Focusing on reaching a specific performance outcome on a new, complex task can lead to ‘‘tunnel vision’’—a focus on reaching the goal rather than on acquiring the skills required to reach it.
– New Directions in Goal Setting Theory
Shi, of Yang-shan, was washing his robe when Tan-yuan came along and asked: “What is your thought at this very moment?”
– The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk
Did you know that the philosophers and rishis of the Indus Valley played an ancient form of golf? They played without clubs or balls. They were the greatest shotmakers who ever lived! These were the words of Bagger Vance to Hardy Greaves who was very worried about his idol, Junah when he saw Junah in deep meditation.
The sight was worrying because Junah was not a monk in a monastery but a washed out, legendary golfer who once upon a time, could “hit the kind of low screaming bullets that started out jackrabbit-high and rose like eagles to peak, tower and float till they were nearly motionless” before dropping “feather soft to the green”.
Asked to compete in an exhibition match, Junah has to struggle to regain his “authentic swing”. Bagger Vance appears out of nowhere and offers to be Junah’s mentor. Hardy Greaves at this time is just a small boy and gets the chance to be Junah’s assistant caddy.
Vance’s methods were unorthodox and counterintuitive. They comprised long bouts of sitting “motionless on the floor, eyes closed, crosslegged” with “Vance in an identical pose directly opposite”. When Hardy sees this, he is convinced that Vance is a snake oil peddler and that his hero Junah was under so much pressure that he was beginning to lose his mind.
They were practising visualisation or “mental rehearsal” (Day & Tosey, 2011) which is related to goal setting and achievement. Mental rehearsal entails, recreation of “key aspects of a mental/physical performance” by imagining how said performance would look, sound, taste, smell and feel like and how the performer might feel, think and do during such performance (Day & Tosey, 2011).
While the scientifically tested process is an entirely mental one, there is a different type of visualisation recommended by new age practitioners. In this form, one is to place a picture of whatever it is they want to be like or wish to attain in a prominent place where they would see it often. It is believed that by beholding, one would be transformed/transported into/to the beheld.
The benefits of visualisation (the scientific version) are by now uncontroversial. Olympic athletes and chess players (Adams, 2009) employ it routinely. These include, “strengthening commitment, confidence and concentration, and enhancing the ability to beneficially control emotional state (Hale 1998; Hale et al. 2005 as cited in Dale & Tosey, 2011).
Visualisation begins with a goal in mind. It could be to sink the ball into a hole or to bury it at the back of a net or to wrong-foot a quick opponent. Without a goal, it will not be possible to imagine scoring.
At this time of year, students are usually asked to set some goals for themselves because, externally set goals are harder to stay committed to (Self-Determination Theory). To the uninitiated, doing this for the first time, setting a goal could be like writing a prayer request or wishing upon a star – if you are going to dream, why not dream like Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled?
When another new year begins and the exercise is repeated, the by then slightly experienced might recall the previous year’s goals and wonder why those did not come to pass. If optimistic, they might conclude that they need only be more fervent at the point of the wish making exercise. After a number of years, they might laugh off the futility of the exercise.
Though this may be stating the obvious, a prayer request or a wish itself is a form of goal which “primes” one “subconsciously” (Locke & Latham, 2006) for achieving that goal. This means that the wish provides “centrality to a person’s identity” and gives “direction to chosen daily activities” (McKnight & Kashdan, 2009 as cited in Schippers et al., 2020). This though says nothing about the existence or absence of higher power(s) and nothing more shall be said of this.
At the same time and once again at the risk of stating the obvious, a goal is not a wish. The fundamental difference being; the former has to be backed up with a goal-achievement plan (GAP) (Schippers et al., 2020). This could be why some students prefer not to take goal setting too seriously. These students tend to land in the Avoidance half of the Mastery-Performance X Approach-Avoidance (Elliot & McGregor, 2001) 4-Quadrant model.
A mastery-avoidance student’s goal is to “avoid doing worse than … before” (Yperen et al., 2009) and a performance-avoidance goal is to avoid “being seen as incompetent or less able than … peers” (Day & Tosey, 2011). In both cases, goals chosen would fall far short of what is actually possible albeit with some or considerable strain. In other words, attempts are made not to approach success but to avoid failure.
This is why some are proud about having a “classroom culture of failure” (Kreuter, Inside Higher Ed, 2011). If there is no stigma to failure, there will be no problem in trying to succeed and with more attempts, the likelihood of success increases. This does not mean we set a goal mindlessly thinking perseverance, will or passion is all it takes. In the words of Hamlet, there are more things in heaven and earth.
Though goals can lead to disappointment, there is incontrovertible evidence of their efficacy in motivation and progress. These include, enhanced self-efficacy – that is a student’s belief in her own ability to effect change for the better, effective self-regulation and interestingly also improvements in sustained attention.
There is a way to set goals which has been developed over 25 years from a range of domains from industry to education and crystalised in the form of the Goal-Setting Theory of Locke and Latham. Tenacity and passion are key tenets of their theory.
These researchers distinguished goals as mastery and performance and as easy and hard. They compared individual goals against group goals and talked about goal framing – “people who were made to view a situation as a threat (focus on failure) achieved significantly lower performance than did those who were made to view the situation as a challenge (focus on success and the usefulness of effort)”. According to them, hard goals are more motivating than easy goals.
Others have given recommendations about how a goal should be constituted. Doran (1981) is said to have first come up with SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. We may be familiar with SMART goals and should know that some, like Day and Tosey (2011) have criticised SMART for not taking into account, “learner’s identity… (feelings and emotions), social relations and values” and for not “encouraging mental rehearsals”.
Many others have built on their work and added their piece to the theory. We will look at two studies. The first is an experiment which set out to investigate the effect of goal setting on academic performance conducted with 2934 students by Schipper and others.
Schipper et al.’s experiment is worth taking note of because it produced results and is very easy to replicate. They made the students attend 3 stages of goal setting within the first term of study.
Step 1: Identify desired future by listing 6-8 goals using a free-writing format
Step 2: Evaluate and elaborate listed goals and articulate specific plans for attaining them.
Step 3: Provide an overall goal statement in the form of a single sentence which began with “I will”. This statement must be made public to the rest of the community.
Their experiment is interesting because, it was found that students who used more words at stages 1 and 2 performed better. The “average total word count for both stages was 3345 words”! These were not empty words. The students had contemplated the obstacles they were likely to face and how they would overcome them.
They also found that contrary to what SMART suggests, goals need not be specific and that writing down non-academic goals also led to statistically significant improvement in academic performance. They rationalised their finding by saying, “students may realise that an important prerequisite” for broader life goals “may be to do well in their studies”.
They also explained the role the environment plays in priming subconscious goals; “Goals are also primed by those around an individual, especially when there is a social identity”. Being part of a community means valuing the goals of the community and subconsciously working to become like role models in that community. This is known as “goal contagion”.
The other study was done by Robison et al. and set out to investigate the impact of setting goals on vigilance decrement. They measured reaction times on a thirty-minute task and measured the prevalence of task unrelated thoughts (TUT) through thought probes – What are you thinking about now; under a variety of feedback and reward conditions.
They found that reaction times decreased and respondents were more alert when they were rewarded with time-off task, when there were specific non-easy goals and there was feedback on progress. It is easier to stay focused on a non-easy goal. Regardless of condition, vigilance decrement (a reduction in alertness measured by increase in reaction times and TUT), could not be entirely eliminated. Regardless of determination and reward, participants could not stave off mental fatigue. Time-off rewards were much more impactful in helping participants stay alert for longer. Cash rewards had the opposite effect; reaction times and TUT increased.
Robison et.al. (2020) did qualify their findings by saying that their rewards were not motivating enough and highlighted other findings where vigilance decrement was reduced significantly or eliminated when participants were promised a huge reward if they performed well in one of several trials without being told in advance which trial mattered. They also highlighted that intense meditation training appeared to eliminate vigilance decrement.
Goals can disappoint. So, one could choose the path of detachment from desire and the path of least resistance which is the stoic way. It is difficult to reconcile this with another stoic principle which is that we should adhere to human nature.
As psychologists point out, it is human to want. Without wanting, there can be no Eros; only Thanatos. Without raw ambition and willingness to suffer for this ambition, we might still be living in M. Night Shyamalan’s village. At the same time, being obsessed can deprive and cause pain.
It is submitted that the answer to this conundrum is not to be smart about goal making. It was not realistic for a peasant to become an emperor but he did. It is however unlikely that he spent his days as a farmer, a wandering beggar or a monk, visualising a throne. Visualisation can only go so far. Obstacles which one has prepared for are not real obstacles and it will be difficult to visualise every possible thing that could go wrong at any stage.
Goals are hard because not everything is within our control. Dreams on the other hand are not. Explanations and biographies are merely ex-post and do not reveal the entirety of a matter.
There are more things in heaven and earth. Some dreams just come true.
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