Goal Gradients
"In general, an intent will beat a wish, a goal will beat an intent, and a plan will beat a goal, But a clear goal, a solid plan, and a well-matched system will be formidable." - Michael Wade
In my late twenties I wanted to start a business and build it into a global enterprise worth billions of dollars. Having audacious goals was the prevailing fad back then and this was my audacious goal. In hindsight, it was a Sisyphean plan. Hard work, I assumed, and making a show of it would result in success. It ended up being the same rock pushed a short way up the mountain only to watch it roll to the bottom for lack of any anchor. A plan I had. What I didn’t have was a strategy.
A strategy is one of those things that are an exercise left to the reader. When I eventually figured this out, the audacious goals were erased from the board and much more modest, yet reachable goals were put in place along with a variety of paths for reaching them. I still had larger goals that gave my strategies direction. But they didn’t seem audacious. Looking back after having achieved some of these goals, they seem audacious given where I started. Having filled in all the steps as part of the effort to work out the strategy needed to reach them, the path to obtaining my larger goals was much less mysterious and more compelling.
Essentially, the effect of having one or more strategies was to break down the larger goals into smaller well-connected efforts that were much easier to achieve. In time, I added rigorous feedback practices around any of the smaller failures and success. In the military, these are called after action reports. I’ll cover feedback in a later post. For now, I want to cover a specific driver behind why breaking down larger goals into a connected series of smaller is much more compelling than working to achieve one big audacious goal.
The theory behind this driver is called the “Goal Gradient Hypothesis.” Based on the work of Clark Hull (1932)1, the hypothesis is derived from the observation that animals, including humans, tend to work harder at reaching a goal when they know they are getting closer to the goal. The marathon runner experiences a resurgence of energy as he approach the finish line or the software coder who works extended hours as she closes in on a solution to a complex problem are a couple of examples. Later work by Kivetz, Urminsky, and Zheng (2026)2 found:
“...that members of a café [rewards program] accelerated their coffee purchases as they progressed toward earning a free coffee. The goal-gradient effect also generalized to a very different incentive system, in which shorter goal distance led members to visit a song-rating Web site more frequently, rate more songs during each visit, and persist longer in the rating effort. Importantly, in both incentive systems, we observed the phenomenon of post-reward resetting, whereby customers who accelerated toward their first reward exhibited a slowdown in their efforts when they began work (and subsequently accelerated) toward their second reward.”
The obvious question becomes, how can we leverage this mechanism in our journey toward mastery? Simple: While having a large or long-term or audacious goal is important - much like having a compass heading - break the larger goal down into smaller and equally compelling goals that are aligned with the larger goal. In my view, this approach can be considered a critical element for turning “repetitive practice” into “deliberate practice.” Every singled practice session should have its own explicit achievable goal. Doing so means every single practice session will be different and satisfying in its own way. In other words, every single practice session will be deliberate.
An example from music:
I have a long-term goal of being able to play the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007. At the moment, this is way beyond my skill and attempting to play the piece through entirely is...a lot of things not good - frustrating, exhausting, time-consuming, demotivating, sloppy, and in all ways not fun. However, focusing on just the first measure or two is within my skill. I’ve found that within a 30 minute practice session, I can successfully play a single measure or two with decent tone and on tempo.
Instead of repeated failures to play the entire prelude, I experience countless successes and moments of genuine satisfaction as I build my skill with the entire piece. With each measure I can sense the goal and I remain motivated to reach the goal before the end of the practice session. And each success keeps me motivated to work on the next measure and next and the next. Some are more difficult then others and require more time and playing larger numbers of measures together are their own challenge, but throughout this process I remain engaged motivated.
“Goal Gradients” last updated on 2025.09.28.
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Footnotes
Hull, C. L. (1932). The goal-gradient hypothesis and maze learning. Psychological review, 39(1), 25.
Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of marketing research, 43(1), 39-58.