Process Vs Outcome Based Goals

Dec 15

Takeaway Points:

Outcome based goals, like SMART goals, can be useful in goal setting, but can also lead to a negative feeling feedback loop when outcomes are not met.
Process based goals focus on building and maintaining habits as the goal, which alleviates the pressure of a specific outcome being achieved. It’s a method of goal setting that takes into account the differences between genetics, environmental circumstances, and fact that people are imperfect and have bad days.
Process based goals more often lead to long term success because they help people learn to enjoy the practice and decouple the feeling of accomplishment from an ultimate outcome.

Goal setting is an important part of any self-improvement endeavor - however, at the same time, I find that it’s one of the hardest elements to get right, and one that has a lot of misconceptions surrounding it.

The SMART Goal

When I was starting out as a personal trainer, my main exposure to goal setting was from my personal trainer handbook, which emphasized a common goal setting strategy called SMART. SMART calls on you to set goals which are:

Specific
- Specific goals are very clear and focused. Instead of “be the strongest lifter in the world” it might be something more like “improve my bench press”.
Measurable
- Measurable goals are goals which can, well, be measured. So, the goal “add 10lbs to my bench press” is better than “improve my bench press” - it’s a lot more measurable, and therefore there’s no risk of confusion about whether you’ve completed your goal or not.
Attainable
- An attainable goal is one which is actually capable of being attained - for example, “add 10lbs to my bench press” is a much more attainable goal than, say, “add 100lbs to my bench press”. Goals should be broken up into smaller, reasonable steps rather than aiming for high, difficult to attain targets.
Relevant
- A relevant goal is one which is personally emotionally meaningful to you - if, for example, you hate bench pressing, then there’s not really much of a point in setting a goal to improve your bench press, unless it helps you to accomplish something else in the process that you care about more.
Timely (or Time-Bound, depending on who you ask)
- A timely goal is one that has a clear time frame on accomplishment. You’ll aim to complete this goal in 2 months, or 1 year, or some other pre-determined time frame. This gives you the ability to reflect backwards on how much you actually accomplished afterwards, and you can then use this to guide your future efforts.

The problem with SMART goals is that, at the end of the day, no one enjoys them that much. Realistically, I’ve NEVER met a person who actually found these kinds of goals fun or empowering.

Why is that?

Well, at the end of the day, these are goals which we can define as “outcome based goals”. These goals are based on achieving a specific kind of outcome - you set a goal based on the outcome you want to achieve, then you work towards it.

The sad reality is that while SMART goal setting is, well, a bit smarter, than simply setting some wild goals and failing to meet them, they’re still based on that outcome basis, and this opens people up for feelings of failure and insufficiency.

At the end of the day, there’s a huge genetic difference between people, which means that in any given pursuit, some people will naturally achieve their goals more quickly and easily, while others will struggle and take longer to develop. This is a natural part of the process, and it can be highly discouraging for the less genetically gifted, who may strive to set SMART goals as conservatively as possible, and still find that they may fail to meet them consistently.

An important element of success in any endeavor, is the positive feedback loop. When you have positive early experiences when starting out, in the form of success in your goals and encouragement from your community, this tends to become a self-reinforcing process in which you have more positive experiences and those positive experiences compound on each other over time, making it easier and easier to stick with it.

Likewise, early negative experiences can start a negative feedback loop, in which those early negative experiences become significantly motivating, this leads to further negative experiences which compound on each other, and in the long run you get frustrated and quit.

Unfortunately, I find that traditional SMART goals, and all outcome-based goals, can backfire and set off negative feedback loops. When you have specific outcomes in mind, and you’re not able to meet them for whatever reason (which could easily be outside your control), this turns into a negative experience which can lead to anxiety and shame and eventual frustration and burnout.

Process-Based Goals

Something that I learned intuitively over 15 years of lifting weights, and many years of other self-improvement pursuits, is that there’s another kind of goal setting, also referred to as process-based goal setting.

Unlike a traditional outcome-based goal, a process-based goal does NOT focus on specific outcome goals, but instead focuses simply on habits, routines, and processes. For example, a traditional outcome-based goal might be “add 10lbs to my bench press”, while a process-based goal might be “train my bench press one additional day per week for the entire month”.

Process-based goals don’t focus on outcomes, but instead on changing concrete behaviors. “Meditate daily”, “spend 15 minutes per day reading in French”, and “work out early in the morning so that I can get my workout done before work and have time to spend with my family afterwards” are all examples of process-based goals.

Because these goals focus on concrete changes you can make, and that are much more in your control, this means that they’re always within reach. You’re responsible for putting in the effort, and that’s all that matters. So long as you put in the effort, you’re getting the most that you can out of the situation, and that means that you’re guaranteed to do infinitely better than if you don’t put in the effort, or get frustrated by the lack of immediate or consistent progress.

If you put in the effort, and appropriately scale the effort over time, you’re basically guaranteed to get serious results in the long run, even if you’re frustrated by your actual results in the short term.

Process-based goals tend to provide superior results, because they focus on nailing down the things that you CAN control, instead of worrying about the things that you can’t. People who are able to focus on process-based goals tend to go further, stick around longer, and accomplish more compared to others with a similar level of innate talent/genetics, because they learn to disengage effort from result.

People who adopt a process-based goal-setting approach are the people who tend to show up, rain or shine, because they recognize that even a bad workout is an accomplishment. There’s a kind of affinity here as well - the kinds of people who tend to adopt process-based goals, are the people who tend to learn to “fall in love with the process” - the people who legitimately intrinsically enjoy the process of working out, rather than only working out for the benefits it can bring.

My Experience And Goals

And let me tell you, I’m the absolute KING of process-based goals, but it didn’t come easy to me at first.

When I was an unfocused teenager, I was always just kind of chasing whatever felt good, and I didn’t have a lot of purpose in my life. I was sleeping through a lot of my classes, my grades were suffering, and I was staying up late at night to watch anime and play video games. This only led me to suffer from depression and anxiety.

Learning to work out gave my life a kind of structure, because it was the first time that I got really into practicing something on a consistent basis, and feeling good about it. I became a better student, and turned my life around. I started to see mastery of skills less as being about innate talent, and more as being about putting in consistent practice and iterating on your practice processes over time, getting a little bit better with each practice session. This made me better at studying for school work, better at working out, and ultimately better at learning all kinds of skills in the future.

Of course, I still struggled with outcome-based goal setting. When I was starting out as a powerlifter, all I cared about was my numbers continuing to go up, so that I could continually push my boundaries and improve. It wasn’t until my numbers started to stall due to the natural process of nearing my genetic limits, that I really learned to shift into a different gear and embrace process-based goal setting. I realized that while I may never be able to set a world record, I can certainly put in the effort and, over time, continually improve on my previous attempts. By learning to embrace the process, I was able to continue to bust through plateaus and achieve new limits.

Sometimes, embracing the process also means embracing change. Over the past year and a half, for example, I learned to embrace an entirely new style of training (and an entirely new set of goals) due to the effects of the pandemic - but because I was already so in love with the process by this point, it didn’t hurt to have to shift my goals so dramatically, and I was able to fall in love with a new set of goals instead.

Learning to fall in love with the process - with any personal endeavor - is going to get you a lot better results than focusing endlessly on just the goal. I now exclusively set process-based goals - for example, my process-based language learning goal for 2021 is to practice a bit of French every day and see where it leads me, and I’ve been able to successfully do so. Certainly I’ve gained a lot of competency in the language in the meantime, but that’s secondary to the primary goal of sticking to the process - and as a result, I’ve learned to enjoy it and be proud of the effort I’ve been able to put in.

About Adam Fisher

Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.

During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.

Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.

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