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Motivation
Why Too Much Focus on Achieving Goals Harms Your Judgment
Six ways to avoid the ethical risks of tunnel vision using behavioural science.
Posted December 30, 2022 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
Key points
- People think they’d never abuse power to achieve their goals. Reality suggests otherwise.
- Excessive focus on objectives can impair one's perspective, level of risk-taking, and awareness of optionality.
- One way to achieve goals while maintaining good judgment is to be more discriminatory about which goals to pursue.
It's that time of year when new resolutions are made and organizations engage in planning wizardry. Being goal-driven has inspired amazing feats of humanity and technological progress.
But while it pays to hunker down and deliver, excessive focus on objectives hides a dark side. There's always a price to pay—and often, it's you who pays it.
The Dark Side of Goal Focus
People think they'd never abuse power or bend rules to achieve goals. But reality proves otherwise. Goal obsession triggers unexpected levels of people-pleasing, undue risk-taking, perfectionist anxiety, and conformity.
The result is a distorted ethics radar and a "reality distortion field." Apple's Steve Jobs was said to distort the truth to advance his goals. Temptation is hard to resist when attractive rewards loom. For example, Wells Fargo pushed sales teams to ensure each customer held eight products. But this was unrealistic. So panicked employees opened over 2 million unauthorized accounts.
Perdue Pharma mismarketed the addiction to pain-relieving OxyContin, contributing to the opioid crisis. Over 15 years, McKinsey knowingly aided this crisis by advising Perdue how to boost sales while urging the regulator how to safeguard patient welfare.
In the legal system, tens of thousands of innocent people are wrongly convicted, with many put on death row. Netflix and the media have popularised the cases of Adnan Syed, Steven Avery, and the Central Park Five. False testimony, extorted confessions, and planted evidence suggest that sometimes, lawyers, prosecutors, and police prioritize their goals over promoting the truth.
This year, true-crime podcasters examined the case of Darrell Lee Clark and Cain Joshua Storey, incarcerated as 17-year-olds for murdering a youth who accidentally shot himself. CNN reports the podcasters interviewed vital witnesses. One witness revealed how police coerced false statements by threatening to take her children. Clark and Storey were exonerated after 25 years, supported by the Georgia Innocence Project.
In the workplace, tunnel vision contributes to unethical behavior all the time. When leaders demand more products sold, pitches won or cases solved, employees become laser-focused on delivering required outcomes. After all, their next perk or promotion depends on it. Any wrongdoing is rationalized to achieve target profit, performance, or promotion.
In sports, athletes persist in taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs to achieve dreams of winning medals. Before the Sochi Olympics, a state-sponsored program was rolled out. Russia was subsequently banned from competing for four years.
At home, presenting the perfect image to neighbors and friends deepens anxiety. Downward social comparisons, not feeling good enough, and fear of missing out all contribute to financial overstretch or even self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
Research points to several side effects of excessive goal focus on our judgment: impaired perspective, impaired risk-taking, and impaired optionality.
Three Forms of Decision Distortion
1. Distorted perspective. It's normal to assume your effort and sacrifice will pay off, whether to save lives or save costs. An intense focus can overwhelm you, blurring other relevant considerations. For example, in negotiations, you may become so focused on defeating the enemy or securing a commercial advantage that you crater the relationship. Alternatively, people can either conform or not take enough risks to achieve their goals when trying to please others. You pay a higher price than expected.
2. Distorted risk. When you focus too narrowly on a personal or professional goal, the ability to objectively calculate risk reduces. We underweigh or overweight error probability. For instance, rogue traders failed to predict the aggregate risk to the balance sheets, losing millions at Société Générale and Barings.
3. Distorted optionality. With a narrow focus, consideration of better options reduces. An ambitious or overly anxious employee may aim to get promoted within 12 months. But a better route may simply be to switch careers. Similarly, a weight loss goal has many potential paths to success. Venture capitalists poured millions into WeWork, FTX, and Theranos start-ups, fixating on being first to market and yielding superordinate profits.
When you fixate on a certain end-state, it can be challenging to rethink, decelerate, or course-correct. Like an athlete hurtling toward the finish line, an addiction to the dopamine rush develops once each milestone is achieved. Amplifying the dark side, the narrow focus tends to combine with confirmation bias and moral justifications. It makes sense to monitor this trap individually and collectively.
Six Behavioral Solutions for Goal Balance
As a behavioral scientist and board advisor, I suggest six ways to reduce this predictable source of cognitive derailment and contain what I call "focus pocus."
- Be selective. Humans have finite resources yet insist on too many goals. Burnout and exhaustion are predictable side effects. Having a to-do list that never gets done isn't smart. Less is more, so choose what matters to limit cognitive overload.
- Flex time frames. Balance time horizons and incorporate new information as situations change to prevent goal rigidity. For example, during the pandemic, politicians blended short-term health with long-term economic considerations. What feels urgent now typically dissipates with time.
- Broaden goal scope. Set a salient, higher-level goal like social justice, equality, or life/work balance. This makes it easier to tolerate hiccups and regulate hair-trigger responses.
- Don't panic. Ask yourself why certain goals aren't working. Ask clarifying Socratic questions to activate a new train of thought. When you spot problems, allocate enough attention to solving them.
- Seek and take advice. Sharing objectives with partners, mentors, or teams can reduce stress, build perspective, and stem misjudgment. It's how soldiers, firefighters, and rescuers win wars and save lives.
- Do your best. Failure to reach goals can stifle the most ardent motivations and trigger anxiety. Objectives will always be unexpectedly speared and sabotaged. Encourage a personal best.
Every goal carries a price. It's necessary to identify the price you pay for success—and the price others inadvertently pay. Focus on the bright side of goal pursuit and avoid the dark side. By maintaining a broad, balanced, and non-binary perspective, you achieve more.
That's a goal worth achieving.
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