Why Goal Setting Isn't Working for You & What to Do Instead
- Paden Bhutia
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Are you still setting goals for yourself in 2025 and finding it difficult to work on those goals?
If setting goals were enough and you had to only set goals, then every single person would be able to achieve their goals. But you and I both know that isn’t how it is.
If you are tired of setting goals and would rather achieve those goals, stick around because I’ll be sharing one thing you can start doing that’ll help.
You'll l know exactly what to do instead of just doing a goal-setting exercise, so let’s get into it!
The struggle
Every self-help book I’ve read so far (And I’ve read a lot of them), almost every single one of these self-help books suggests that you write down your goals..
Of course, this is a good and valid suggestion but this is only the first part..
Some people may get stuck on this part. They may get into the habit of simply writing down their goals and believe that they’re getting clearer and that’ll help them.
What I’ve found in my experience is that writing down goals is a great starting place. I even believe that putting down your desires on paper can boost your confidence levels. But this is the extent to which I take it..
The second critical part is working on what you’ve written down. The part where you put in your efforts.. I don’t believe you have to necessarily struggle and put in the effort. I’ve made a whole video on why I think struggling with your goals is unnecessary, you can check that out later if you like.
Also, if you’d like to improve your habit of being consistent with your life goals, you’ll love the Become Consistent challenge, which is a 3-week online challenge designed to help you get into the momentum of working on your life goals.
What is going to work instead of just doing a regular goal-setting exercise?
Over the years, I’ve come across several clients who’ve told me that they’ve tried setting goals but still find it difficult to work on their goals..
Whenever I’ve come across this type of client, I always ask them what they are doing to achieve their goals.
Like I ask them for cold, hard evidence of exactly what steps they’ve taken to move toward their said goals. And it’s always fascinating to me that every single time the person has been unable to give me a list of concrete steps they’ve taken toward their goals..
This isn’t in any way a judgment on someone well-intentioned and wants to achieve their goals but somehow is unable to take concrete actions.
To give you a personal example.. for years I struggled with emotional stress eating.. I would eat every single time I felt low, discouraged, hurt or any of the lower emotions. But once the emotion passed, I would swear I’d never engage in stress eating.. but soon after that, I would find myself stress eating again.. It was this catch-22 situation I found myself in, I would say I didn’t want to overeat or stress eat, but I wasn’t doing anything concrete to break that negative habit..
I remember writing a lot about it, about wanting to stop, but if someone were to ask me what I was doing to break that negative habit, except for my intention of stopping, I didn’t have any evidence that I indeed wanted to get out of that negative habit.
The awakening
It was only when I started applying coaching techniques to myself I was able to finally be able to break that negative habit, among several others.
It’s been several years since I’ve completely gotten rid of the need to eat away my feelings and now be to able to process difficult emotions healthily.
Through my experience, I’ve learnt that you can have the best intentions of wanting to do something, such as break a negative habit or cultivate a new one, but unless you take concrete steps, it’s not going to happen.
There’s is powerful quote that always reminds me of this truth, and it goes like this
“Intention always takes a beating without action.”
After struggling for years, I created a simple method that works for me every time I want to apply my intention and get things done.
Before I share that with you, if you’re struggling to get out of a negative habit, remember it’s about being consistent with your efforts.. If you need my help on that you’ll benefit from the Become Consistent challenge.
The transformation
For me, the simplest way to work on your goals is to use something I call the O.R.S method.. and I’m not referring to the oral rehydration drink here, but it could be for your goals, if you think about it..
Okay, jokes apart, let’s get into the O.R.S method of working on goals
Step one: Observation
You are going to observe everything you’re currently doing with regard to your goals. It looks like this..
Let’s say you want to start a side hustle while working a full-time job. You’ve been writing about starting this side hustle, you’ve been thinking about it for weeks now! But when you get honest about what you've been doing to move towards this goal, you’ve done nothing. Now, observing what your actions have been toward your goals is not an easy task.
For one, you may start judging yourself when you realize that you’ve not done anything substantial to move toward your goals.
If you start judging yourself for the actions you’ve not taken, it can cause you to get into a negative spiral and make you doubt yourself. This is something we want to avoid doing. The purpose of the observation technique is to get an objective and honest look at whether your desires and actions are aligned.
If you notice that what you want to achieve and your actions are aligned, then keep going; that’s fantastic.
However, if you notice that what you say you want and what you’re doing isn’t aligned then instead of beating yourself up, you can use that moment as a moment of great opportunity to assess whether you truly want to do what you’ve been saying or it is just a ‘nice to want’.. either ways don’t judge yourself for whatever you realize in that moment of observation. What is true for you will be revealed to you in your moment of observation.
Second Step: Reflection
Once you’ve taken a good look, let’s say 10 minutes of sitting down quietly with your goal and looking at the progress you’ve been making. What comes up for you? Are you able to see clearly the steps you’re taking to move toward your goals? Can you see the daily and weekly progress you’re making? Or do you see that you’ve hardly done anything concrete that’ll move you toward your goals?
Once you have this data of whether you have or have not been taking steps toward your goals, I want you to question two things:
a. Is this goal truly important to you? How will you know? Well, if it’s been a while and you’ve not done anything about it and you don’t even think about it for day,s then maybe this goal isn’t as meaningful to you and
b. Ask yourself, do you want to continue with it, or is it time to release it? You’ll know this intuitively..
This reflection step is deeply personal, and only you can decide what’s right for you.
Final step: Support your goal
If you’ve decided to continue with this goal or even choose a new one, you want to write down what actions you’ll be taking towards that goal.
Here’s an example: if you say you want to start a side hustle. Stop writing down something vague as ; start a side hustle. Inside, write down:
What side hustle do you want to start and by when?
Create a business plan
Create a prototype
Create a website
Launch plan
Listing down what actions you’ll take and by when is a much better approach than simply writing down what you want to achieve
Next step in supporting your goal is you want to get expert help to help you. This can mean taking a class, signing up for a course, getting a consultation, or anything that’ll help you in taking action toward your goals.
And finally, having a log of the concrete things you do daily so you know the next step, you face challenges that you’re doing concrete things toward your goals and the challenges won’t be able to distract you as much.
The result
This method works better than simply writing down your goals..
I believe that if you aren’t making that goal front and centre in your life, then no matter what you say, that goal isn’t as meaningful to you. And there’s nothing wrong with it. You either will make time to work on it, or you’ll make an excuse; you can’t do both!
That brings us to the end of this episode. Comment below and tell me what goals you’re currently working on, I’d love to hear from you and cheer you on..
If you’re ready to become more consistent with your life goals, the become consistent challenge can help you to get in the groove of working on your life goals.
Till next week, remember what you want matters, and it’s really up to you to make it happen. Take good care of yourself!
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