Broad versus specific goals: what's better?

Conventional wisdom tells us that when it comes to goal-setting, specific and measurable is best. Often called SMART goals, popular self-help literature often urges us to make our goals as concrete as possible. But these often fail to translate into our messy, not-so-boring lives. So how do we create goals that give our lives meaning and structure while also accepting that things aren’t quite so simple?

In their paper, How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective (Höchli, Brügger and Messner, 2018), the authors advocate for a new way of conceptualising goal setting. Instead of focusing solely on small, specific actions (which they call subordinate goals), these academics propose that we should also consider broader, “vague or abstract” goals, which they label as superordinate goals.

Superordinate goals are centred around the concept of an “ideal self”, the person that we constantly aspire to be and can work towards becoming at any moment. For example, a superordinate goal could be to be healthy, or to be present. The point is that these goals are aspirational and, although achievable, are not something that can ever be accomplished to completion. You can never “complete” health or presence – though it can be part of your daily life and behaviours.

This may seem to go against conventional goal setting wisdom, which tells us to get as specific as possible straight away, create a fail-safe plan and measure everything. As much as popular self-help literature can help ignite passion, a research-based approach is best for achieving results. Höchli et al.’s (2018) paper draws on roughly one-hundred peer-reviewed papers in the field of psychology (particularly health and exercise psychology). SMART goals simply do not fit in with the current literature (not to mention that the whole SMART framework was invented by gross corporates).

So what makes superordinate goals so effective? The paper proposes that this is due to three qualities: they are identity-based, long-term (in fact they ultimately have no endpoint) and are relevant across contexts.

A good way of illustrating this is what can happen when our goals do not include these three qualities. I remember when I had the goal of bench pressing 100kg. Although this was not a bad goal in itself, it had weak ties to my identity (I wanted to be stronger but didn’t yet have a “why”). Also, having an endpoint without any bigger structure meant that as soon as I hit that weight I let myself off the hook and began to miss some sessions. Not to mention it’s lack of relavance to other contexts. Sure, I could bench 100kg, but I also tended to neglect other training goals that could have made me stronger in the long term.

All the above is not to say that subordinate goals do not matter. In fact, when utilised properly they provide specific tasks that give our bigger goals meaning. That goal of mine definitely had a place in my lifestyle, I just hadn’t defined it yet.

Identifying and defining these superordinate goals can get complicated and is often hard to do without an outside opinion. Working with a therapist is a helpful way to identify potential superordinate goals and then create subordinate goals that are in line with these. As the authors conclude, these two types of goals need each other to create both meaning and structure. When balanced, we can begin to make some solid progress towards a lifestyle we love.