SMART Goals

You’ve likely heard the acronym SMART related to goal setting. This is a good time to recall the meaning and see where it applies to your 2022 personal and professional plans.

Studies show that more specific and ambitious goals lead to more performance improvement than easy or general goals. The goals should be specific, time constrained and challenging.

Additional research suggests that goals should be set ideally at the 90th percentile of performance assuming that motivation and not ability is limiting attainment of that level of performance. As long as the person accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.

Look for our tool next week on HARD goals to compare with SMART! Keep growing, keep

moving in the direction of your dreams!

• SPECIFIC – target a specific area for improvement

When you are trying to make a goal specific, ask yourself: Can someone else understand what I am trying to achieve?

• MEASURABLE – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.

You don't necessarily need to use numerical or quantitative measures. Qualitative measures are still measures, as long as they have meaning to you!

• ATTAINABLE – specify who will do it.

Don't be afraid to aim high. You may need to break a huge goal into a few smaller goals.

• RELEVANT – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.

Make sure it is something that tangible and important to you at this point in time. It could be terrific to learn Portuguese but is that goal relevant to your journey right now?

• TIME-BOUND – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

Keep in mind this is different than making your goal measurable. Time-bound is WHEN you want to accomplish the goal, measurable is how much you need to do to meet your goal.

Check out this cool one-minute video on SMART goals!