The Case for Keeping Your Goals to Yourself
Sharing goals with other people feels like a way to hold yourself accountable, but it can be self-sabotaging
I love to run, but I don’t run fast. Consequently, speed work often lands on my “should do” list. In early 2016, I decided to get serious about getting faster. By March 31, I wanted to be able to make it through a progressive treadmill speed workout that I’d clipped from a fitness magazine. After a warmup, this involved running two minutes at six miles per hour (easy for me), two minutes at seven miles per hour (a little tougher but doable), two minutes at eight miles per hour (hard), and two minutes at nine miles per hour.
Those last two minutes proved treacherous. For two months, I eked out progress, slowing the treadmill again and again before time was up.
Then, three weeks before my deadline, stuck at about one minute of that top speed, I posted on my blog about my increasing velocity and the challenges I was facing. I also said I would keep trying.
After I hit “publish,” I never attempted my speed goal again.
From time to time over the past three years, I’ve wondered what happened: Was there something in telling people about my progress that pushed me to quit?
