Issue 63: Six goals. Three green. Three red. Now what?

ISSUE 63

7 NOVEMBER 2025 | READ ONLINE

Hi Reader,

I’ve been sitting with my Q3 retrospective this week.

Six goals. Three green. Three red.

It looks satisfyingly symmetrical in Notion. My inner overachiever, however, had some questions.

Part of me wanted to call it a 50 percent success rate and move briskly on. Another part wanted to zoom in, interrogate every red, and start rewriting my system.

And then there was the slightly smug voice that whispered:

“Maybe Q4 should be easier. Fewer reds. More dopamine.”

Of course, my Q4 goals are the hardest I’ve set all year.

So what does that say? That I didn’t learn? That I’m addicted to stretch? Or that my definition of a successful outcome is evolving into something more honest than an all-green dashboard?

This is where last week’s question returns:

What would be a successful outcome?

Not theoretically. Not in a workshop. But in a real quarter, with real numbers, and a very real brain that enjoys both progress and self-critique.

When “All Green” is Too Cheap

If success is only “green equals good, red equals bad,” then Q3 should feel like a disappointment.

It doesn’t.

Those three red goals are not proof that I fell short. They are proof that I aimed at things that were not guaranteed. Some were experiments. One depended on other humans and real life. One was probably two goals disguised as one.

They are not verdicts. They are information.

We forget this. We start grading ourselves like a performance review rather than listening like a coach.

A successful outcome is not “I hit everything.” That is one version. It is not always the bravest one.

Sometimes a successful outcome is:

I chose fewer goals, and they actually meant something.
Half of them stretched me to the edge of what I know how to do.
I can see clearly what belongs in the next season and what does not deserve another quarter of my life.

That is a very different story from tidy success metrics. It is also a better one.

What the 2025 Research is Saying

A few pieces this year back up what many of us are feeling.

First, Jean Rhodes’ summary of new work on goal-setting in mentoring highlights something counterintuitive: in complex or uncertain contexts, non-specific goals, such as “do your best” or open goals, can outperform rigid SMART targets because they leave room for learning and adaptation, rather than forcing performance at all costs.

The Yale Center for Customer Insights reviewed multiple studies in 2025. It came to a clear conclusion: goals grounded in intrinsic motivation (enjoyment, meaning, alignment) are more likely to stick than those we chase purely for utility or optics. In other words, how it feels to pursue the goal predicts more than how impressive it looks.

A 2025 series of studies reported in PsyPost found that long-term commitment is driven less by how “important” a goal is on paper and more by whether people find genuine satisfaction in the process of working toward it. Enjoyment in the journey, not just reverence for the outcome, keeps people engaged.

So if you had a mixed quarter, and your instinct was to either:
Make everything easier, or punish yourself for aiming high,
The research would gently suggest a third option:
Look at the quality of the goals, not just the color.

What I am Learning from 3 Green and 3 Red

Here is what my own Q3 is teaching me.

Having only six goals forced clarity.
No hiding behind volume. If something was on the list, it had weight.
Three green tells me my system works when the goal is aligned, scoped, and owned.
The ones that went green were the ones that were mine, not borrowed expectations.
Three red tells me where the frontier is.
They were not random. They clustered around more complex, more vulnerable, or more externally dependent outcomes.
Harder Q4 goals are not a refusal to learn.
They are a choice to define “successful outcome” as growth in capability, depth, and integrity, not just completion.

Would it feel nice to engineer a pristine Q4 where everything goes green? Absolutely.

But that would be designing for ego relief, not evolution.

This Week, Try this

Before you lower the bar or inflate the list, sit with three questions:

For each major goal this quarter, ask:
What would a successful outcome feel like in my real life?
Calm? Proud? Relieved? More spacious? More impactful? Be specific.
Look at one of your “red” goals from this year.
Was it truly a failure, or was it a stretch, an experiment, or poorly defined?
What is the lesson it is offering that an “easy green” never would have forced you to see?
Write one sentence:
A successful outcome for me this quarter will feel like __________.
Not sound like on LinkedIn. Not look like in a slide deck. Feel like in your body at the end of the quarter.

And so, I'm going to take my three green and three red.

Not a clean win. Not a collapse. Just an honest quarter.

And in an honest quarter, the outcome that matters most is not “Did I hit everything?”

It is, “Am I becoming the person who can hold bolder goals without losing myself?”

Let me know what you think. How did your Q3 turn out, and are you able to hold space for an honest quarter?

See you next week,

Megan