Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Not Goal Orientated

I am very goal orientated. I set a goal and I go after it. The extent to which I commit to my goals seems staggering, or simply crazy. Many people are not like that. As a coach, or even fellow team member, I struggle to understand their motivations.

Goals are easy to understand. They are clear, often defined by numbers, like Mach 1 or 26:17. It is easy to see progression against a numerical goal. The alternative I struggle with.

I understand that others are relationship or experience orientated. In a sense I have some of those tendencies too. The extent and detail of those motivations mystify me. For example, an athlete that simply wants to improve and set personal records and eat a lot of food is more difficult to work with than an athlete that says, "I want to run AB:CD in the 5k."

How do I, how do we, work with people who are not goal oriented better? I don't know. Is it that goals are more amorphous than concrete numbers and milestones? Goals do take years to develop for the most part. Perhaps it is that younger people, my age included, have not formed their goals yet? I don't want to convert everyone to as goal orientated as myself, but I would like to better understand their motivations or reasons for lack of motivations. What do you think?

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