Hit the goal first

Wait until you’re back on the ground to critique your flight performance. (SDASM Archives)

A friend’s infant is learning to creep.

Engaging every muscle he can, he propels his body along the floor to reach a toy, encouraged by both of his parents. The strain shows on his face and can be heard in his grunts and cries.

And then, just as he is about to reach the toy, his father nudges it a few inches back.

I understand why the baby’s father is doing this. The location of the toy is arbitrary, so why not encourage the child to keep going when he’s on a roll? The baby, fortunately, does not notice — and he gets the toy eventually.

However, if his father nudged toys — and treats, and praise, and comfort — out of reach all the time, there would be a problem. The child would learn that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t get what he wants. And then he would give up.

Hopefully, the age of well-meaning parents refusing to allow their children to experience positive reinforcement is on the wane. Unfortunately, though, people do this to themselves all the time. They start getting close to reaching a goal, and then they change it.

This habit of moving the goalposts is usually grounded in enthusiasm. “Wow, we’re moving so quickly through Level 2 — let’s try Level 3!” But enthusiasm soon fades to discouragement if we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the warm glow of success. Striving feels good, but we need to allow ourselves to appreciate attainment, too.

My grandmother used to remind me that, when playing with a cat, you have to let the hunter win its quarry from time to time. If you keep yanking the dangling mouse out of reach, the cat will suddenly decide that it’s time for a bath and the game is over. A perpetual chase eventually gets boring.

So it is with us and our goals. We need to reach a given goal first, celebrate it, and then raise the bar.

My pace for a 5K race is faster than my pace for a 10K. I would not appreciate nearing the end of a 5K only to find out that, since I’m doing so well, the course has increased in length. In giving everything I have to the smaller goal, I have nothing left for the larger one.

The benefit of having a goal in the first place is to calibrate our attention and resources carefully to reach it. A smaller goal is not just preparation for the larger one — it is an end in itself. To dismiss the smaller goal before we’ve even reached it does not honor the work we did to get there. It undermines it.

The truth is, getting all the way to the end of something is hard work. The final stretch is often where the greatest test of our stamina and courage is to be found. It’s where we start being afraid that maybe we can’t actually do it. So if we’ve gotten 80% of the way there, it’s no wonder that we might want to hand-wave the last 20% and move on to the next step.

As an educator and a coach, I encourage you not to do this. See what happens when you let yourself push through the hardest part, reach the goal, and bask in the satisfaction of it. What if you were to do all this before you even consider what the next goal will be?

“Good as done” isn’t the same as done, and more isn’t always better. If you’re going to go to the trouble of having a goal, wait until the goal is met before you move the goalposts. Hit the goal first before you pick a new one. See if you find yourself hitting more goals — and being more motivated to set them in the future.