The Power of Setting and Declaring a Goal
· Time
In September 2022, I set myself a very public personal goal: to run a 5-minute mile.
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It was a completely mad idea. I was 58 years old, and, although in reasonably good shape, the fastest I could then complete a mile was in just over six minutes. I had given myself only eight weeks to cut around 70 seconds off my time—a massive improvement that most people familiar with running thought was unattainable.
The appeal of the mile is that it is neither a sprint nor a marathon, requiring a combination of sustained speed and endurance—strong legs, strong lungs, and mental fortitude.
In my quest, age would be a factor. The fastest known mile by a runner over 60 is 4:49, set in 2020 by 61-year-old Dan King, a former University of Colorado athlete. While I am disciplined about my exercise and run seven days a week, my training is casual in its duration and intensity—and critically, I am no athlete. Yet I would be trying to run just 11 seconds slower than the record for someone roughly my age.
I hired a coach and—to make everything transparent and public—announced my goal on LinkedIn. I also approached running experts for their opinion and advice. I encouraged followers of my LinkedIn page to engage with my journey and set stretch goals of their own.
Why would I do this? Why would I set myself up for potential failure in such a public way?
As founder and CEO of Discovery, a global financial services organization started in South Africa with the goal of making people healthier, the challenge was an opportunity to improve my own health while demonstrating the importance of physical activity and encouraging others to lace up their running shoes. Data from Vitality—a business model we pioneered for health and life insurers that tracks over 60 million life years of health and wellness data to reward positive health choices—shows this compellingly: moving from no exercise to just one physically active day per week reduces the risk of death by 36%, with positive knock-on effects for other healthy behaviors and mental wellbeing.
But most importantly, I did it out of a deep, long-standing conviction to illustrate the power of setting and declaring goals: in this case, out loud and in public. Not only would I be motivating myself, but by declaring it publicly and encouraging others to set their own goals, I hoped to spark a chain reaction.
This wasn’t just a personal ambition; it was an experiment in human motivation. Behavioral science explains why goal-setting is profoundly effective.
As rational decision makers facing options under conditions of risk and uncertainty, we think we are motivated to choose the most rational option—the one with the best combination of value and likelihood of occurring. This thinking—codified in the 1940s as “expected utility theory” by game theory founders John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern—dominated decision theory for decades.
Expected utility theory assumes a linear relationship between rival potential gains—and between potential gains and losses. But this linear model was challenged in 1979 by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Their theory—prospect theory—proposed that losses loom larger than gains, a phenomenon known as loss aversion.
In one experiment, participants reported feeling much worse about losing $100 than they felt good about gaining $100—despite the amounts at stake being the same. A foundational reason is that people evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point, typically the status quo, rather than in absolute terms. This reference point determines whether an outcome is perceived as a gain or a loss. Once a loss is perceived, loss aversion kicks in—an emotional response in which the pain of loss far outweighs the pleasure of gain. Losses are typically felt to be twice as impactful as gains of the same size.
The logic is this: by setting and declaring a goal, we put ourselves on the line. By putting something at stake, we create something to lose. And because avoiding a loss feels psychologically twice as valuable as achieving a gain, setting and declaring bold goals triggers this force, unlocking radical motivation and decisive action. By declaring a goal publicly, I created something to lose: my credibility and public accountability to my followers.
So how did my five-minute mile work out? I began, as all strenuous physical challenges should, with a health check and a baseline fitness assessment (which I also wrote about on LinkedIn). The latter gave me a cardiovascular fitness VO2 max result of 47.7, well above the 41 classified as “excellent” for men my age. My coach set me a brutal training plan, which he thought could—if all went well—slash my time by up to 30-40 seconds.
Over the next month, I stuck rigidly to my training routine. My time was improving: I managed to whittle it down to 5:40, which was stellar progress, but still a long way off from five minutes. I posted weekly “performance dashboard” updates on LinkedIn—and there, too, I saw huge gains toward my other goal of inspiring other people to set profound goals of their own. One person pledged to wrap up their PhD analysis within the year, and another set out to learn a new instrument. One of the most moving posts came from someone undergoing chemotherapy who decided to run about 3 miles in under 30 minutes—then followed up months later to say that even though it had intimidated her to set a personal goal publicly, she had achieved it.
About six weeks into my training, I got impatient. I thought, How can I run at close to 3 minutes per kilometer when I don’t train at that speed? So I pushed a little faster than my coach had suggested. Then, after my run, I went into a full-day board meeting where I sat, barely moving, for ten hours. I went home to do an easy run up a steep hill, and to my horror, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my calf. I had torn my calf muscle.
I tried everything to fix it, including platelet-rich plasma therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I was gutted, but I had to face it: my challenge was over.
Of course, I was devastated that I didn’t achieve my goal. I had made the rookie error of going too fast too soon, and I was bitterly disappointed. But I also saw the bigger picture: I had brought my time down to 5:35, and my VO2 max had risen from 47 to 58. Nearing age 60, I was faster and fitter than I had ever been, and my running had leveled up. Moreover, people all over the world had started chasing goals of their own and sharing their progress. My 30 posts over eight weeks had reached close to 12 million people.
So, was it a success or a failure? In the final calculation, it was a success for several reasons. First, it engaged people in the importance of physical activity. Second, it proved my hypothesis: setting and declaring a goal takes you further than you would have gone without one. And third, even if you fall short of the destination, the goal—and the journey—will change you.
After my injury, one of my key takeaways was that I had nevertheless made remarkable progress as a runner. So, I set myself another goal: could I run a marathon again—something I hadn’t done in two decades—and do so at a reasonable pace, given my age? This time, I stuck to my training plan, avoided injury, and the answer was an emphatic yes.
In 2025, I ran the London Marathon in 3 hours, 37 minutes and 40 seconds, a time that put me in the top 20% of all finishers. I could never have achieved that time 20 years ago, let alone before my 2022 challenge. This had a positive knock-on effect: my result in London meant I qualified for the Boston Marathon, and I ran an even faster time in that race.
In my case, one declared goal—even a failed one—led to another. My limits expanded. And in the process, I experienced the transformative power of setting and declaring goals.