Struggles of a fitness professional with… fitness – Goal-setting

I used to work for an organisation whose core values had been summarised using the acronym CORE. Really. I am not kidding. Legends. You know, the usual corporate psychology BS. ‘Allow us to keep screwing you up, but let’s all just do it with a big smile’. Co-operation was a one-way street. But it was the lack of E that finally made me leave in search of greener pastures. I took offence every time they reminded us of the need to strive for excellence. Meanwhile, they kept shrinking the department year after year, overloading us with a ton of extra administrative tasks that actually made it impossible to do our job. I can’t even remember what the O and R stood for. It must have been essential, I guess 🙂

The question is that, more often than not, the acronym precedes the elements in question, be it values, attributes, characteristics, or the name of a fancy new piece of technology. I just found out that ANGELS stands for Argos-Neo on a Generic Economical and Light Satellite, a nanosatellite smaller and more efficient than previous similar ones. So, there you have it. I can picture Smarty-pants talking to him or herself…

‘Huh, I need a fancy name to impress my investors and convince them to lend me the shitload of money that I am going to need to pull this off. Oh, wait! It is a flying machine… and it is going to protect us… and it has wings!’

The real headache comes when you then try to justify the name.

‘Feck it. G and E, gosh. Hmm… Got it! They are going to be generic and very cheap!’

Genius. This guy even convinced the investors that it would be a walk in the park financially.

OK, OK. Let’s focus. Hopefully, by now, we have not yet given up on those resolutions we pencilled down for this year. And most of us are well aware that our goals need to be SMART or, even better, SMARTER. There you go. Smarty-pants strikes again!

I am not questioning the practical benefits of these goal-setting techniques. But let’s be honest. The acronym came first. Smarty-pants then just picked up a few attributes matching the letters. Very scientific. Then, it is just a matter of repetition, marketing, fact-twisting… until we all assume it is an unmovable truth. Like the VARK fallacy.

It is a personal stance, but there is something critical missing there. Our goals, if anything, need to be flexible. But hey, I get it. Flexible, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound and Specific would not have done the smarty-pants trick, huh? Nope, I can’t see it happening… ‘Hey, have you established your FARTS goals for this year yet?’

Shit happens. We all know that. You fall into a ditch full of gorse and spend the next three months plucking the last one of the thorns off your sorry arse. Your favourite chicken in the flock dies, and you fall into a deep depression for months. Your sister-in-law delayed her wedding, and now you need to prolong your diet for another twelve weeks. So, yes. We will often have to re-adjust. So much for making them specific and time-bound, huh? But if human beings managed to climb to the top of the chain, it was precisely thanks to our ability to learn, react and adapt.

However, in my professional experience, the leading killers of all those New Year’s resolutions are the damn long-term goals, smart or not. That half-marathon we plan to run next year; or to fit in that fancy XS-size bikini while drowning our liver in mojitos in Punta Cana next summer. Neuroscience tells us that unconscious processes control our behaviours a lot more than we think. Nucleus Accumbens, its name. Among other brain structures, this area is involved in the pleasure we experience. It drives our behaviours in search of that fantastic shot of dopamine that will make it worth dodging any insane amount of crap that life may be throwing our way at any given time.

We may not like it, but our brains are not wired for delayed rewards. We unconsciously seek instant gratification. So, long-term objectives do not do the trick: no immediate goal attainment, no dopamine release. No dopamine, and dear old Mr N.A. is as grumpy as a polar bear eating quinoa salad in the middle of Arizona. The result: we are effed. Procrastination. ‘I would rather teach French to the spiders in my attic than go out there for my run today. Tomorrow, Latin’.

We must learn to feed the beast by establishing milestones, partial objectives, or subgoals… Sorry, Smarty-pants. I am trying to find the right word here to fit in any fancy acronym. Seriously now, we need to keep feeding that pleasure centre by attaining immediate goals to maintain our motivation levels intact, by associating our routines to something that will provide instant satisfaction. Will Power is just an IndyCar legend, not the answer to long-term behavioural change. Otherwise, our smart goals will soon become dumb no matter how hard we consciously try to stay in control of our behaviours.

FARTSM… Nope. Is that the art of creating awesome flatulence? Shrug. I tried.