How to Set Goals You’ll Stick With: The MTO Technique 

Every December ushers in a season of frenzied goal setting. As the new year approaches, both companies and individuals vow to do better, get healthier, and achieve the truly audacious. 

Then comes January. 

Cold weather settles in, the drudgery of the daily routine returns, and reality hits like a ton of bricks. By this time of the month, the optimism of December is often just a memory as many of us realize we’re the same flawed people we were back in November. 

Is there a way out of this cycle of over-optimism followed by surrender and guilt? Plenty of people insist you should simply give up on setting goals. These arguments have merit. Repeatedly promising the impossible and then beating yourself up is a lousy way to live. 

But I recently stumbled on another approach that promises to allow you to stretch yourself with goals but avoid quickly tanking them when reality hits. It’s called the MTO technique. 

The problem with traditional goals 

Before I explain how to set goals with the MTO technique, let me explain why you shouldn’t feel bad that your previous attempts at goal setting haven’t worked. If you usually end up more demoralized by your goals than energized by them, you are very much not alone. Management researchers have found that traditional goal setting has serious downsides. 

Yes, goals can be motivating in the short term. But as a Harvard Business School paper with the memorable title “Goals Gone Wild” notes, within organizations too much emphasis on goals can lead to “a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation.” 

Goals can make us lose sight of the bigger picture, cut ethical corners, and suck so much of the joy out of an activity that we forget why we even wanted to pursue it in the first place. Sometimes we even chase goals so frantically in the short term that we burn ourselves out in the longer term. 

It’s not just within organizations that goals are problematic. They can have perverse effects on individuals, too. Every time New Year’s rolls around, many of us vow to exercise every day, get up at 5 a.m., or finally write that novel. Then the kids get sick, an insane deadline looms, or the roof springs a leak. We miss our goals for a bit, sink into self-recrimination, and declare the effort a failure. The result is even less self-confidence and motivation than we started with. 

How to set better goals with the MTO technique 

What’s the way out of the trap? According to coach Raymond Aaron, the solution isn’t dropping goals entirely but making them more flexible to escape the “dreaded binary.” With a traditional goal like “work out every day” or “double sales,” you’re either a total winner or a total loser. The pressure is too intense and the expectation of perfection is incompatible with real life. 

“Instead of writing a goal in The Dreaded Binary Technique, you break every goal into three levels,” Aaron writes on his website. He gives these levels the acronym MTO: 

• Minimum: This is “what you can be counted on to achieve based on your past performance.” 
• Target: This goal is a “stretch” that is “slightly beyond what you know you can accomplish.” 
• Outrageous: Somewhat paradoxically, Aaron defines this one as “what you know you cannot achieve.”

Why the MTO technique beats traditional goals

It might sound odd to call just maintaining the status quo a minimum goal. But for Aaron, the low bar is the point. He offers the example of a salesperson who sets selling his typical seven widgets as his minimum goal and nine as his target, and becoming the company’s top salesperson as his outrageous goal.

“You will most likely achieve your Minimum, since that is what you typically do,” he explains. “You then look at your goal and realize that you’ve only got two sales to go to hit your Target. That will inspire you to go for it. If you achieve your Target then you are even happier; nevertheless even if you hit only seven or eight, you have still achieved your goal (at least to the Minimum) and you feel great. If you actually achieve Target, you are elated. And, the increased self-esteem you generate each month will soon propel you up into the Outrageous category.” 

The motivating power of easy wins 

The rigidity of traditional goals can be dispiriting. Aaron’s approach promises to have the opposite effect. By giving yourself an easy first target, you build confidence and energy, which makes hitting your T and O goals a lot more likely. 

Best-selling author Oliver Burkeman claims it works for him. He has a target of starting to write each day by the leisurely hour of 10 a.m. It’s an easy goal, he writes, so he can stick to it “virtually without fail, through life’s ups and downs.” On the days he manages to start earlier, he feels elated and ahead. His low bar for his morning routine builds momentum that spurs greater success. 

It seems counterintuitive that you might achieve more if you set more relaxed, flexible goals for yourself, but that’s what these experts claim. If you’re one of the many people who are already depressed about your progress in 2025, maybe it’s time to listen to their wisdom. 

The MTO technique might just get you further toward your goals this year than the traditional approach of ambitious targets quickly abandoned.