SMART goals

A SMART goal is a particular type of goal that has been scientifically proven to help you achieve what you want. SMART goals were designed to increase the likelihood of achieving your objectives. Read on to find out how.

Purpose-driven goals

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Everyone has desires, many of which fall outside of our current possibilities. Desires are good for our psychological well-being since they can fuel our motivation and give us hope. Moreover, once we work towards attaining desires, positive emotions usually arise, and as a consequence, we feel better due to the sense of progress. But a desire without a plan is just a wish, and it will stay as such until we take actions that move us closer to them. Goals are planned desires; they are the next step after the wish, and framing goals accurately and efficiently can considerably improve the odds of achieving them.

So, if you have a desire and want to fulfill it, goals are essential. Otherwise, your desire is just a wish.

What are SMART goals?

Psychology and Scientific Management have proven the SMART goals framework presented here as very useful to increase the odds of achieving your goals. Goal setting methodologies aim to answer what, why, when, where, who questions by defining a plan. The more questions the plan answers, the better since the chance of success will be higher. SMART is a framework for setting SMART goals and an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. It is a framework that I have used personally and professionally, which has been helpful to me, especially when delegating tasks. 

Specific means that the goal must be concrete. So vague statements need to be avoided. This criterion answers the question of what needs to be accomplished.

Measurable means that the goal and the progress toward its attainment must be measurable. It must be possible to measure the degree of completion and know precisely when it can be considered as achieved. 

Achievable means that the goal defined must be realistic when time and resources are considered. An easy goal is likely to cause boredom, and an overly aggressive one will cause frustration. We should aim for the Goldilocks zone, which is a goal that is not too easy nor hard, but that represents a challenge that one could overcome with consistent work and effort, making us grow in the process.

Relevant means that the goal must be aligned with the person’s short-term and long-term objectives. This question answers why or the purpose of the objective, which is key to accomplishing the goal since it is the spark that ignites motivation.

Timely means that the goal must have clearly defined start and end dates. Dates will allow one to measure the progress over time to evaluate whether or not the plan is likely to be completed on time and take corrective measures if, at the moment of the forecast, the goal is not likely to be achieved on time.

Examples of SMART goals

First example of SMART goals: personal life goal to improve health

We all value our health, so goals relating to health are ubiquitous. However, they are usually framed vaguely, so suppose that I wanted to lose weight because I might be a little bit overweight. Now let us see how we could improve the chances of achieving such a goal with the SMART framework.

• Specific: lose 10% of my current body weight.
• Measurable: I will measure how much weight I lose each month.
• Achievable: A weight loss of 10% is a reasonable objective for one year and is likely to enhance my health.
• Relevant: This goal is fundamental to me since a healthy body will likely make me happier in the long term.
• Timely: I will complete this goal in one year, starting the 1st of January of 2022, so the 31st of December of 2022 is the completion date.

With this information, we develop a definite goal statement such as “Before the 31st of December of 2022, I will lose 10% of my body weight as measured the 1st of January of 2022, because doing so will improve my health considerably.”

Second example of SMART goals: professional goal example to enhance my writing skills

Suppose that you wanted to enhance your writing skills. We could frame this goal as SMART:

• Specific: Increase one’s writing skill by 20%
• Measurable: Take a standardized writing skill test such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for English, and then add 20% to your score to set the target. To measure your writing skills, ask a professional English teacher to assess your writing based on the chosen key performance indicator (KPI). 
• Achievable: 20% is a reasonable objective given enough time and assuming that you are not already a master in the skill.
• Relevant (or realistic): writing skills are essential in almost any career, and your personal life is likely to benefit too from learning better communication skills.
• Timely (or time bounded): This objective will start on the 1st of January 2022 by taking a writing skill test and end on the 30th of June 2022. So a period of six months is set for the goal.

So with this information, one can develop a SMART goal statement such as “I will increase my writing skill by 20% as measured by the CEFR by the 30th of June of 2022, so I will start working on this goal on the 1st of January 2022 by taking the first test”.

Third example of SMART goals: professional goal to post more about career skills

Think about blogging and career advancement; a great way to build a powerful personal brand is to write valuable articles in your field and get traffic to them. So, for example, let’s translate the goal of building a powerful personal brand into a SMART goal.

• Specific: publish one post per week of at least six hundred words about a topic in my field and share it with the relevant field networks.
•  Measurable: it is easy to measure whether I posted each post for the next fifty-two weeks. 
•  Achievable: One post per week is doable given my life circumstances; it’s not too difficult, but not too easy considering my full-time job.
•  Relevant (or realistic): a powerful personal brand in my field could give me (or anyone) more opportunities for career development.
•  Timely (or time-bound): The next 52 weeks (a year) will be on January 1st, 2022.

Given the statements above, we can create a powerful SMART goal statement such as “I will publish one post of at least six hundred words about a particular topic on my work field per week for fifty-two weeks starting on January 1st, 2022.”

More benefits of SMART goals

Here are some side benefits of goals that are SMART:

• If you set SMART goals and fail to achieve them, you will be able to assess when you deviated from your course toward your goal, which can support you in diagnosing your missed goals to create action plans to learn from mistakes and avoid repeating them.
•  In learning how to write SMART goals, you will gain practice in breaking down problems and objectives into smaller tasks, which will allow you to apply the divide-and-conquer strategy, that is, dividing a large objective into smaller achievable ones that, once completed, sum up to the goal you desired
•  To set a SMART goal, you will need to strategize about potential plans to reach your goal and how much effort it will take to achieve it so that you will start materializing the steps toward your goal and, thus, increase the likelihood of achieving it.

Summary

Goal setting is a critical skill in life that can improve your well-being by helping you achieve your goals and grow in the process. You can develop this skill, and the SMART goals framework can help you achieve those goals by providing you with a proven methodology to define goals. Good luck, and be relentless and SMART when pursuing your desires! 😉

References

Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.

Wiese, B.S. (2007). Successful pursuit of personal goals and subjective well-being. In B.R. Little, K. Salmela-Aro, & S.D. Phillips (Eds.), Personal Project Pursuit: Goals, Action and Human Flourishing (pp. 301-328). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

The science of success: what researches know that you should know