One goal at a time
Focusing on fewer goals at once makes you more likely to finish them. In a 2012 study, Amy Dalton and Stephen Spiller found that detailed planning helped people complete a single goal, but the benefit shrank or disappeared when people planned for several goals at the same time. Planning for many goals at once can make each one feel harder, so fewer goals often means more finished.
Every January, and honestly every Monday, I see it. A client shows up to our call with a list of goals.
Launch the podcast. Redo the website. Hire an assistant. Post every day. Start a newsletter. Lose 20 pounds. Read a book a week.
All good goals. All at the same time. I ask, "Which one matters most?" and they say, "All of them."
A few months later, most of the list is untouched.
What the research found
If you read Decide when and where, or it won't happen, you know I'm a big fan of if-then plans. Deciding exactly when and where you'll act makes follow-through much more likely.
But in 2012, Amy Dalton and Stephen Spiller found a catch.
When people made detailed plans for one goal, those plans helped a lot. When people made plans for several goals at once, the benefit faded, and with enough goals, it mostly went away.
Why? Planning out a bunch of goals at the same time made people more aware of how hard it would be to fit them all in. Every goal started to feel more difficult. And when a goal feels too hard, we tend to put it off.
What this means for your business
You've probably felt this. You sit down to plan your week, list all twelve things you want to get done, and feel worse than when you started.
That's not a planning problem. That's a too-many-goals problem.
When everything is a priority, nothing is. And your energy gets spread so thin that nothing gets enough of it to actually finish.
How to pick fewer goals
Write down everything. Get the whole list out of your head first.
Pick one main goal for the quarter. One. The one that would make the biggest difference if it were done in 90 days.
Pick up to two supporting goals. Smaller, and they should make the main goal easier.
Park the rest. Put everything else on a "not now" list. It's not gone. It's waiting its turn.
Make detailed plans only for the main goal. That's where the if-then plans pay off most.
This is the same thinking behind my approach to quarterly planning for people who hate planning. Fewer priorities, planned well.
What it looks like
One client came to me with eight goals for the quarter. We spent our whole first call narrowing it to one: get her group program filled.
She was nervous about "giving up" the others. But she filled the program in seven weeks. With the time and energy that freed up, she knocked out two of the "not now" goals before the quarter even ended.
When you finish one thing, you get the time and energy back for the next.
The bottom line
You can do almost anything. You just can't do everything at the same time. Pick the one goal that matters most right now and give it your best plan.
If you want help choosing what matters most and following through on it, that's what I do.
Frequently asked questions
How many goals should I work on at once?
Research by Dalton and Spiller (2012) suggests planning works best when you focus on one goal at a time. A good rule is one main goal per quarter with up to two smaller supporting goals.
Why don't I reach my goals when I have too many?
Planning for many goals at once can make each one feel harder and make it obvious how little time there is for all of them, which makes people more likely to put them off.
Do implementation intentions work for multiple goals?
They work best for a single goal. Dalton and Spiller found the benefits shrank when people made plans for several goals at the same time.
Sources: Dalton, A. N., & Spiller, S. A. (2012). Too much of a good thing: The benefits of implementation intentions depend on the number of goals. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(3), 600–614.
