SMART Goals: Making Goals You Can Achieve

New Year’s resolutions: you might love them, you might hate them, but chances are you have an idea of things you want to achieve in the new year anyway. Some of these goals you may stay focused on the entire year, while other goals may fall by the wayside within the first couple of weeks of January. If you find yourself wanting to make New Year’s resolutions that stick, consider giving SMART goals a try. This method, taught to me by my mom at a young age, helps you write goals that are doable and effective, ones that you are more likely to stick with and achieve. S.M.A.R.T. = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound. Let’s break it down.

Specific

“Go to the gym more.” Ahh, the wildly general goal that is likely to peter out by February. Instead, let’s make this goal more specific. For example, “I want to go to the gym three times a week, with two days of lifting and one day of cardio.” The more specific the goal, the easier it is to follow, to stick to, and to achieve. It also acts as a deterrent for procrastination. If it’s Tuesday and you know you have to go to the gym three times this week, but you have plans on Friday and Saturday, you are going to get up and get your butt to the gym so you can keep up on that goal. Unspecific goals pave the way for procrastination and excuses.

Measurable

An important part of achieving your goals is knowing where the finish line is. Making your goals measurable not only helps you identify if you’re making progress, but also if you have met the goal. Let’s use the goal of eating a healthier diet as an example. Making this more measurable could mean rewriting it: “I want to eat three servings of fruit and two servings of vegetables each day.” This can help you determine your daily progress and adjust day to day as needed. You may find that your go-to grocery list isn’t making this goal very easy for you, so the following week, you can adjust your grocery list to include more fruits or vegetables. Measurable goals allow us to measure our progress in a way that allows for adjustments to ensure our accomplishment.

Achievable

Making your goals achievable is vital to succeeding in them. (Stating the obvious here.) When we make goals that are too far out of our reach, we are more likely to give up on them quickly, throw the towel in, and decide to try again next year. I’d love to say, “shoot for the stars,” but unless you are an astronaut with a space trip on the calendar, that’s probably not very achievable. So instead, shoot for the top step of whatever staircase you are standing on, make a goal that you can achieve. When we set achievable goals, we get to experience a sense of accomplishment. This acts as a motivator, a drive to continue our efforts to achieve more goals. Achievable will mean something different to everyone. For example, for some, reading 50 books in a year may be simple, easy, and achievable. However, if you haven’t finished a book in the past decade, this might not be super achievable for you. Take your current habits and set a goal just a step or a couple of steps beyond them. When you consider your baseline, you set more achievable goals.

Realistic

This step may seem like a repeat of the last; achievable and realistic are very similar in nature. However, reinforcing this idea is essential to writing goals you can meet. Setting realistic goals for you and your current situation is the best way to ensure you stick with them. For example, it may not be super realistic for me to try and pay off all of my student loans in the next year, although I wish it were. Instead, I will take into consideration my current financial situation, find a budget that works for me, and make a goal to stick to that budget and, with an additional goal to pay extra when I can. As much as we’d like to set a high goal and believe the stars will align for us to meet it, achievable goals tend to be a little more realistic. Don’t get discouraged; meeting small goal after small goal allows you to build up the progress needed to achieve a more grandiose goal. Once you have a habit of meeting these smaller goals, setting bigger goals will start to be more realistic for you. It’s all about building up to that point.

Time-Bound

Some goals are naturally more time-bound than others; however, adjusting whatever goals you have to make them time-bound can help create a sense of urgency that keeps you stuck to your goal. It can also create a sense of structure or a plan for your goal. If someone has a goal to backpack up a mountain, they will probably need to be prepared to achieve that goal in the summer, as when winter comes, the mountain may not be hikeable.  If that’s the case, they’d be silly to wait until July to do some conditioning or buy the appropriate equipment. We can even apply this concept to one of our previous examples. If you want to read 50 books in a year, maybe try to have 20 of those books under your belt by June. Making your goals time-bound gives you a deadline and a concrete plan to achieve them.

While writing SMART goals can give you a realistic plan to achieve your goals, you are still human, and life will still happen. You may get injured and need to take time off from the gym, or you may be hit with unexpected financial responsibility and not be able to take the trip you planned. If something gets in the way of your goal temporarily, that’s okay; get back to it when you can. If something gets in the way of your goal permanently, that’s okay too; make a new goal that is achievable and realistic for you. Life will not always go to plan; your ability to adjust to life’s challenges and difficulties is a valuable accomplishment that should not be overlooked. So, get out there, make some goals, do your best, and don’t beat yourself up if they don’t pan out, just find ways to adjust them so they work for you.