use a better yardstick
when detailed ambitions drive growth [39]:
Most of us are familiar with S.M.A.R.T goals, the framework that has been repeatedly taught to us from school and beyond. In this blog, I want to share an additional way to view goal setting: using better measure to set and track your goals, aka find a better yardstick.
On one of my runs recently, an idea came up about the purpose of goals specificity. What I meant by that is being obvious about the granularity of my goals. I realized that in the past the more specific my goals had been, the better I was able to achieve them. I also learned that ambitious goal setting not only didn’t detract me from achieving them, but with the right level of aspiration, it even pushed me to be better.
If that is not clear, I can elaborate.
I started running in 2021, an activity I took on a whim in my last semester at the University of Minnesota. I took an online running class, yes online, for fun and that I knew could get me an easy A. In this class, we had clear deadlines, assignments and goals we need to achieve. There were two running assignments every week and regardless of what happened in my life that week, I needed to complete those two runs. From being someone who ran once a month, I ran twice a week for that class. At the end of two and a half month of the course, I managed to run my first 5K.
Then, something altered my progress - a small detail that shifted my running practice. I unintentionally changed my measurement units. Once I came back to Viet Nam for winter break, I started using kilometers instead of miles to track my runs. As innocent as this sounded, it actually hurt my running progress. As one mile equals one and a half kilometer, setting a goal of five kilometers are actually only a little over three miles. I liked to talk about my running progress and being able to say I run five kilometers sound quite impressive because five sounds “big”. Also none of the people in my life was running back then so I have all the bragging rights without being challenged. I hit my running plateau at around five kilometers for the entire two months.
In February 2022, I flew back to America and moved to Austin. This time, I began to surround myself with runners, from real life friends to social media buddies. They would talk about their practice in miles: some run three miles a day, some run five, some run 15 over the course of a week. I also discovered my favorite forms of online content - writing on running! I started religiously following The Half Marathoner, a publication on running and everything surrounding it.
Naturally, I would aim for longer distances too. I began to set three miles as my usual practice mileage, then grew to four and five. When I see people talking about running ten miles, I want to be in the same place eventually. Effectively, if I did the conversion, the mileage of five miles would almost double that of a four kilometers, my prior running limit essentially. Recently, I ran my first 10K race (6.2 miles without ever running that distance before) so this strategy has definitely paid off for me.
Just by making the simple switch with measuring units, I am empowered to run further without doing any mental heavy lifting.
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In building this publication, I have also learned some things on goal setting. In short, ambitious goal setting, if done right, can propel and push me to do the seemingly impossible. I recently set out subscription growth for this newsletter, and that has put me in the driver seat to brainstorm, plan and execute my intentions to drive said growth. Ever since I started doing this, I have seen sustained increased in readership. Some weeks I would attain the goal I set out while some weeks I didn’t. Notwithstanding that, this change has pushed me to make intentional efforts with my newsletter’s growth.
In writing, I learned that if I put a hard deadline for myself to finish an essay on a certain day, I would manage to do it no matter how busy I become with work or my personal life. I learn to prioritize what I set out to do. The thing is I love talking about doing something. I love the most to talk about what I want to do, need to, aspire to achieve but not until I actually put down a concrete goal for my eyes to see and my brain to process, I would dance around the task forever. Khe Hy referred to this in his blog as “meta work” - a type of procrastination that makes us feel good but actually doens’t move us any closer to where we want to be.
What I prefer to do now is to be a little aggressive with where I want to land with my objectives, because even if we shoot for the moon and miss, we might as well land on the stars.
To sum up, my takeaways as an extension of SMART goal setting are:
Clear and specific goals help me focus
Ambitious and borderline impossible goals make me rise to the occasion
When you enter a challenge and lift the standards to the best possible, you naturally make yourself try harder to reach that level.
By telling yourself that you can attain this incredible goal, in a way, you are indirectly putting enormous trust in your abilities.
So say a quiet whisper to yourself,
You are strong,
You are capable,
and go do it.
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Love it💯
Love this approach. I am not a runner, although I have been running with my boyfriend for the past week. This morning he decided not to go but I still pulled myself out of bed and sprinted to the track at the local park. I didn't run the usual mile me and him do together, I found it quite hard to break through the pain by myself, but I still worked out for 1h.
I was wondering if you have any advice for novice runners like me, on how to break through that mental barrier of pain?