Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time bound. What do those words have in common? SMART is an acronym for goal setting and specifically means Specific, Measurable, Attainable Realistic and Time bound. SMART goals are better than whimsical goals because you can gain greater control, meaning and motivation from them. A goal without measure is not really a clever goal, it’s more like a wish or fantasy.
So one of the biggest reasons people don’t accomplish goals is because they’re not SMART goals.
Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time Bound
Without a specific target for a goal, your goal is more of a whim or fantasy. How will you know you have reached your target if you don’t specify one? An example might be “I want more money”. But how much more – exactly? Or, “I want to lose weight”. By specifying your target you are making a dream/fantasy into a very specific purpose. It gives your goal weight and specificity.
A more specific target is to say “I want to earn an extra $500 a month”, for example. Or “I want to lose half a stone in weight”. These are specific goals which can be measured. You’ll know when you attain them by checking your income or your weight – based on your current income or weight! But this is still pretty vague as a goal. Just by wanting something doesn’t mean you will attain it. To get even more specific you could say I want to earn an extra $500 a month from the internet, for example. Or, I want to drop my weight down to 12 stone, for example.
Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time Bound: Measurable
The second letter of the SMART acronym means measurable. This is pretty important because many goals are simply wishes without a connection to the real world. To make a wish real you need to pin it down with real world measures. With the examples above you could measure your income before and after you have accomplished your goal.
If you’re currently earning $100 a month from the internet and you want to earn $500, that’s something you can measure. But saying “I want to earn more money” isn’t measurable because you will keep shifting your goals because there’s always “more”! How can you know when you have achieved it?!
You may never even notice when you achieve a shift in income or a loss of weight with a vague goal such as “I want to lose weight” or “I’d like more money”.
Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time Bound: Attainable
The third letter in the SMART goal acronym is attainable. This is pretty important too because without an attainable goal it’s likely to fall into the same category as wishes and fantasies! If you don’t really believe you goal is attainable, you’re going to falter somewhere on the path to achieving it. As
Henry Ford once said: “whether a man believes he can achieve something or not, he is right”! If you set a goal, but don’t believe it’s possible, how motivated do you think you’ll be to get started?! Pretty unmotivated I’d say. Without an attainable goal, you’re likely to give up pretty quickly and carry on as before.
While a lofty goal can be motivational, it’s also likely you’ll give up if you don’t really believe in it. Your goal needs to motivate you and be lofty enough to get your excitement levels up, but not too big that you won’t actually make a move towards it! This brings us to the next letter of the SMART goals acronym: realistic.
Realistic
The balance between an achievable goal and a realistic goal is a fine one. How will you know what is achievable unless you set a really big goal and pursue it? But is your really big goal realistic? If a super big goal intimidates you and motivates you, it’s probably a good one. But if it puts you off and demoralises you, you should probably pick something else.
Striking the balance between realistic and achievable is personal to you. Still, a goal should be big enough to inspire you into action, but realistic enough that you believe it is possible, that way you can pursue it with a positive mental attitude. A big goal you don’t believe in is simply a wish, dream or fantasy.
Time Bound
Without a date on your goal, it’s still a dream. A date on a goal gives it an expediency without which you will lose momentum and drive. Using the previous example of losing half a stone in weight, you could set a target to get to your ideal weight in 3 months, for example. Set the date and your ideal weight for your goal and you have a time frame with which to bring a goal into reality.
If there’s no time frame on a goal, it becomes something you “would like to happen one day”! When you take this approach to goal setting, you let yourself completely off the hook and there’s no accountability because you will settle for “whenever” as your time of arrival.
I highly recommend Stuart Lichtman’s book which discusses goal setting in great detail using cybernetic transposition and Stuarts “three step” process. You can access his book by clicking on the image below.
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