internal vs external validation + brief goals update
These guys are motivated!!!
Hello there!
While we were on the subject of motivation the other day (and it’s good to know I’m not the only one), I got thinking about my goals list, and the fact that I haven’t done a goals update for a while. This is mainly because I don’t want to bore you all with a massive list of “No further progress” 🙂
It seems like I’m good at setting goals in January and making good progress, but stalling around the summer time, I wonder if anyone else has found a similar pattern with their goals? Or does your non-goal hitting period come at a different time of year, maybe around Christmas for example?
For me it’s pretty obvious what is happening, there is just way too much other fun stuff to be doing while the weather is good, be that going for a walk, going away on short or longer breaks, playing golf, or simply just chilling out with friends and family outdoors. Next year I might as well be realistic and insert a “goal hiatus” into my schedule between June and September!
Anyway I have made some small progress on a couple of goals this month, one of which was the running goal “Run a 1:30 Half Marathon” which I just about squeaked over the line on Sunday at 1:29 in the Reigate Half Marathon. This got me thinking about how people get their validation, or motivation, or whatever you want to call it. Many people would stick that straight on Facebook and I would call this seeking external validation, and I would have done exactly that about 5 years ago, but now I am just not that bothered.
This could be partially because I can’t be arsed with FB anymore, I just don’t get bum-thrills because someone I knew 8 years ago “likes” the fact that I did a run or did a run in a particular time (do they even know that is the time I was aiming for? Do they know if that time was good or bad in general or for a runner of my standard? Most probably not in both cases!!!)
Ah… wait… I can see what you are thinking already. If I am so detached from all of that low level human emotion rubbish and floating on this higher plain above those Facebook semi-morons, then why do I need to post it on the god damn internet on my own blog! Who do I think I am FFS!?
Well I guess you got me there, but I would argue that setting goals on a blog and then trying to achieve them is actually at least 50% an exercise in internal validation. It’s being personally accountable by making those goals public 1. I also find people are more scathing of people who they know (behind their backs of course) who try to set and are banging on all the time about their goals and achievements so I’d rather avoid boring old friends to death and just post it on here instead, to people who I know are of somewhat of a similar mind.
Look, this isn’t all about the book of faces, I am not saying everyone who posts on FB is an externally motivated person and vice versa. I think it could be one of the stronger indicators, but it clearly goes much deeper than that. Let’s quickly move on and look at some of the other stuff…
are you internally or externally validated
- If you feel you haven’t performed well but then someone says you have in fact done well, and you instantly feel better, this surely must be a strong sign you prefer external validation. I have often felt like I’ve not performed well enough to my internal expectations despite others saying I’ve done well, and it doesn’t tend to have too much effect on my mood or assessment of my performance.
- Conversely you may think you have done well at something and find someone “hatin’ on you” and it really brings you down. (On a side note if this is you, please don’t listen to them!!! Hater’s gon’ hate and all that!). Again I find that it’s easy to ignore such comments because I know internally if I’ve done well or not, and besides, they are probably just jealous or have some other serious pathological issue and are probably going to be run over by a 10 tonne truck tomorrow at any rate 2
- Do you like regular feedback from your manager at work? Do you like your yearly/6 monthly/quarterly reviews? If so then again you may well be an external validation seeker. If however you know you’ve been doing a good job and your managers meetings are just a waste of your precious time, your are probably fine with having your own internal validation.
- I guess this boils down to simply “not giving a shit what other people think of you”, but there is a slight difference between just not caring and rationally assessing each persons comments on it’s own merits, and then dismissing the ones that you think are simply badly judged, which is how I prefer to go about things if I possibly can.
- I also think this sort of thing is strongly linked to whether you have an internal or external locus of control so go have a read of that older post if you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth a look in my humble opinion 😉
validation and financial independence
It’s also worth noting that as with most things there is no black or white here. I would say I lean towards being internally validated but if someone I respect in a given field says I did a good job in said field, then it feels good and that is obviously an externally validated feeling.
However, with us FI chasers I strongly feel our validation swing-o-meter™ needs to be pointing more towards the internal end of the spectrum because let’s face it, it is hard to come out of the closet and talk about those things with the wider world for a start. And secondly most people just think you are nuts/deluded/a complete idiot if you tell them about your aspirations of FI, or a lottery winner/greedy/lazy/inheritance grabbing barstard if you are already there.
What do you think readers, do you seek more of the internal or external validation and why?
Other updates
What else have we been up to? A fair bit as usual!
We went to Bath for a long weekend for our 2nd wedding anniversary which was very nice. A word of warning if anyone goes there though… Watch out for the parking!!! It is a bit of a nightmare and will cost you around £10 per day. I would recommend staying in the centre and getting the train there if possible! Or barring that do the park and ride. We googled “Free parking in Bath” and unfortunately the top hit was woefully out of date and it turns out there is no free parking in Bath (that we could find at least, it’s all permit holders only).
Despite having the weekend away and being generally busy we are also looking at a lower than normal spending month so far, and with not all that much planned between now and the end of the year I am hoping we can smash out some low spending months at least in October and November as well to bring our savings rate goals up to scratch a bit!
Check out our mega frugal (and not so healthy) dinner one night when we were away… living the high life! 🙂
I’ve also got myself another beer kit and will start brewing that soon. I will get up a “how to” post soon, it’s pretty easy but as usual there are a few “gotcha’s” to watch out for along the way which I think will be worth writing up my experiences with it.
The garden is producing lots of green tomatoes (great!) and a small amount of red ones. As the growing season draws to a close I must say it’s been an interesting experiment with the first year of having a garden and I think I will ramp up my efforts next year, I think I can do a lot better.
Anyone like fried green tomatoes?
Other goals progress:
Learn about and submit a tax form – Completed! Read here and here for the step by step process if wanted to do this yourself and missed it!
Get my golf handicap down to 20 – I am now down to 22 so moving in the right direction again. I think one or two more good rounds and I could actually hit this target before the end of the year!
Build one Android App/Build one iPhone App – I’ve secured a gig to build one of each and will get paid for it so despite me having far less time than I originally thought when I wrote up those business goals, I will at least have ticked one of them off before the year is out! Phew!
Notes:
- In all fairness you can probably try do a similar thing on FB as well but really who is paying attention to that sort of thing with the hundreds of shitty spam posts and “yay my baby threw up for the first time today” status updates constantly filling up your timeline, it must get lost in the ether pretty quickly ↩
- What do you mean I sound like the one with the serious pathological issue!? 😉 ↩
Discussion (11) ¬
Great post there, TFS.
Posting your goals and stuff on a blog is so different from posting them on FB and like you, I don’t do those kinds of updates on FB.
In fact, it makes me shudder to think of posting on FB “woohoo, got 50% Savings rate this month and my net worth has increased by 10%!” and for someone I went to school with, whom I’ve not seen since I was actually wearing a school uniform to Like or comment on it! And I wouldn’t want to guess what my colleagues would say haha!
I really agree with you on the personal accountability factor of maintaining a blog. There have been occasions when I’ve stopped myself buying something because I didn’t know how I could justify it on my blog haha!
It looks like I too lean towards internal validation. I’m pretty happy knowing myself that I’ve done a good job.
Anyway, good luck with your next home brew (I might get round to doing another one in the next week or so) and fantastic crop of tomatoes!
Haha, it would be fun to do as an experiment, we should all do it one night and report back the comments we receive (my guessing is there would be a stunned silence!)
Cheers and good luck with your next homebrew as well 🙂
Really great to read this update. Was just thinking two ago, that I also forgot about some goals and consequently circuit to write a Q2/H1 update in the summer. This is a good reminder for me to finish that Q3 post in time before next week!
I guess recently I’ve been thinking more about income divisions and saving money on groceries. However, I think I’ve made some good progress.
If I were you, I’d have left those tomatoes on the vines, or I’d let them ripen on a sunny window sill. I’m in the same boat you see, I have masses of green tomatoes but since we’ll have at least 10 days of Good weather starting today, I’m leaving them there outdoors! I reckon you should not go down the chutney route, but make a kind of salsa instead, you could always get some Sainsbury’s 35p cartons of passata to mix with the green… The flavour would be immense!
Cheers
Hi M,
Maybe there is something about summer which makes you forget about all those targets you set in January, or maybe it is just a time thing or that we are all partially scanners (http://thefirestarter.co.uk/scanners-financial-independence/) so get bored with stuff too quickly and move on to something else. As long as you are doing “something” and not just sitting around wasting your spare time then it’s all good.
Ah the Toms… The plant was in fact reaching black hole status and was collapsing under its own weight so I had the choice of picking them now or leaving them to most probably rot on the vine 🙁
I put them in a brown paper bag with some limited success on the reddening front so not all bad.
We’ve made our own passata/bolognaise sauce with some of them but the salsa idea sounds great for the rest of those that don’t go fully red, I can mix them with my home grown chillies 🙂
Thanks!
I think the whole internal/external is definitely a spectrum and most people probably work best with a combination of both forms of validation in different levels. As you point out though, if you have heavy leaning towards external validation FIRE will certainly be tougher on you. With such a long time horizon and lack of public discussion on the fact you are forced to rely on those internal milestones to juice up your motivation, if that’s not something you draw satisfaction from you might be in for a bad time.
I detest what facebook has become with a passion. It’s the bane of my existence at work as 50% of my time is probably spent clearing up after the mess people make of their lives via social media. With a blog at least a person has to go out of their way to view the information, if they don’t want to see it then they don’t read it. These days with everyone on facebook you’ll see what your “friend” from 15 years ago had for the dinner via your news feed and you’ll damn well like it! That said, I hypocritically have a FB page myself (check it out :P)
FIbrarian recently posted…What will your retirement look like?
Hi FIbrarian,
Thanks for the comment! 🙂
I have to say I am really interested to hear what your job entails if 50% is dealing with social media fall out…! Hopefully we can meet up at the FIRE Escape down in (near) Devizes 🙂
I do have a FB page myself as well, I don’t think it’s particularly hypocritical. It’s nice as a store of some photo memories (although I certainly wouldn’t rely on it as such) and you get the odd event or are alerted to some interesting news you wouldn’t otherwise have heard of. Luckily I can rely on Mrs T to fill me in on anything interesting so I don’t have to filter through the reems of crap and just jump on there once a month or so to get to the good stuff. I guess if I were still single I would use it more but make liberal use of the “block updates” button on certain (i.e. most) people 😀
Huh, i am usually 93.5% internal motivated, but from time to time i slack. My challenge in September was to eat only cooked food/slow food as opposed to fast food. Looking good until now and although i told to some friends about it, it was mostly something that i did because i want it. Not long until the end of the month. Go! Go! Go!
Great article and great come back! Keep it up!(Hi,hi, see the external part here, right?)
I like your accurate measurement there George 🙂
That’s a good challenge to attempt and I bet you are feeling better for it and your wallet is too?
Haha, I got a little buzz out of your positive comment there I have to admit, I am such an external validation seeker 😉
Goals are tricky. They’re a good tool and can be really powerful, but how come they work in some areas of your life and miserably fail in others? Jut because you write something down in the “right” way (see Brian Tracey etc) and tell other people about them means…..that you still might fail utterly against them. And I’ve no idea why! I’d still argue that it’s worth going through the process though, as opposed to just drifting without any ambition and objectives.
Hi Jim,
I agree that the whole “writing it down and soon you will get what you want” is a little flimsy for me. I don’t literally believe that but I do think that writing something down is a really good first step you can take. A lot more needs to happen after that but it is more inspiration seeing it down on paper (or on the laptop screen) than it is just as an idea floating around in your head.
Thanks!