Page 148 - Hard Goals

Difficult 139

HOW DIFFICULT IS DIFFICULT?

About 40 years ago, two psychologists dramatically advanced
the science of diffi cult goals. We owe a lot to the brilliance of
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham (and the legions of research-
ers they inspired). Their scientifi c studies involving more than
40,000 subjects provided conclusive validation that people who
set or are given diffi cult specifi c goals achieve much greater per-
formance levels than do people who set or are given weaker
goals that send a message of “just do your best.”
Locke and Latham’s studies are too numerous to detail in
this book, but there is a mix of laboratory and real-world exper-
iments to pick from. In one of Locke’s lab experiments, people
were asked to correctly answer a series of math problems over
two hours. (I know, the experiment itself could be construed as
a diffi cult goal.) Some were told to “just do your best,” to “get
as many problems right as you can.” Others were given a more
diffi cult goal: namely, they were given specifi c scores that they
should try and beat. (The numbers they were given were roughly
6 percent higher than the number of correct answers the “do
your best” crowd had achieved.)
If you’ve been paying attention up to now, you shouldn’t
be surprised to learn that the diffi cult goals group beat the “do
your best” crowd; not by a little, but by 20 percent on average.
If you ease up and tell people “just try,” they won’t give much
effort or perform very well. But challenge them with something
more diffi cult, a goal that gets them a bit “amped up,” and
they’ll go to town. Interestingly, the diffi cult goals group didn’t
start off all excited and competitive and then peter out dur-
ing the two-hour experiment. Instead they started strong and