1: After thirty-five years of research on goal-setting, it all comes down to this:
Harder goals inspire greater effort.
There is, however, a caveat, Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: “As long as the goal is not absolutely and obviously beyond a person’s control or ability.”
That’s the rub. Harder goals are better. As long as they aren’t too hard.
Here’s another key point about goal-setting: “Go only for wins that genuinely matter to you,” Jane suggests.
“When it comes to personal growth, success, and happiness,” she notes, “it’s not how much motivation you have that matters—it’s what kind of motivation.”
Why is that? Because “if your main motivation is to please someone else, or to live up to some external standard, you won’t be very happy…”
“Even if you do reach your goals.”
That’s very different from choosing goals that matter to you personally.
When you achieve these goals, they are much more likely to make you happier.
And there’s more. “Choosing your own goals leads to better health and happiness, faster,” Jane writes.
“In fact, every time you achieve a goal of your own choosing, you improve your odds of achieving the next goal,” she notes. “Scientists call this the upward spiral of positive outcomes—and it happens only when you are in charge of the goals you pursue.”
2: More than 400,000 people have used Jane’s SuperBetter framework to set epic goals.
A game designer with a PhD, Jane believes the principles that make games compelling can also help you set and achieve meaningful goals.
Her SuperBetter framework includes seven “rules.”
One is to define and pursue an “Epic Win.” So, what exactly makes a win epic?
“An epic win is a special kind of goal. It’s designed to be more like game goals than ordinary self-improvement goals,” Jane explains.
Whether you’re playing golf, sudoku, or Super Mario, good “game” goals have four things in common:
- “A gameful goal is realistic,” Jane explains, “if you have reason to believe you’ll successfully achieve it if you make your best effort. After all, games are designed to be winnable.
- “A gameful goal is challenging if, to achieve it, you have to learn a new skill or draw on strengths like creativity, cleverness, and grit. A goal without an interesting challenge is just work!
- “A gameful goal is energizing if just thinking about it fires you up. You know you’ll feel fantastic if you achieve it. . .
- “Most important, a gameful goal is forgiving. If you don’t achieve success on your first try, all is not lost. . . In fact, even if you fail, something good will happen—you’ll learn strategies and ideas for doing better on your next attempt or on your next goal.”
Researchers call this skill “positive reappraisal,” or benefit finding. It’s the belief that good things can come from stress, trauma, or major life changes.
“Positive reappraisal,” Jane writes, “is a powerful source of mental, emotional, social, and physical resilience: It lowers stress hormones, improves mood, leads to greater relationship satisfaction, and boosts immune function.”
How do you “get good” at positive reappraisal? By setting yourself up to regularly experience epic wins or positive breakthroughs.
“The key to a good epic win,” she explains, “is that it feels like a huge leap forward to you, while still being totally achievable.”
3: One way to create an epic win is to make it measurable.
Jane writes that this means having “a very clear goal, with progress you can objectively track, [and] an obvious way to know when you’ve achieved it.”
For example, compare “getting more sleep” to “getting eight hours of sleep every night for one week.”
Or compare “lose weight” to “lose five pounds.”
Or, instead of “Be less dependent on pain medication,” try “go twenty-four hours without needing pain medication.”
The first set of goals is okay, but Jane points out, “they are basically useless when it comes to being gameful, because they establish no clear win condition.”
So, how can you create a measurable win?
First, Jane suggests picking “a habit or activity you’d like to do often, an ability you’d like to improve, or a milestone you’d like to reach.”
Next, pick a number that feels challenging, something you’re not completely sure you can do.
Then, set a goal based on that number.
“If you are 100 percent confident,” Jane notes, “then it’s probably a quest and not an epic win.
“Quests are about making steady progress,” she explains. “An epic win should feel like a major breakthrough, like you’ve just found out something new and awesome about yourself when you achieve it.”
A quest proves you can make progress. An Epic Win shows you that you’re capable of more than you realized.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What meaningful goal would feel like a major breakthrough while still being within your control?
Action: Turn that goal into a measurable Epic Win by choosing a number, deadline, or unmistakable finish line.
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