What is a SMART goal?

As the school year begins, you, a spouse or partner attending college, or your child or teen, may begin hearing a lot about setting goals, particularly SMART goals. This method of setting goals is both a description of the type of goal people are encouraged to set and an acronym for the criteria used to create and evaluate the goals before launching into the work needed to achieve them.

Specific: Vague goals are doomed to fail because they give too much to aim for and not enough at the same time. Imagine that you want to learn a language. Nobody knows an entire language. You don’t know the whole language in your native language. There’s no way you could meet a goal of learning the entire Italian language or the entire Spanish or French language. But “learn Italian” could also mean learning any Italian, leading you to think I’m “done” as soon as you can say anything. And well, that’s not really speaking Italian. Instead, choose a language level, with a specific number of words and conversational skills, and set that as your

Measurable: Goals you can’t measure share a similar fate to goals that are not specific enough. If there is no way to measure your goal, how will you ever know if you’ve achieved it?

Some people hear “measurable,” and immediately think this means the goal has to be about physical attributes such as weight gain or loss, body measurements, or the amount of time you can run or the amount of weight you can lift. While all of these can indeed be measurable goals, goals from other areas of life can also be measured, even if you have to invent your own measuring system.

For example, suppose you struggle with depression, and your goal is to improve that part of your mental health. First, get specific. Improve it how? Do you want to find the right therapist for you? Are there certain symptoms that are having a noticeable negative impact on your life, that you want to alleviate?

Once you answer that question, you can decide how to measure your progress. Of course, the goal of finding a therapist is obviously measurable. You measure success on that by whether or not you have made your first appointment and committed to your therapy plan. But what about the symptoms? How do you measure “getting better?” There isn’t a gauge for that. You can’t measure “feeling more optimistic” with a test the way you can tell how your asthma is doing with a peak flow meter or get a reading of your blood sugar to monitor diabetes or your blood pressure to monitor hypertension. But maybe you can start a journal, and make it your goal to have a specific, measurable number of days in a month where you give the day a letter grade above a B, or a rating above a 5.

Achievable: An achievable goal is a realistic goal. It’s something that can be achieved within the bounds of reality, and with the use of your own strengths, with acknowledgment of your weaknesses. Every human being has weaknesses. Nobody is perfect. You want accept them, and find ways to work with and around them when you need to, not dwell on them until they become either excuses or ways to beat yourself up. And always pay more attention to your strengths, and focus on how those strengths can help you overcome your weaknesses.

Suppose you have problems staying organized, but you love to start new projects. Starting new projects is a strength. Many people have trouble getting started on things. You can use that love of starting new projects to turn “creating an organization system” into a project for yourself. Creating this organization system may be your goal, or it can be something in service of a goal, such as finding a new job, redecorating the house, or learning a new art form.

Relevant: Relevant goals are those that mean something to you personally. This does not mean they can’t be about other people. The best goals often are. But it does mean that it has to mean something to you personally. It has to be important to you.

An example of this might be a goal to be of service in the place where you worship. If you practice your spirituality in a place with other people, this goal is of course going to be about others. Maybe your goal is to join at least one group your church offers and participate in no fewer than five service projects with that group within the year. That goal will of course be about other people. It will be about the other people at church, and about the people who you help with your service. But because this will be an expression of your faith, this goal will be important to you, it will be relevant to your life. You are therefore more likely to meet that goal.

Think of how different your focus, your approach, would be if you attempted to set that same goal at a place of worship or other spiritual practice you did not believe in. For example, if you went to that church just because your relatives all go there, and you’ve been tagging along. You would be much less likely to meet that goal, because it would not be relevant to your values.

Time-bound: Goals are much more likely to be achieved if they are time-bound. That is, if there is a deadline or due date set for the goal.

Setting a goal with a realistic time restriction will help motivate you to achieve it. If you set it too short, you will only feel frustrated. Demanding that you learn a language or how to play a new instrument in a few weeks is too restrictive. Despite the handful of examples of people who have done this that you may be able to find, most people cannot meet the demands this would take while also working a wage or salary earning job, managing their household, caring for children or other family members, caring for pets, and spending time with friends. At the same time, setting a goal with no time restrictions provides little to no motivation to get started, or to keep going. It’s too easy to tell yourself you can always “do it tomorrow” because you’ve just given yourself an unknown, seemingly endless series of “tomorrows.”

While this method is particularly popular in schools and in employee training at large corporations, it can be used to set strong goals in any situation.

by Jess Santacroce

Writer/Editor: The 315

photo: stock photo 

Inspiration: Heather Sartini, a fictional teacher featured in several novels by Jess