There's nothing more natural than using path- and travel-related metaphors. We've all spoken of "long roads ahead", "heading in the right direction", or "taking a wrong turn." Szu-Chi Huang and Jennifer Aaker, psychologists at the Stanford School of Business, say that path-metaphors aren't just a convenient way to describe our goals. They recently conducted six studies involving over 1,600 people who were pursuing fitness, diet, and educational goals and found that whether people focus on "the journey" or "the destination" makes a big difference to motivation and success. We reached out and asked about the differences between the two kinds of metaphors, and how we can use them to motivate ourselves at each stage on the way to our goals.

Journey versus destination

The destination is "like a dot on the map," says Huang, "It's the desired end-state of all our striving." If you're trying to lose 20 pounds, then 20 pounds lighter is the destination. According to Huang, thinking about the destination highlights the difference between where we are now and where we want to be: "Knowing there is an ideal state and they are not there yet, that gap motivates people," she says. It's not just the beauty of our goal, it's the pain of not yet having achieved it.

Journey metaphors, by contrast, "draw a line from your current state to your future state and illuminate what it looks like." Thinking about the journey calls our attention to all the things we'll need to do, the obstacles and milestones, the highs and lows along the way.

Starting the journey

Big goals can be exciting, but they don't come with directions. It's easy to say "I'm going to get into great shape this year," but that doesn't tell us what to do tomorrow. Therefore, thinking about the journey is especially important right at the beginning.

If you're setting out on a fitness journey, for example, Huang recommends prepping the same way you would for an actual physical trip. "What do we do when we're going on a trip? We buy the equipment we need: the appropriate shoes, the gym membership, whatever tools we need. We prepare by reading books or taking a course." Also, notes Huang, most people don't like to travel alone, so this is the time to find travelling companions with similar goals.

Focusing on the journey also "helps us to map out the milestones and sub-goals that we'll need to reach along the way." At the outset, focusing only on the final destination can be discouraging if we don't have a clear path to get there. Huang says setting out milestones gives us immediate direction, allows us to experience small successes along the way, and builds in opportunities to review whether our companions and equipment are still right for the next stage in the journey.

On the path to victory

According to Huang, whether we should keep our eyes on the prize or focus on putting one foot in front of the other depends on where we are in the journey.

In research for a 2017 article, she found that thinking about the destination can be demotivating in two ways. When our goals seem unattainable, "we tend to disengage because we don't like to commit to things that are impossible." This is especially a problem in the early stages of a journey when the destination is still far-off and we haven't proved to ourselves that we can hack it.

Yet we also disengage when goals are too attainable. "It's a tortoise and hare effect," says Huang, "Losing one more pound sounds simple and I won't care about it much, so maybe I'll just go grab a dessert." When a journey is going well and the end is in sight, small sub-goals seem less relevant and we start to slow down.

When this happens, "It's time to bring back that big destination." Huang suggests using visualization to help bring your final goal to life. "If I want to lose five pounds, I visualize the dress I want to look good in or imagine myself in a situation where my friends can compliment me on feeling so much fitter in my workout class." When we visualize things, it engages our emotions and makes it personally relevant. For Huang, saying she wants to "lose five pounds" won't do the trick, "A number is just a number. There's no emotion around it, no relevance."

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