
SMART Goal Setting
How are you doing with keeping all those New Year’s resolutions you set at the beginning of the year? If you want to accomplish those resolutions you’ve got to understand SMART Goal Setting.
If you are like many of us, you may have forgotten all about them! It’s only natural, and we’re only human.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ”
~ Lawrence J. Peter
In this article, I’m going to share some personal success strategies to help make sure that you stay on track with your personal growth plan.
I’m also sharing this key success factor because it’s a vital happiness enhancing strategy that you can take part in. People who are happy engage in the practice of striving toward meaningful goals in their lives.
What is this strategy? Reviewing and Refining Your Goals!
I want to share the specifics of SMART goal setting, along with a two-step process for keeping you on track with your progress toward those goals.
If you’ll engage in these exercises, you’ll keep your ship on course.
“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”
~ J.C. Penney
Review
Ships at sea can easily wander off course. Winds, currents, and even the every day distractions of taking care of business on the ship can cause the ship captain to lose sight of the main destination. In the same way, unless we are regularly reviewing our goals, we can easily lose sight of our goals and end up working on insignificant tasks, or seemingly urgent tasks that come up, but that don’t lead to our specific goals.
Take time daily, monthly, and each quarter, to review your mission, values, and purpose.
If you need some help figuring out your mission and purpose, I’ve written a couple of articles just for you, titled Have a Personal Mission You Can Be Proud Of!, and A Simple Formula: Find Your Mission Through Your Passion.
If you need some help clarifying your values, read my article What Everyone Ought To Know About True North, for some practical ways that you can set goals in keeping with your most important personal values.
As part of your review, think about the different areas of your life. Are you in the midst of achieving a balance in your success, or are you drifting off course in any areas of your life. You may want to consider using this life wheel worksheet from Mind Tools to help check what areas of your life you want to set extra goals in so that you will be happy with your balance at the end of this year.
Refine
Now that you have engaged in some journaling and reflection about where you now stand in terms of your progress toward your goals, you may need to further refine your goals. This is where SMART goal setting comes in. Here are the five criteria that make goals truly effective.
Specific
Is your goal specific enough? Think about WHAT you are going to do, and WHY you are going to do it. Both questions are vital to successfully meet your goals. Be careful to look for hidden goals run counter to achieving your important goal.
For example, one of my goals is: Take quiet time daily, practicing deep breathing and prayer/meditation 3x per day.
On the other hand, one of my unwritten rules has been: I will watch my favorite TV show once a day to relax and de-stress. I realized, upon reflection, that a) it’s unrealistic to think that I am going to practice this quiet time 3x per day. On the other hand, I realized that my main focus this year is Steve’s coach, which means that if I don’t take care of myself through prayer and meditation, I will not have as much spiritual/mental/emotional vitality to carry out what I need to. So, when I realize that the WHAT is a bit too much, and that my WHY was not clear enough, I have now refined my goal as follows:
Take quiet time daily, practicing deep breathing and prayer/meditation 1x per day, before watching any Television.
Now that I am now more clear on the WHAT and the WHY, I believe I will be more successful in achieving this outcome.
Measurable
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
~ Vincent Van Gogh
If you have a hard time measuring the specific milestones or next actions needed to achieve your goal, it’s unlikely you’re going to accomplish that goal. I’m very grateful to Sterling and Jay from Internet Business Mastery for a couple of concepts in this regard.
First, you can use their success strategy of backward planning to make your goal more measurable.
For example, another one of my goals is as follows: I will run one full marathon, raising money for a worthy cause.
Utilizing the backward planning method, I picture myself finishing the race. Then I ask myself, what happened just before that? Well, I had all the planning down for parking and for the racing equipment I would need in order to successfully run the race. I had successfully raised the $500 dollars I needed to raise for my charity. I had run more than 26.2 miles prior to starting the race. I had trained on hills to strengthen my legs and my mental mindset. These steps all become sub-activities I can then schedule into my calendar.
Attainable and Realistic
These two words actually seem to go together in my mind. If it’s not realistic, is it going to be attainable? I think not! Some of us are guilty of thinking too small. On the other hand, we can think so big that we actually don’t believe we will carry it out it on a sub-conscious level. For example, “I will earn $5 million dollars” is a big goal, but it lacks the specific WHAT, WHY, and action steps for attaining it. And most likely, unless you are going to play the lottery (I don’t encourage it :), and win, you won’t carry out that goal in one year.
On the other hand, if you are careful to follow the steps listed above, you will have a much more attainable and realistic goals. You want goals that will stretch you, but that are realistic and attainable.
Timely
This criteria goes hand in hand with setting specific and measurable goals. If you engage in the backward planning activity that I described above, you will have a set of actions for your goals. I urge you to set a date for accomplishing each one of those goals. The date may change, but it will motivate you to take action regularly to carry out your goal.
By writing down this date next to your goal, you can then set timelines for the activities that need to lead up to meeting your goal. Make sure that you are working on one activity every day to help you get closer to your end goal.
Once again, I am going to share a great idea from Sterling and Jay from Internet Business Mastery. Utilize Google Calendar or some other type of online calendar to schedule the different activities that you need to carry out for each of your goals. Set that calendar as your browser default. This is an invaluable strategy! You can also color code your different tasks to correlate with your different goals.
In order to keep this from getting too complicated, you may want to focus on one or two goals at a time. The encouraging part about this method is that you will daily have a reminder of the most important activities to focus on for the day. And you’ll know that your ship is staying on course despite all the cross currents and winds of distraction and hassles of every day living.
Here are Some Helpful Motivational Books for Your Goal Setting Journey:
Inspiration
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel. Stories are inspirational. This story will inspire you as you embark or continue on your goal setting journey.
Life Mission and Purpose
How to Find Your Mission in Life, written by Richard N. Bolles, one of my favorite authors, is a small and inspiring book to help you find your true life mission. He is also the author What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
, another personal favorite of mine.
The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life, written by Laurie Beth Jones, is one of my all-time favorites on this subject as well.
Goal Setting Workbooks:
Make Success Measurable!: A Mindbook-Workbook for Setting Goals and Taking Action, by Douglas Kay Smith.
Goal Setting Forms : Tools to Help You Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for Your Goals!, by Gary Ryan Blair
photo credit: elbphoto
Brandeis University M.S. in Project and Program Management Online
Excellent advice Steve. I’m a HUGE believer in the value of goal setting and I would be lost without my lists! My problem is it’s easy for me to get distracted with new ideas and in the process my enthusiasm will carry me far, far away from what I should be doing. So my lists help to keep me grounded and focused. I’ve also learned to quickly write down a new idea so I can let it go for the moment and then go back to it when I’ve finished what I’m doing. Thanks for the inspiration!
marquita herald recently posted…Stepping Stones to Greater Resilience – FREE till April 26!
I’m not an affiliate for Simpleology, even though you may see some of their Google Ads on this site. But one of the things I love best is their Google Chrome add on. Whenever I get an idea or if I see a page that I think I should read while on the internet, I click the Simpleology icon on my browser and it saves it as a future To Do item. In the same way, I’m able to stay focused without feeling like I’m missing out on something.
What messes me up is that I like starting things and I have boundless capacity for new ideas. And when I start things (work on Goal #1) it is subject to Project Creep. Last November I had this idea that could have just been a blog post. I made a video (with puppets no less). The video led me to create a solution that was in the form of a simple diagram. Then I thought I should explain the diagram in a short report. Then I thought it could have a Reference Manual to go with it. I am now on page 163 of writing that manual. I should let things go like Marquita said. Then again, I have about 5 major unfinished projects. Those are all good ideas but the first is unfinished for two years now!
Maybe this honesty in public will help keep me focused!
Richard Goutal recently posted…Build Your Online Business with Free Tools?
Richard, 163 pages! Wow! It sounds like you were focused enough to write that manual! I think we all go through phases in our entrepreneurial journeys where we need to have a lot of ideas. Over time, we learn the power of focus and learn to work on One thing. I’m still learning this. Maybe the manual should be your main project at this point? It certainly sounds like you have put the most time and energy into it. Thanks for your honesty and enthusiasm!
Hi Steve,
As a coach I really believe in goal setting for my goals and the goals of others, one aspect that I alway s add is the letter E that stands for econolgical. Having a goal in smart way , well formed and easy to remember, that gives us enthusiasm is very important, it is also important to check the ecology of this goal that is what are we afraid we might lose in obtaining it and how would our ” system” react to it, that is the people around us or our company or even our body once the goal is achieved.
My formula is Smarte;)
Thanks for this sharing and great post.
That’s a great point, Patricia! There’s a great goal setting worksheet I found over at Effective Time Management Strategies that encourages the writer to start off with the value that the goal represents. I think it’s a great way to make sure that our goal is ecological.
Goals are really important and the strategies which you have mentioned in this post to help us achieve our goals are awesome. Thanks for the share.
Regards,
Brian
Brian Lagoni recently posted…The Secrets To intensify States in Hypnosis
Brian, I’m going to have to search out your blog for the power of hypnotic language as a means for helping our subconscious assist us in reaching our goals. Do you have any suggestions off the top of your head? Or could you design a blog post on that in the future? You could even feature it as a blog post on this blog. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Hi Stephen,
Goals are just useless if you don’t have a good goal setting strategy. Applying the SMART criteria in setting up your goals needs some major focus and analysis between what you really need and what you really want. Goal setting can be very easy if you are not confused of what to include in the list.
Thanks Stephen for tackling this goal setting topic. Such a helpful read for those having some problems in foreseeing their future plans.
Regards,
Blake
I am a strong believer in goal setting and so I have done a lot of R and D on it. These points exactly fit goal setting and are right when it comes to setting goals. What I believe is to set goals everyday or to set one goal for a month and then everyday write down in your diary that what you did that took you towards your goal and what you did that took you away from it. This is great for measuring your steps 🙂
tammy@wheatgrass juicer recently posted…The Future Of Wheatgrass Juicing
Stephen, I love this post. And I love the idea behind SMART goal setting! And I love you listed The Alchemist! Such a powerful book! Have a great week, my friend!
Bryan Thompson recently posted…It’s Time to Thank the People Who Made Your Moments Unforgettable
Bryan, thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your kudos for the Alchemist 🙂
What’s good in setting a goal is that you know what and where to start. Not just doing something you don’t even know where you’re going.. Thank you for the recalling to me “SMART” 🙂
Stevie Smith recently posted…What Men Really Want From Women
Great article Stephen!
Thanks, Kevin!