Goal commitment: why some goals survive the first setback and others fade

Plenty of people set a goal in January and have forgotten it by March. Usually the goal itself was fine. What faded was the commitment to it.

Psychologists who study goals separate two things: the goal (how specific and how hard it is) and goal commitment, your determination to reach it. In 1987 John Hollenbeck and Howard Klein argued that commitment deserved its own research, because a goal people do not care about has little effect on what they do.

Commitment matters most for hard goals

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham studied goal setting for decades. In their 2002 summary of that research, specific and difficult goals led to better performance than easy goals or a vague "do your best", as long as people were committed to them and got feedback on their progress.

In 1999 Howard Klein, Michael Wesson, John Hollenbeck and Bradley Alge combined many studies of goal commitment. Commitment was linked to performance, and the link was stronger when the goals were difficult. An easy goal tends to get done whether you care about it or not. A hard goal gets done mainly by people who stay committed after the first problems.

What strengthens commitment

Locke and Latham named two broad sources of commitment: how important the outcome is to you, and how strongly you believe you can reach it. A goal you chose for your own reasons, and that feels within reach with effort, is easier to keep.

Telling others can help as well. In a 1989 study by Hollenbeck, Charles Williams and Klein, students who made a difficult goal public were more committed to it than students who kept it to themselves. Saying a goal out loud adds the wish to be consistent in front of other people.

What our test asks

Our goal commitment test has 8 statements and gives two scores. Determination is how much your goals matter to you and whether you hold on when things go wrong: "It matters a great deal to me to achieve the goals I have set." Two of its four statements are scored in reverse, for example "I give up on my goals when I encounter the first difficulties." Persistence is the effort you keep putting in: "I return to my goals after setbacks or obstacles."

The test draws on Hollenbeck and Klein's work, and one statement is close to their wording, but we wrote the statements ourselves and split them into two scores. Their scale asks about one specific goal, while ours asks about your goals in general. So it is a self-reflection tool, not a validated questionnaire. You rate each statement on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

When changing a goal is the right call

One reverse-scored statement reads "I easily change my goals when things do not go as planned." Agreeing with it lowers your score, but changing course is sometimes the sensible move. In 2003 Carsten Wrosch, Michael Scheier and colleagues found that people who were able to let go of goals that had become unreachable reported better wellbeing than people who kept pushing.

So read your result with your real goals in mind. A high score helps with a goal that is still worth reaching. If you score high and still feel stuck, check whether the goal still fits your life before asking whether you are trying hard enough. A low score with a goal you truly care about is a reason to look at importance and confidence, the two sources Locke and Latham named.

For persistence over years, try the Grit Scale and read grit and long-term goals. If your goals stall before they even start, read why we procrastinate and how to stop.