What is Really Slowing Your Progress? New Research on Goal Accomplishment (N=3

“Under deadline, what is stopping you from reaching your goals?”

That is the most important question I ask my audiences. This question is important for a number of reasons, but foremost is that if you get frustrated or start to lose motivation and don’t know why, you might ask one of the most damaging questions to your self-confidence, and sometimes even your self-esteem: “What is WRONG with me?”

There is nothing wrong with you. But, there are probably a few things holding you back. Let’s work on helping you start making progress faster.

At a recent event with a health insurer, I asked the audience, “Under deadline, what is stopping you from reaching your goals?” I add “under deadline” because that is how most people feel most of the time in today’s warp-speed world. Plus, I often get more open and insightful responses. I received an incredible 716 responses.

After the event, I analyzed the audience responses in two steps. First, I categorized the responses by key terms. Similar terms like “Time” and “Lack of Time” were combined, while distinct terms like “Prioritization” and “Organization” were kept separate. The top five goal limiters were time, distractions, interruptions, me, and procrastination.

However, in the next step, we grouped the key terms into themes. Similar categories like “time” and “other work” were combined as “Workload.” Categories like “anxiety,” “frustration,” “self,” and “lack of motivation” were grouped as “Mindset.” The analysis revealed a surprising insight: mindset surpassed workload as the primary barrier to goal achievement. In the social sciences, “mindset” represents our beliefs and attitudes about our abilities and work.