SMART Principle Helps to Set up Your Goal
Author:Charlie,Date:2010-1-27
At the beginning of the year, many people like to make plans and have ideas of goals that they would like to achieve by December 31.
When making plans, however, it’s a good idea to apply the SMART principles found in the workplace. These make the plans more concrete and the anticipated results clearer.
SMART is an acronym which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. This is a useful framework to put around goals, to ensure that the aim is understood, and the progress can be assessed.
Specific Goals
It is tempting to have general goals, such as “lose weight” or “keep the house tidy”. These are admirable, but do not have a specific focus. How much weight is to be lost? How is tidy defined? By thinking about what is actually to be achieved, the goal can be made specific. Only then can its success be understood.
Measurable Goals
This links with making the goal specific. By changing the “lose weight” goal to “lose two pounds per week”, or “lose a total of three stones”, the goal setter knows exactly what they want to achieve.
Other things can be harder to put measures around such as tidiness. In this case, the tasks may be a part of the measure, and items such as “empty the rubbish bins every week” or “vacuum every five days” may be the way to ascertain if you are achieving the goal.
Achievable Goals
There is no harm in creating goals which will be difficult to attain, but it is self-defeating to plan the impossible. Be realistic about the level of resource available; for example don’t set a goal which requires four hours a day, if it would be a struggle to dedicated four hours per week to it. If the goal is not achievable, it will soon fail.
Goals should always be set for tasks which are within your control; “saving five percent of net income” is within your command, “winning the lottery” is not, even if you do buy a ticket every week.
Relevant Goals
How much do you want to achieve the goal? How useful will it be in your life? These are questions to consider, which allow for times when the goal is becoming harder to achieve.
There are things to be done which are interesting, but if they lack relevance to the rest of your life, then they are likely to be abandoned when circumstances become difficult. Broadening horizons is good, but too many flights of fancy are unlikely to succeed.
Time-Bound Goals
All meaningful goals have a deadline. This is the moment that can be looked forward to, if things aren’t going so well. If the deadline is a long way off, it can be a good idea to put interim markers in place. For example, if the goal is to “learn a language”, then the stages can be completion of a class, or finishing a chapter of course book by a certain date.
By applying this framework to your planning, it is easier to measure success and to gain focus. These dramatically increase your chance of achieving all that you plan.
