Dr. Michael Gervais is a renowned sport & performance psychologist who works with the best-of-the-best in athletics.
From Super Bowl teams to Olympians to extreme sport athletes, Dr. Mike has guided and been witness to their routines & preparation.
On his popular podcast Finding Mastery, he talked about the goal setting habits of the top athletes that he is around.
He revealed something fascinating: the highest performers that he works with do not set goals.
On the surface, this seems and sounds counterintuitive. One would assume that the better the performer, the more skilled at setting goals they must be. After all, the highest performers tend to accomplish more than most; therefore, goal setting must be a precursor, right?
Here’s the reality: in sports everyone shares similar goals: win championships. We’re on the cusp of NBA & NHL seasons and only a month into football season. I would hope that the vast majority of athletes began the year with a goal of winning.
When Tiger Woods was a rookie on the PGA tour in 1997, he was interviewed by a seasoned PGA tour player Curtis Strange, who was still playing golf while beginning his TV commentary career.
Strange asked Tiger about his thoughts on an upcoming tournament and Tiger said he was looking to win it. When pressed about winning from Strange, Tiger said that he always entered tournaments with a game plan and goal to win them – otherwise, he didn’t see the point.
Strange admonished the younger Tiger’s approach – seeing as one could have an incredible professional golf season finishing with a bunch of top 10 finishes and never win. In fact, winning just a few times in a year on the PGA tour is considered a banner year. Strange quipped at Tiger’s goal of winning every tournament with a snarky “You’ll learn.”
So, if every athlete’s goal is similar – if not the same – to win, what sets someone apart?
Michael Gervais says the best athletes commonly don’t set goals, they follow North Stars.
A North Star is different from a goal. A goal has an end point: win the game, make the sale, earn the money, buy the house, marry the girl, hit the weight on the scale, etc. Textbook goal setting is “SMART” which stands for simple, measurable, achievable, realistic/relatable, time bound.
A North Star by contrast is more abstract and typically doesn’t have a defined end to it. A North Star looks like: being the best athlete, creating a loving home, being the healthiest, fighting childhood hunger everywhere, etc.
I learned this firsthand through my health journey. I’ve documented a few times that I successfully let go of 30 pounds in 2015 and have maintained that weight for the past 9 years. I began that journey like many others who become dissatisfied with their health or weight. I wanted to cut excess weight and become more healthy.
I embarked on a very regimented and restrictive diet for a month. The purpose of this plan was to jump start a newer, healthier lifestyle. I didn’t know what the results would be. Yet had I been pressed, I would not have thought 30 pounds was a doable number. 15, maybe 20 pounds is likely where I would have set my goal.
Instead of a goal, I developed a North Star. I want to be and live a healthy sustainable lifestyle. That’s what I focused on. With that North Star as a guide, I committed to the unsustainable diet for a month and then transitioned to a sustainable healthy lifestyle that provided nutritional parameters. In fact, I didn’t weigh myself until after week 3 of the 4 week program. After three weeks, I was down nearly 20 pounds. I was astonished! I continued the final week and then maintained a nutritional guideline for myself and 6 weeks later I dropped 10 more for a total of 30 pounds.
The North Star propelled that result. Had I created a goal of “losing 20 pounds” I would have been more focused on the number than the lifestyle and might have pumped the brakes as I hit that goal. The North Star carried me further.
That North Star still carries me. Over the years, I’ve changed and amended my health routines based on preferences and research findings on what helps to create optimized health. Because I use a North Star rather than goals, I’m able to use the ambiguity to truly optimize my actions.
Michael Jordan & Kobe Bryant wanted to be the best to play basketball. By definition, being the best is not a goal. It’s not specific or measurable (what does the best even mean… points, championships, impact on the sport??), it’s not achievable or realistic (we can’t get everyone to agree who is the best) nor is a there a specific time frame (all-time is not a timeframe). Yet, that North Star guided how they prepared and played each game, it even guided their endorsements and off-the-court endeavors. For Jordan specifically, he had to shift his mindset to rely on team members more so that the team could win more – thus elevating his stature.
What is your North Star? What’s the thing that guides you and helps you determine your plans & actions? Before you set goals for the coming year, be sure to first find a North Star or guiding principles to help you determine the directions that you want to go and help you overcome the obstacles on your journey.