just enter your email address below to get this blog's updates, news, and more!Confident Goal Setting: How to Pick Up a Cow, Daily
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
-Helen Keller
There is an old saying that says, "[i]f you can lift a calf every day, when you become an adult you can lift a cow. But don’t ever stop." This saying can be traced back to the legendary wrestler Milo of Croton, who introduced the “calf” workout in the 6th 20century B.C.
The Calf Workout
It was said that, as a boy, Milo trained for the Olympics by daily lifting a baby calf above his shoulders and carrying it. As the calf grew, so did Milo. By his teens, Milo was carrying a fully grown bull on his shoulders, and he purportedly entered his first Olympic event carrying a bull across the Olympic track.
Although it is quite possible to lift a newborn calf, and strongmen such as H. Mann have been known to lift full-grown bulls, the story of Milo is questionable. Here’s a story that’s not…
Mental Exercise and the Calf Workout
In 1980, a Florida State University psychologist trained an undergraduate with average intelligence (for a college student) to memorize and retain strings of 80 digits, one after another. During the training, which lasted for 3 to 5 hours per week for 18 months, the undergraduate was given random digits and then asked to repeat the digits back. If he correctly repeated the sequence, the following sequence was lengthened by one digit, otherwise, the sequence was shortened by one digit. While 18 months of moderate training wouldn’t qualify someone as an expert in most fields, the undergraduate’s relatively brief training made his memory comparable to people with the best memories in the world. The training was essentially Milo’s calf worked applied to mental exercise.
The Florida State experiment illustrates how the seemingly impossible can happen when we turn "cow goals" into calves and then allow ourselves — like Milo — to grow with our goals.
Setting Unthinkable Goals, Confidently
Setting audacious goals can be intimidating; it can feel like we’re setting ourselves up for failure when we decide to compete in an Ironman, write a Novel, learn to speed read, or save $1 million. Truth be told, some worthwhile goals can be rife with difficulties. There are, however, two helpful keys for overcoming many of these difficulties: time and goal velocity.
Time
Most goals seem believable if we give ourselves enough time to complete them. You may be setting yourself of for a lot of unneeded stress, anxiety, and perhaps failure if you decide to complete a novel in the next 3 months. But as your target time for completion increases, so does the believability of your goal. Milo gave himself years to develop the strength necessary to carry a bull, and so it should be with your goals.
Goal Velocity
Goal velocity is the rate at which you progress towards your goal. If want to write a 300 page novel in two years, your goal velocity would be .5 pages/day. If, in a year, you want to run a 5-minute mile and you presently run the mile in 12 minutes, then you’ll need to run a mile three times per week and increase your speed by 3 seconds per mile. If you want to save $1 million, you’ll need to save $200/month for 17 years at %10 interest. You get the picture.
Final Thoughts
Milo’s bull had a natural growth rate, but you’ll most likely need to make a conscious decision about how fast your cow (i.e. goal) will grow, and then you’ll need to "pick it up" regularly. If it’s nearly impossible to devise a velocity for your goal’s growth, chances are it isn’t a good fit for Milo’s approach to goal setting (it might, for example, be unwise to calculate and adhere to a goal velocity for finding a spouse). Another possibility is that you’ll discover you find no meaning in your goal, and drop it altogether. Finally, you may find yourself getting pulled into your goals and completing them much earlier than expected.
May you lift calves today, and cows in the not-to-distant future,
Clay
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[tags]confident goal setting, goal setting, confidence, goal velocity, pick Up a cow, lift a cow, Milo, strength training, digit span, Ericsson, S. F.[/tags]
View Comments
Anything worth doing takes some doing.
A baby has to crawl before he can walk, etc.
Clay, great job on explaining the small steps we all need to make to work towards our goals. Tying together the ancient with the modern is a great way to show just how timeless worthy principles are.
The best part is “goal velocity” — I never thought about breaking down something into a more manageable — even tangible — rate.
Goal velocity for spouse-finding might be: finding a good job, social networking (in real life), dating, etc.
@Tannage: Thanks for the Cheng Man Ching quotation, it will likely show up in the future post. I think you’re right about the calf analogy working best with tasks that grow as you grow–there are goals that perhaps should be achieved during critical periods and in a more qualitative and non-linear fashion. I like your latest post, by the way, on learning how to cook. Thanks for posting that.
@Nez: I don’t know if your goal velocity list for spouse-finding was meant to be partially humorous, but this part made me laugh: “social networking (in real life).” Items on the list for my former self (10 years ago) might include getting out of the house, talking to girls, and not cutting my own hair. Good times. Anyway, I’m glad you like the goal velocity concept; I don’t know where that came from but my fingers typed it so here it is. I think that coming with with a “goal unit” per “time unit” rate makes us solidify our goals in a way that we might not otherwise.
This is great advice for goal-setting. It is so very important to do a little bit each day to get yourself closer to accomplishing your long-term goals. As part of my own Quarterly Review, I look at assigning myself one thing that I can do to each month that gets me closer to those 3-5 year goals.
Good you mentioned about time. Nowadays everything need to be today, tomorrow, there is no time to “waste”. Facebook was launched yesterday, today is popular, tomorrow is gone. But we still should stick to the plan and give ourselves fair amount of time to reach our goals otherwise we all get mad! Nice Helen Keler quotation.
Goal velocity can be tricky for some things. If you try to write a 300 page novel in two years by writing .5 pages per day, you’ll be fine for a while. But at some point you’ll find that you don’t know what’s going to happen next in the storyline, or you need to go back and rewrite huge sections, or something else happens that leaves you writing 0 pages per day for a while.
I’ve never written a novel so I’m just assuming here, but it’s definitely true when writing a computer program. Some of the comments have touched on this idea of non-linear progress.
But the main thing is that most people start writing 0 pages per day from day one! They’ll never pick up a cow that way.
What if all I have a pig and a chicken? I guess I’m out of luck.
@Hunter: Very true. Many goals can’t be achieved in a linear fashion, so stay tuned for my upcoming “How to Pick up a Quantum Baseball Every Other Week” post . OK, on a more serious note: I think that goal velocity can be thought of similarly to miles per hour in a car. That is, even with cruse control, you can maintain a specific speed for the entire duration of a drip to your final destination. There are stop signs and you’ll usually need to stop and eat or even get your car fixed. The important thing is the *average* speed for the trip. Thanks for the insight.
@Jonathan: Ahem… Well, Jonathan, if you want pig or chicken-sized goals, then be my guest
@Paul: I like this: “Facebook was launched yesterday, today is popular, tomorrow is gone.” yeah, many of us want instant goal gratification and quit when we don’t get it. Perhaps that’s because we often don’t choose goals that intrinsically motivate us but instead allow external influences to shape our supposedly “internal” goals. I know that I’ve done this more than once.
@Stephen: Nice. I think that working on your long-terms goals on a steady and consistent basis (no matter how small the progress is) maintains goal inertia, which is important.
Nice – I knew you were going to get deep with that cow.
Since I love big beautiful goals, it’s nice to see someone not say “Ok, crazy. Can’t do it”
I am right in line with this thought process – I agree that time+goal velocity=success. It’s nice to see it simply put.. a reminder I sure can use right now.
And for that, I thank you.
Hey Clay,
Very nice article! For some reason, the trackback from my blog to this article did not show. May be still in moderation?
-Desika
You are very clever! Indeed, people find external goals and make them internal. It took me very long to understand that. The best receipt for success is to find the goals that match your spirit (some may find The Purpose Driven Life useful here) and just do the things you are the best at. If you always loved playing tennis why do you want to be the best in fishing? Because your friend is?
It is funny how we can spend our whole life pleasing others jumping from one place to another. Steve Jobs put it simple – find the thing you love to do and do it! I don’t want to be very rich, I just want to do the things I love and earn for my family from it.
Have you read “Neuromancer” by Gibson? “Time is time”. Nothing more.
@Deskia: Hmm…. for some reason I didn’t see it. Thank you so much for linking to this article, by the way! I’ll check and make sure that I accept track backs (I’m pretty sure that I do).
Clay,
You are very welcome!
-Desika
Clay – enjoyed this post. It was interesting and fun to read a different take on goal setting.
@Pat: I’m really glad . Thanks for stopping by again.
I have enjoyed this website and would like to try the movie later. Good idea!
A couple of comments on goal velocity: An important element that drives goals is the passion you have for completing the goal. For example, writers have days when the the “juices flow” or the runner goes 6 minutes past his former time not 3 min. It could be a trap that says, “Well, since I did so good last time, I think I will miss a time towards my pursit. Actually, missing an allotted time can be a setback.
The idea that completing a goal is a continuous process aligns with your goal velocity but, the flexibility might also include: “If I do better at one time, I still maintain my original velocity speed the next time and not feel as if I have to compete with my best time” – this could lead to burn-out.
@Mona: I see what you’re saying. Perhaps there should instead be a minimum daily goal velocity might be one adaptation. For example, if I want to write 6 pages per day, then if I write 12 pages one day I’ll still need to write 6 pages the next day. Very good point!
–Clay
I think your adaptation is a good way of putting it! It prevents some passionless automation to occur. I did subscribe and look forward to your articles. I am a writer also – mostly about social issues – especially as they relate to social norms.
Thanks Clay, another thoughtful post and a very memorable analogy!
Nice article. Do you have a URL that has more details about the FSU experiment? I’ve been digging around for it and can’t find it. Would love to see more details on it.
Being a cattleman from Australia, I accidentally stumbled across this article whilst looking for a way to lift a cow for real as the animal was having trouble calving. Regrettably, the cow I had to lift this morning will have to be destroyed due to, well, nature taking its course.
I must say though, Milo’s story whilst at face value is entertaining appears to be utterly impractical.
Lifting a cow simply for the sake of lifting a cow is pointless, if not merely egotistic. Lifting a cow to try and save both its and its calf’s life appears to be a better reason.
This reminds me of a quote from Cheng Man Ching, a contemporary Tai Chi master.
“Mastery in Tai Chi is like building a tower out of paper. Every day you put another sheet on the pile”
Lifting a calf every day probably works best with pursuits that grow as you grow, or the development of habits (hopefully good ones). You can get good at almost anything so long as you dutifully apply yourself every day.
I remember using this metaphor for learning how to cook. When you start from a zero knowledge base, cooking that dish every day is like lifting a very heavy calf. I sometimes wonder why it took so long for things to stop tasting like formeldahyde but sticking at it was the thing that worked in the end!