There are three types of goals:
Process goals: what you will do (actions and behaviors)
Performance goals: how you will perform (standards/measures of performance)
Outcome goals: your desired result
Outcome goals are what most of us think about when we set goals, but they are only a small (arguably unimportant) piece of the puzzle. They give us a "what" to achieve, but the other two types of goals give us the "how" and the "how well".
Let's look at an example using fitness.
Process goal: Do 30 minutes of strength training, once daily, for 60 days
Performance goal: Be able to do 50 bicep curls before failure using a 15 lb weight.
Outcome goal: Gain muscle and definition in my arms
You can see from this example that the outcome goal is the "what" and the other two are the "how". The process goals and the performance goals will eventually get you to your end result.
James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits, argues that outcome goals aren't actually that important and that if you ignored the outcome goal altogether you'd still achieve it as long as you maintained the other two types of goals. He refers to process and performance goals as "systems" and says that "people don't rise to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems".
I have seen this clearly in my own life which is why I am going to focus on process goals in this community and I hope you will too.
Tomorrow I will post a worksheet that you can use to brainstorm and prioritize your goals, so watch for that!
That's all for now! See you tomorrow!