We’ve all heard goal setting is an important component for success. We’ve been told to set goals that are both short and long term, ones that focus on behaviour and outcomes, and most commonly, that they should be SMART. The problem is, so many of these ideas are just dead wrong.
McEwan and colleagues did a meta-analysis of all the physical activity interventions that focused on goal setting. They found 52 interventions and compared the different types of goals in the different studies to see which ones had the biggest effect sizes.
McEwan and colleagues found no significant difference between goals that were specific and those that were vague. Goals don’t have to be specific and measureable: vague goals work just as well for people who are starting to be more active, and relative goals are better than any benchmarks or guidelines.
Collaborating on a goal didn’t make it more likely that the person was going to achieve it. There was no significant difference between goals set by the client, the health professional, or following a discussion between the two. In fact, effect sizes were the smallest for collaborative goals, and largest for those set by the client. This means if the client comes with some outlandish goal that might be hard for them to achieve, it’s better to let them have it and then revisit it after a while, rather than working with them to lower the bar.
Goals that were revised on a weekly or fortnightly basis were more likely to promote adherence than those which were revised either daily or not at all. This doesn’t mean you need to collaborate on setting goals. Instead, it’s just helpful for you to check in every week or so and ask if the clients want to revise what they set as their goal.
As another testament to this, McEwan and colleagues found the effect of goal-setting was amplified by the use of some complementary behaviour change techniques, or BCTs. What didn’t seem to work was rewards. Some people think rewards might help people focus on the goal, but comparisons that included rewards generally led to lower effect sizes than similar comparisons without rewards. Instead, it seems to help to give clients clear strategies for making progress. Creating action plans can be a very helpful method for helping to bridge the gap between a goal and the current behaviour. In this meta-analysis, providing a set of strategies increased the effect sizes by around 18% (from .498 to .588).
When using these strategies together, you have what’s called the “high-performance cycle” by Latham and Locke (1991). People set goals, get strategies for improvement, track their performance, get feedback on how they’re going.
We’ve come a long way from the SMART acronym and so far it’s not looking good. The final part to discuss is the T for time-bound, remembering the example from the World Health organisation of 150 minutes per week. Weekly goes like this one did not increase people’s physical activity by themselves. If I was told to do my exercises three times a week, it doesn’t seem to influence my adherence Instead daily goals led to improved physical activity, particularly in combination with weekly goals. Daily goals by themselves have an effect size of .60, and with weekly goals this rises to .947, both of which are significant.

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