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The July Edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology hosts an article by Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach on goals and aspirations. Through five studies they set to explore how monitoring one's remaining vs. completed actions influences the motivation of a subject to move up levels within a goal ladder.

The first of the five studies tested eigthy-six undergraduate students with a two between-subjects design. The first group was asked how many years they've been enrolled in college and were asked to take a moment to think about what they had achieved so far and write it down. The second group was asked to report how many years they had left in college and were asked to think about what was left for them to achieve in school. The study also asked for their eagerness to graduate and begin their carreer (this created the authors' measure of degree of aspiration).

Consistent with their other four studies, the authors found that students that had been asked to focus on remaining actions had a greater level of aspiration than those that had focused on completed actions. In other words, if you sit to think what sales you have left to achieve your target you are likely to generate in yourself an aspiration for further, greater sales achievements. It also means that when you want to help an employee think of what her next career step might be, it is better if you first spend a few minutes reviewing with her what else she could achieve in her current level (vs. what she has already achieved).

The studies delivered a second insight: students that focused on completed actions expressed greater satisfaction with their current academic life than students that focused on remaining actions. Ambition and satisfaction, it seems, don't like to keep each others' company for long.