3 Shifts to Refresh Your Goals when Progress is Invisible

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: 3 Shifts to Refresh Your Goals when Progress is Invisible, published on 25th May 2026.

Welcome to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast, where I help you refresh your thinking in both life and work. Today I'm here to help you refresh your motivation towards your big goals for this year.

Today's episode is grounded in something we know from psychology: we are wired to stay motivated when we can see progress, and to lose motivation when we can't.

So if you are working towards anything meaningful right now - whether that's a career move, a strength goal, building a business, or growing your authority - this episode will help you understand what's happening when it feels like nothing is happening.

The messy middle

When we are in that messy middle phase of a goal, when nothing really seems to be moving, it can be really tough. As we are approaching the middle of the year, it may well be that some of the goals you kicked off in January are now in that phase.

You might be putting effort in, showing up, doing the work, but there's less evidence at this point that it's actually adding up. And that can be really frustrating.

It's often one of the hardest parts of any meaningful goal. The beginning brings energy and novelty, momentum. There's some easy startup - you can go and buy some tools or equipment. The end again brings its own energy as the finish line comes into sight. Even if you're tired, you can see it. But that middle - which is often the majority of the time, especially for a big goal - is much less glamorous.

It can feel repetitive, unclear, uphill. You can start questioning the goal and even yourself.

For important goals, we need to find ways in this phase to not give up. Our brains are highly responsive to feedback. Even dopamine, which is often talked about as the motivation molecule, is linked to feedback loops and signals that something is working. The progress principle shows that even small visible wins can significantly boost motivation and wellbeing.

The problem is when that progress is not visible for quite a long time.

We have a couple of options. We can create smaller, measurable bits that we can start ticking off and generate some visible progress. But there are going to be other times when we need to draw on some other tools to help make the goal feel inevitable.

That's what I want to talk about today. When the goalpost still feels quite far away, when progress is hard to see, and when part of you is wondering whether any of this is actually working - what can we do to support ourselves and the goal?

Shift 1: extend your timelines

Most things that matter take longer than we think. Career pivots, strength building, growing a business, changing behaviours and habits, building authority, creating something meaningful. They don't tend to fit into neat and tidy timeframes.

We cannot always control when a particular outcome is going to arrive. But by making the timeframe too short, we can often stifle our goals. We can knock the oxygen out of them.

This is something that has unfortunately been reinforced by the concept of SMART goals, which I believe are highly misused inside organisations. SMART is great for controllable processes and milestones - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. But for big, complex, meaningful goals, it can actually kill them. Because you do not control the full outcome or the timing.

On big meaningful goals, there are going to be aspects outside your control. You cannot apply SMART to the entire goal - only to the process you are in control of.

So the first shift is really simple. If it's feeling hard, if it's feeling like nothing is showing up yet, don't drop the goal. Just widen the timeline.

Shift 2: use more than just your logical brain

When a goal starts to feel complex and messy and none of it is making sense, we need a little bit more than logic to help us.

Most of the goals we are trying to achieve are not a simple ten-step plan that is one size fits all. A fitness goal alone requires you to factor in age, injury, personality, lifestyle, hormones. It is a lot more complex than a simple ten-step plan.

There are going to be phases when things are not working or they are taking longer, and it's hard to logic your way through that. Sometimes we are throwing everything at a goal and we don't exactly know which part is going to work. So we hit a limit if we are only approaching it with an analytical, logical mind.

This is where I say: let's bring in the other half of our brain. The vision, the belief, the identity. Not "I'm waiting for this to happen before I can be happy or successful," but "I am somebody who." Intuition. These are all things a logical brain alone is going to miss.

If you are someone like me who is very evidence-oriented, this can initially feel uncomfortable. You want proof before you fully commit. And I understand that. Some form of evidence can be very important. But if you are doing something new that doesn't have a perfect playbook - because you're not following a perfectly linear career - you won't always have proof that it works for someone exactly like you upfront.

That's where we want to draw on some kind of conviction. Not blind delusion, not "trust the process" - that one really does not work for me. If somebody tells me to trust the process, I am less likely to trust the process. But we do need to find ways of creating self-belief that this goal is possible for us. If you don't, you will subtly hold yourself back.

This is where my difficult puzzle analogy is quite helpful. I did a related episode to this when I had completed the hardest puzzle I've ever done in my life - a Van Gogh Starry Night puzzle. It was so difficult that sometimes I would spend more than 40 minutes not being able to place a single piece. Family members would walk past the table, have a go, and they wouldn't be able to get a single thing in either.

However, I had this knowing that it was a complete puzzle. It was brand new, still in its packaging, and I had seen videos online of people finishing it. So I knew it was solvable. And because of that, I stuck with it far longer than felt logically right - because it was such a time drain, and you didn't get the momentum or that feedback our brains are wired to receive when in pursuit of a goal. The dopamine was few and far between for quite a long time.

What made it possible was knowing that the puzzle was solvable. And it did get finished.

I really took that analogy and saw it in the context of our other goals. It's a very subtle shift - from believing something is possible, to subtly doubting it's right for us.

If you are working towards a goal but there is a part of you that doesn't believe it's fully possible for you, that is worth examining. Sometimes you need to put yourself in safe, trusted hands - someone who you believe has genuine expertise in that space, who can challenge you warmly and say, no, actually, this is what's possible.

Shift 3: be more systematic

When we have the right systems, habits and routines in place - and they feel good - that reduces decision fatigue. Instead of asking what should I do next, you can just put your energy into following the right system.

Going back to the trust the process point: it is really important that you find credible sources, test, refine, and personalise. Ideally, get support from someone you trust who can give you the right critical path to achieve what you want. I always believe that coaches are the shortcut, if they are expert in what they do, have proven results, and have achieved things themselves.

Once you have a very personalised critical path, you can set up processes and systems and follow them for a period. It may be that you follow them for 90 days, three months, and then you check in. But you allow yourself some runway of just following without needing to constantly check in.

I say this as someone who has needed a lot of feedback in the past. What I have got a lot better at over time - building a business, building a podcast, building a career - is having periods where you really want something, you set up your processes, and then you slowly but surely just get on with it.

Before you know it, a significant chunk of time has passed. When you check in, you see the real progress that has happened, rather than constantly asking: is it working? What should I be doing next?

So yes, you want to be systematic and you want to have processes. But first you want to test those processes and get comfortable that they are the right ones for you.

Making it as enjoyable as possible

The final shift, and hopefully the fun one, is making the goal as enjoyable as possible.

If a goal is going to take months or years, it needs to feel at least a bit good along the way. Otherwise, at some point, your brain will start to get tired or start to resist it. In positive psychology, we talk about intrinsic motivation - where the process itself has meaning and enjoyment, not just the outcome.

One example for me is my baked oats. I call them almond croissant baked oats. My whole family loves them. I love making them - it's quite relaxing, a bit like baking to unwind. All my ingredients are to hand because I've been doing it regularly. And during the week, when I've prepped them in advance, I have three or four ready-to-go breakfasts with good protein in them. The process feels good at every stage.

At this point in my life, I want goals that are genuinely fun - where the process is enjoyable. And I believe there is normally a way to play to your unique strengths, your personality type, and your preferences to make it more fun. That will look different for different people.

Using the fitness example: I know a couple of people who love the data. They are analytical, and they really enjoy tracking everything. Me, I can take it or leave it. There is some data I like - I now have a sheet where I can see how I'm progressively overloading every session. But what I love most is the final part of my workout, when I get onto the pull-up machine and see whether I can get to the next level. That is pure playground fun for me.

Where do you find joy in your processes? Where can you make it fun? That will be your sustainability. That's what will allow you to extend your timelines, follow the system, and be less reliant on that external feedback loop - because the process itself is intrinsically rewarding.

A quick recap

So to bring it all together: when you are not at the fun part of a goal, here's what to do.

Extend your timelines. Use more than just your logical brain - tap into intuition, vision, and that more creative side. Have systems, test them, and trust that the success is in following them. And finally, make the process as enjoyable as possible.

Please share this with somebody if you know they are struggling with a goal right now. Let me know what goal you were thinking of as I took you through this. I look forward to connecting with you next time.

Bye-bye.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.