Moving the Goalposts
Changing success criteria whenever the prior criteria are met.
"We hit the number. Now there's a new number."
What is Moving the Goalposts? Changing success criteria whenever the prior criteria are met. Strategy where 'winning' is permanently one quarter away.
Targets quietly redefined after every quarter.
Strategy where 'winning' is permanently one quarter away.
Spot the goalpost move.
Skeptic: 'You said AI couldn't pass the bar.' Defender: ''
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The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Moving the Goalposts can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Moving the Goalposts most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Moving the Goalposts?
- If we removed every payoff for Moving the Goalposts, what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Moving the Goalposts persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of moving the goalposts.
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Moving the Goalposts through 2 lenses
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Moving the Goalposts?
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Which best describes Moving the Goalposts?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
When you encounter Moving the Goalposts, your prefrontal cortex has to do extra work to override the automatic response — and that override budget is finite.
Executive control, planning, impulse override, working memory, System 2. First thing to go offline under stress, fatigue, or low blood sugar. Why your 4pm decisions are worse than your 9am ones.
See Prefrontal in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
Assuming the conclusion in the premise.
The conclusion is hidden inside the premise.
What's true of the parts is assumed true of the whole.
Because there's no sharp line, no distinction exists.
Quietly redefining a term mid-argument.
What's true of the whole is assumed true of the parts.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
Accurately modeling what another person is thinking and feeling — without merging with it.
Endless choice and swipe loops reduce commitment and increase dissatisfaction.
We measure ourselves against peers, not against our past selves.
Any small cost — clicks, forms, thought — that shifts behavior.
Accumulated workarounds for misaligned incentives that compound like technical debt.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
20% of your activity produces 80% of the result. Find it. Cut the rest.
Egocentric, power-driven, immediate-gratification value system. The will to dominate.
Unwritten rules that govern behavior in a group.
Strong in-group loyalty paired with out-group skepticism.
Augmentation strategy vs. substitution strategy.
Update beliefs in proportion to the strength of new evidence.