What is a Smart Goal?
How many times have you heard someone say how much they wish they could do something? I remember growing up as a child and hearing my mom say all the time, “I really want to lose weight.” Every new year she would say she would lose X amount of weight and start exercising a certain amount of time a day. She wouldn’t even make it halfway through the month before she went back to her old habits.
Nothing against my mother, but I always wondered what made all these other weight loss success stories so drastically different from hers. Now, obviously, this article isn’t inherently about losing weight. But there is a certain power associated with goal setting that relates to all aspects of life.
There is no such thing as good excuses. If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you will find an excuse. I believe it was just never a priority for her. It was never a GOAL.
There is a science behind creating a quality goal and it is called a SMART goal. It is an easy to remember acronym to help guide you in creating your goals. S is all about getting specific about each goal you set. M is determining how you will measure the goals you set. The letters A and R help you with questions to determine how attainable and relevant your goals are. And lastly, it is important to consider the amount of time needed.
Write Down the Specifics
What exactly do you want to achieve? The more specific your description, the bigger the chance you’ll get exactly that. SMART goal setting clarifies the difference between I want to be a millionaire and I want to make $50,000 a month for the next ten years by creating a new software product.
Questions you may ask yourself when setting your goals and objectives are:
What exactly do I want to achieve?
Where?
How?
When?
With whom?
What are the conditions and limitations?
Why exactly do I want to reach this goal?
What are possible alternative ways of achieving the same?
How Will You Measure Your Goals?
Measurable goals mean that you identify exactly what it is you will see, hear and feel when you reach your goal. It means breaking your goal down into measurable elements. You’ll need concrete evidence. Being happier is not evidence; not smoking anymore because you adhere to a healthy lifestyle where you eat vegetables twice a day and sweets only once a week, is.
Measurable goals can go a long way in refining what exactly it is that you want, too. Defining the physical manifestations of your goal or objective makes it clearer, and easier to reach.
Is Your Goal Attainable?
Is your goal attainable? That means investigating whether the goal really is acceptable to you. You weigh the effort, time, and other costs your goal will take against the profits and the other obligations and priorities you have in life.
If you don’t have the time, money, or talent to reach a certain goal you’ll certainly fail and be miserable. That doesn’t mean that you can’t take something that seems impossible and make it happen by planning smartly and going for it!
There’s nothing wrong with shooting for the moon. If you aim to increase your income by 10x, and you only increased it by 6x, it is still a great result. If you shoot for the moon, even if you fall short you will land among the stars.
How Relevant is Your Goal to You?
Is reaching your goal relevant to you? Do you actually want to run a multinational corporation, be famous, have three children, and a busy job? You decide for yourself whether you have the personality for it, or your team has the bandwidth.
If you’re lacking certain skills, you can plan to attend training. If you lack certain resources, you can look for ways of getting them.
The main questions to consider:
Why do you want to reach this goal?
What is the objective behind the goal, and will this goal really achieve that?
You could think that having a bigger team will make it perform better, but will it really?
Build Deadlines Into Your Goals
Time is money! Make a tentative plan for everything you do. Everybody knows that deadlines are what makes most people switch to action. So install deadlines, for yourself and your team, and go after them. Keep the timeline realistic and flexible, that way you can keep morale high. Being too stringent on the timely aspect of your goal setting can have the perverse effect of making the learning path of achieving your goals and objectives into a hellish race against time – which is most likely not how you want to achieve anything.