Do You Know About SMART Goals?

It’s hard to stay productive when you don’t have good goals in place. Sure, you can feel productive by doing lots of busy work, but that won’t move you forward. To make real progress, you need goals and ideally those are SMART Goals.

What are SMART goals?

SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. Let’s look at each of those and how each term applies to goal setting.

Specific – be precise in your goal. Make it a benchmark, something where you’ll know when you reach it. Instead of saying that you want to lose weight, make it a goal to lose 10 pounds.

Measurable – how are you going to keep track of your progress? A specific goal will help with this. You need to decide what your measurement will be for each goal.

Achievable – don’t set your goal so high that there’s no chance of reaching it. Yes, it can be a stretch goal, but it should be completely unattainable.

Relevant – Give your goal meaning. Saving $25,000 may not seem very relevant, but saving $25,000 as a down payment for your first home makes it very meaningful and relevant.

Time Bound – Set yourself a deadline. Without it, it will take you much longer to reach your goal.

Think about one of your big work related goals. Take a moment to write it down as a smart goal that fulfills all of the above. Keep this written goal close by and you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll start to make progress towards meeting it.