Forget big, bold new year goals. Instead, just do your best

Now is the time of year to abandon your goals, for in a month’s time, you’ll be bombarded by overconfident, self-appointed coaches with shopping-mall-white teeth to help you set new ones.

I say resist the temptation to set specific, measurable, achievable and time-based (SMART) goals if you are serious about getting anything done that takes more than a few months or is even reasonably complex.

Recent studies have shown setting specific new year goals is less effective than just trying your best.Credit: Getty Images

While you can generally avoid the big teeth, big tats coaching brigade, for many of us, we cannot avoid our supervisors armed with the HR-designed (and therefore goal-driven) annual appraisal form.

They used to try that one with me, and every year, I filled in the bit on goals as a conscientious objector, inviting my supervisor and their HR backers to discuss my published research on the shortcomings of goal-setting. Sadly, I was never taken up on my invitation, but equally, I was never pressed to commit to doing anything more than “the best I can”.

It turns out that doing the best you can is actually a pretty good commitment to make. This is especially true if you are working on complex tasks or if you are required to learn new knowledge in your job. Increasingly, that describes the work environment for many of us.

Much of our routinised work has been automated: think robots in factories, word processing and AI transcription in offices. This has left us with more time to engage with complex and changing problems.

Research now suggests that non-specific, do-your-best goals may be more effective than getting too specific.

Our access to information has never been so immediate and immense at any other time in history. Navigating this ocean of information, to surf the waves of knowledge while avoiding the whirlpools of disinformation, is a very significant challenge. Gone are the days of “looking it up in the manual”.

An increasing body of research questions the supremacy of SMART goals, not only in work but even where they are probably most commonly practised: fitness.

For newbies to physical workouts (and there will be a lot of those come New Year’s resolutions), research now suggests that non-specific, do-your-best goals may be more effective than getting too specific.

In one study, participants were asked to walk for six minutes. They were either asked to set open goals (see how far you can go), asked to do their best (DYB), or asked to set SMART goals. No matter which approach was used, there was no difference in how far (and therefore how fast) people walked.

Those “who were assigned open and DYB goals were more likely to report psychologically adaptive experiences (i.e. flow states, intrinsic motivation, confidence, challenge perceptions)”.

When it comes to creativity, Simon Pietsch of the University of Adelaide, with colleagues from Perth, Denmark and Norway, has just published the results of a study on goal setting and creativity in the journal Educational Psychology. Participants had to come up with alternative uses for a paperclip.

In two minutes, they either had to “see how many” ideas they could generate, do their best to generate alternatives or choose a specific goal of how many they aimed to generate. Turns out there were no differences in performance between the three approaches.

Given the ubiquitous and largely uncritical embrace of SMART goals at work, at the very least, the increasing body of research (that dates back to the 1980s or before), suggests it is time for a rethink. And that time is now.

Maybe, if you are lucky enough to have some time over the summer to consider your life direction and career, or are forced to if your employment has ended, you might wish to explore how many alternative career paths you can think of, or failing that, do your best to think up as many alternative careers as possible.

There you are, I’ve set you some nice open and do-your-best goals to kick off your new year!

Dr Jim Bright, FAPS, is a director at IWCA Pty Ltd and director of Evidence & Impact at BECOME Education. Email to [e-mail]. Follow him on Blue Sky @DrJimBright.bsky.social

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.