A Matter of Perspective
Goals! Who needs them anyway?
Well, me for one. And in all likelihood, you as well.
Goals are important in our world because everything we do is judged by some invisible criteria that dictates what we do, what we should be and when we should accomplish it.
I’m not really totally against goals and setting them. In fact, as I mentioned last week, I am actively engaging in setting some myself.
Someone told me that I should employ SMART goals.
What?
Aren’t ALL goals SMART?
Apparently not.
SMART is actually an acronym which stands for:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely
I agree with the SMART idea. Goals must be specific for us to reach them. We must have a focal point to aim for.
Goals must also be measurable. We need something to judge if the goal is actually achieving anything.
Our goals need to be attainable. I can set a goal to make $1 million in one year, but unless I am cranking out some serious change on a printing press, I probably need to scale that back a little—at least for the time being.
Realistic goals kind of ties into what I said in the above paragraph. It probably isn’t “smart” to set a goal for losing 100 pounds in six months.
Since goals should be timely, I need to give whatever the goal is a time frame within which I intend to accomplish it.
So a good SMART goal might look like this: I will earn $1 million over the next five years.
It’s specific—earning $1 million.
It’s measurable—when I have the $1 million I will have accomplished the goal.
It’s attainable—I’m not sure exactly how yet, but if I put my mind into it, I think it’ll happen!
It’s realistic—sort of.
It’s timely—I gave myself five years to do it in.
This goal is very broad, so to truly be a SMART goal, I would narrow each part down and set many smaller goals in order to achieve the end result.
There is a good article at: http://topachievement.com/smart.html that goes into greater detail on how to set a SMART goal. If you are interested in learning more about goal-setting, I suggest you check it out. I intend to use those steps to fully “flesh out” my goals for 2019.