Friday Halt: Try Your Best or Set Higher Goals?

FROM THE EDITOR

I’ve been thinking this week about how we set goals. For a long time, I’ve heard it said to people to just try their best. It’s been said to me, heck, I’m sure I’ve said it myself once or twice. It’s not if you win or lose it’s about having fun. It sounds supportive, right??

But I came across an article on goal setting and it has me thinking that just having fun isn’t quite enough. When the goal is broad, the effort tends to be broad. When the goal is clear even if it’s a little uncomfortable, our focus sharpens and performance usually follows. There’s a difference between hoping for progress and aiming at something specific.

I’m not convinced that “try your best” pushes growth. It might protect comfort more than it builds capacity.

What’s Happening Right Now?

When you step back and look at decades of work on goal setting, a few patterns keep showing up. The structure of the goal matters. How we define the target shapes how people perform. Vague intentions sound supportive, but they rarely drive measurable change.

In more than 90 percent of controlled studies, specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than vague goals like “do your best.”
Performance rises when goals are clear, challenging, and accepted. People not only work harder, but they also persist longer and adjust their strategy to reach the target.
Feedback and commitment strengthen the effect. When people can track progress and believe the goal matters, results improve even more.

For us as a community, that means we should define success clearly, agree on the target, and measure progress if we expect stronger results.

Why This Matters at Work

“Try your best” is common advice. It sounds fair. It sounds kind. The problem is that it does not define success. When a goal is vague, effort becomes vague. People may work hard, but they are not always moving in a clear direction. Over time, that lack of direction slows growth.

Clear and challenging goals change behavior. When the target is defined, focus improves. Effort rises. People stick with the task longer. That does not mean every goal should be extreme. It means the goal should stretch the person based on where they are. For someone new to a task, the higher goal may be learning the skill the right way, not hitting a big result right away. A learning goal can be harder than a number goal because it takes practice and adjustment. For someone with experience, the stretch may shift toward results. Higher does not always mean harder. Higher means more growth for that stage.

This is where popular goal tools can fall short. Many people default to SMART goals as if the acronym guarantees success. Being specific and measurable helps. But “achievable” and “realistic” often turn into safe. Safe goals rarely stretch behavior. A goal can meet every SMART rule and still be too small to matter. In some cases, strict goal formulas push people toward early results when they really need skill first. A framework is just a tool. If it keeps the bar low or ignores context, it limits growth instead of driving it.

In work settings, how goals are set matters as much as the goal itself. When people help shape a goal, they understand it better and are more likely to own it. Ownership changes behavior. People step up. They solve problems. They adjust when things are not working. Setting a higher goal to someone often creates pressure. Setting a higher goal with someone creates commitment. Without buy in, even a clear goal can stall.

The same pattern shows up in sports and hobbies. Clear goals with steady feedback improve not only short-term results, but long-term skill. Using more than one type of goal, such as focusing on process and results together, often works better than chasing one number. Goals also need guardrails. Without feedback and clear limits, they can create pressure or push people to cut corners.

The real question is not whether to try your best or set higher goals. The better question is whether the goal is clear, shared, and built to grow the person in a healthy way.

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