1: There were two teams of lumberjacks.
“Some were told to work smart and fast, but no pressure, do your best,” writes Steven Kotler in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
“Others were given quotas. This much wood for a good week of work, this much wood for a great week,” he writes.
“It’s important to note that there was zero financial reward given for meeting these targets. The goals were simply set, and that was the end of it.”
The results?
“Time and again the lumberjacks who had been given targets to aim for ended up gathering far more wood,” Steven writes.
2: Who were the researchers? The godfathers of goal-setting theory: psychologists Gary Latham and Edwin Locke.
Beginning in the late 1960s and in the decades since, in dozens of studies in dozens of fields, their work has demonstrated that setting goals increases performance and productivity by 11 to 25 percent.
“That’s a fairly extraordinary boost,” Steven comments. “At the upper end, if an eight-hour day is our baseline, that’s like getting two extra hours of work for free simply by building a mental frame—that is, a goal—around the activity.”
The bottom line?
Creating goals is one of the easiest and best ways to increase motivation and enhance performance. “Goals tell us exactly where we want to go,” Steven writes. “When we know where we’re trying to go, we get there much more quickly.”
3: Do you want to learn how to create inspiring goals to make 2024 the best year of your life?
Tune in next week!
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Reflection: Do I have a repeatable process to create high-impact personal and professional goals?
Action: Come back next week as I’ll share my proven process to make 2024 the best year of your life.
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