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If you’re like me, you’re driven to succeed and want every tool available to help you achieve success in your personal and professional life. One of those tools that will help you achieve your dreams is setting smart goals.
In order to achieve your dreams, you first need to understand what it takes to get there. What are the steps or tasks along the way that will lead you to your ultimate goal?
Table of Contents
What is a Goal?
A goal is, according to Merriam Webster, “the end toward which effort is directed”. What this means is the goal is some end result you want to achieve. For me with this blog, my goal is to help as many people as possible with my professional and financial blog posts. For others it could be as simple as saving an additional $50 each month or as complex as becoming the next CEO of Apple.
Goals can be broken into different categories. From a time standpoint, goals can be short-term and long-term goals. Goals can be personal or professional. You can even dig down deeper and have subcategories like personal finance or personal achievement.
People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.
– Earl Nightingale
What is a Long-Term Goal?
A long-term goal is one that you hope to ultimately accomplish and typically takes more than 12 months to reach (as a rule of thumb). Long-term goals require a good bit of thought and planning. To stay on track, they typically require short-term goals along the way.
Examples of Long-Term Goals
- Create a Small Business
- Save for Retirement
- Become CEO of a company
- Become President of the US
What is a Short-Term Goal?
A short-term goal is one you plan for in the near future. Near future could be day, week, month, or months. Short-term goals are typically goals you can complete in less than 12 months. Short term goals can be standalone goals (meet an immediate need) or they could be part of your plan to achieve your long-term goals.
Examples of Short-Term Goals
- Complete a Semester of College
- Contribute $3,000 to a Roth IRA for 2019
- Finish Reading a Book
- Complete your monthly budget
– Karen Salmansohn
Each day, you can awake and focus on small, easy goals you can accomplish in the short term – goals that, over time, will lead you to your long-term goal
Professional Goals
Professional goals are goals related to your job or career.
They could be goals related to the performance of your job duties and professional growth (education, certifications, etc.).
If you’re a manager over a retail office, an example could be something like increase revenue by 5% by year’s end. If you’re an engineer over capital projects, an example could be to complete a particular capital project on schedule and under budget.
Professional goals could be goals related to your overall career. An example could be become a professional engineer within 4 years after graduation or become CEO of a company prior to age 50.
Personal Goals
Personal goals are those that you set related to your life in general. They could be related to your health, your income, your faith, your education, your family, etc.
Some examples include losing 5 pounds within the next 2 months or increasing your income by $10,000 by year’s end.
What is a Smart Goal?
S.m.a.r.t. in smart goal is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Specific goals are ones that are clear.
Measurable goals are goals that can be measured.
Achievable goals are ones that are challenging, but not too challenging and can be accomplished in the given time.
Relevant goals are ones that pertain to the ultimate goals of the individual or business.
Time-bound means that a goal has a definite amount of time or a definite end date.
A smart goal is one that meets all of these criteria. In order to ensure your goal is smart, you should think of each letter as a checklist or filter.
When you have a goal, ask yourself is it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The easiest way to do this is just check each criteria, one at a time. By the time you get to the end you should have a smart goal.
How to Set Smart Goals
To set a smart goal, you first need to think about the end in mind. What is your ultimate goal?
For now, let’s say it’s to earn enough from your side business to replace your full time job. This is obviously a lofty goal, so let’s think about what we could do within the next year to advance our goals. How about make a set amount of money per month from your business. This is a good start. Now let’s make it smart.
Let’s start with specific. Is this goal specific enough? A better example might be, make $50 per month from your side business.
Let’s try measurable next. Is this measurable? It is, so let’s move on to the next one.
Is it achievable? I think the answer here is, it depends. If it’s, make $50 per month right away, then that might not be realistic. If it’s, make $50 per month by the end of the year, then that might be too easy. For this example, let’s make $50 per month from your side business within six months. We’ll assume this is both challenging and achievable.
Is it relevant? Since we started with the end in mind, it is.
Is it timebound? It is because it must be completed within six months.
There you go, that’s all it takes to set a smart goal. Once you’ve done this enough, creating goals that are smart will be second nature.
Examples of Smart Goals
- Sales – grow sales by 20% by end of 2nd quarter 2019
- Procurement – complete RFP bid documents, send out to bid, and award a contractor by July 2019
- Human Resources – complete all corporate benefit updates by October 2019
- IT – update 50% of computers to Windows 10 by end of 3rd quarter 2019
- Personal – Save $100,000 by the age 34.
- Blogging – Start a WordPress Blog with Bluehost in the next two weeks
Why is Goal Setting Important?
Goal setting is important because we are bombarded by hundreds or thousands of different thoughts, ideas, commands, etc. each day, every day.
Without goals, you don’t know where you’re going, so you have no control over where your personal and professional lives are headed. It’s like captaining a ship without a compass. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up going in circles, lost out at sea.
Goals focus our minds and intentions and allow us to work towards something. Goals give us motivation because we know why we’re doing something and how it’s helping us achieve our dreams.
Achieve Your Dreams by Setting Smart Goals
Once you’ve identified your ultimate ambitions either personally and professionally, and made long-term and short-term smart goals, you’ll need to execute and track each goal routinely to make sure you stay on track.
This means you’ll need to spend time each week (could be day, month, and/or year depending on the goals and time frame) to write down the actions necessary to move your goal forward and take action. You’ll also want to track what actions you were able to complete in the previous week.
Prioritize Your Goals
There is only so much time in each day for your goals and, inevitably, there will be a point in your life where you don’t have the time to focus on them all at the same time. When this happens, think about what is most important to you and important to achieving your ultimate goals.
Create a list that identifies the most important goals and lists them from most important to least important. When prioritizing time and energy for your goals, make sure to start with the most important goals and work your way down the list.
Make Your Actions and Goals Visible
Write them down and put them in a conspicuous place, so that you’ll see them at least once a day. The more top-of-mind they are, the better.
Schedule Time for Your Goal Tracking
Schedule a block of time on your calendar each week to ensure you have the necessary time (30 minutes; hour) to form a proper assessment. The more you do this, the easier it will become as you’ll develop a habit of performing these assessments.
Practice Accountability in All Aspects of Your Life
When you go to assess your progress for the week, be honest with yourself. Were there things you could have done to move your goals forward, but didn’t? What kept you from performing those actions? The more you push yourself forward the faster and more likely you’ll reach your goals.
Track Your Progress Along the Way
Keep a log of the work you’ve accomplished and the results of those actions. Revisit that log routinely to ensure the actions you’re taking are having the desired end result. If they aren’t, spend time to identify why they’re not, experiment with new actions, and continue tracking until you learn what it takes to move you closer towards your goals.
Update Your Actions as Necessary
If actions are no longer necessary, remove them from the list. Don’t quit something or remove a goal just because you’re afraid or discouraged. However, if a goal is no longer relevant or needs to be changed to better match up with your ultimate ambitions, change or remove them.
Conclusion
To achieve your goals in life (whether personal or professional), you need to identify what those goals are (it’s harder than you think), what smaller goals or actions will lead you there, make them smart goals, and track them until you reach them. Goals give us a focus that we wouldn’t otherwise have and allow us to accomplish great things that we never imagined possible. If you are serious about getting ahead in your personal or professional life, take action and start making smart goals today.
Book Recommendations For Goals Setting and Achieving Your Goals
I just finished reading The 4 Disciplines of Execution and I highly recommend it. It focuses primarily on leading indicators (actions that influence the results) and goal setting/tracking as a means of influencing your long term goals and lag indicators (results). At work, I’m primarily a project manager and have many projects I’m currently working on. I feel like this gave me some takeaways that I could implement immediately in my professional career.
I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People years ago and implemented the lessons immediately in my personal and professional life. Although a little dated, the lessons themselves are powerful. I recommend this book because not only has it helped me, I’ve seen it help others make positive change in their lives.
Do you use smart goals? What have they helped you achieve?