Low Net: How to set goals you can stick to
Whether setting your sights high or looking to just chip away, the key is arriving at a plan you can sustain
Happy New Year! This week we’re talking about goals, including a season-long project, worthwhile golfer resolutions, and Tiger’s 50th birthday.
How good could you get if you went all in for a year?
This is the time of year when we lock in on habits we want to change—a worthwhile exercise unless you happen to be perfect, which assorted friends and family inform me, I am not. If you’re the kind of person who likes to set specific goals, the advice on this is mixed. It’s believed to be better to set more ambitious goals as a way of making sure they have your attention—too easy and you risk blowing them off—but it’s also better not to talk about them. Why? As scientists have noted, just talking about things you plan to do can decrease your motivation to actually do them.
Of course, that’s tough for those of us in media who like to mine our own modest golf lives for content, like Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers, who is embarking on a year-long project to see if he can whittle his handicap down to scratch. As both Alex’s editor and someone who has played a lot of golf with him over the years, I believe this will be fun to follow, and not just in a what a lucky bastard sort of way. The goal is for Alex, who plays to a 3.2 index, to explore inefficiencies in his game ranging from full swing to strategy in hopes of identifying takeaways for the rest of us.
For instance, I’ve recently resumed using the Stack System to gain back some clubhead speed, so of particular interest to me are the ways Alex is learning to incorporate his speed training with his work at the range, since that’s something I want to do as well. “I’ve been working with trainer Mike Carroll, who says using both is key,” Alex says. “The Stack is an incredible tool to work on speed, but actually hitting golf balls is important as well to make sure that speed is transferring to the course.
Small goals for the rest of us
Granted, Alex working with a team of advisers is extreme. For the rest of us, Luke Kerr-Dineen outlines some very manageable resolutions to pursue. If you pay attention to Luke’s advice over the years, you’ll notice some of it is quite simple, even mundane, because that’s where the gains are. So Luke’s list of resolutions includes things like focusing on one element of your swing to fix, tracking your chronic misses, and planning your practices in advance. All of these sound basic, but that’s the point, because the little things are the kind we can stick with all year.
ICYMI….
Lastly, you might be aware that Tiger Woods turned 50 last month, which was an excuse for us to dive into various elements of his greatness, including my video look at his mental game, Drew Powell on his putting, LKD on his course strategy, Alex on his fitness routine, and Jonathan Wall exploring how long peak Tiger would have been with modern equipment.
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