neurochemistry%20of%20music.pdf> [Accessed 20 May 2022].

Gifford, J., 2021. 52/17 updated – people are now working and breaking longer than before | DeskTime Blog. [online] DeskTime Insights. Available at: <https://desktime.com/blog/52-17-updated-people-are-now-working-and-breaking-longer-than-before/#:~:text=112%2F26%20becomes%20the%20new,as%20long%20of%20a%20break.> [Accessed 18 May 2022].

Gorvett, Z., 2020. Does music help us work better? It depends. [online] Bbc.com. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200317-does-music-help-us-work-it-depends> [Accessed 18 May 2022].

Koestner, R., Lekes, N., Powers, T. and Chicoine, E., 2002. Attaining Personal Goals: Self-Concordance Plus Implementation Intentions Equals Success. [online] Selfdeterminationtheory.org. Available at: <https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2002_KoestnerLekesPowersChicoine_JPSP.pdf> [Accessed 10 May 2022].

Hammett, G., n.d. You’re Setting Goals All Wrong. Here’s the Process You Should Be Using. [online] Inc.com. Available at: <https://www.inc.com/gene-hammett/how-to-better-set-your-goals-in-2019.html> [Accessed 13 May 2022].

Locke, E. and Latham, G., 2002. Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), pp.705-717.

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Ordóñez, Lisa, Maurice Schweitzer, Adam Galinsky, and Max Bazerman. “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting.” Organisational Collaboration. Routledge, 2020, 21-34.

Rutledge, T., 2019. Beyond SMART: An Evidence-Based Formula for Goal Setting. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: <https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-healthy-journey/201910/beyond-smart-evidence-based-formula-goal-setting> [Accessed 13 May 2022].

Schwantes, M., 2018. Science Says Only 8 Percent of People Actually Achieve Their Goals. Here Are 7 Things They Do Differently. [online] Inc.com. Available at: <https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/science-says-only-8-percent-of-people-actually-achieve-their-goals-here-are-7-things-they-do-differently.html?cid=landermore> [Accessed 12 April 2022].

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