The SMART Way To Craft Your Goals

Failure to plan is planning to fail.

 In order to achieve your goals you must have a clear plan of action.

 

In my last blog post How To Set Goals And Achieve Them, I discussed setting your goals up properly in order to accomplish them. In that post I included a dream sheet for you to complete.

 
Did you find completing the dream sheet to be an eye opening exercise?

 

Now that you have completed your dream sheet, we are going to take those hopes and dreams and turn them into tangible goals by making them S.M.A.R.T. (Specific/Strategic, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Results Oriented and Time Bound).

 

In today’s post we will be dealing only with the specific and measurable aspects of your goals.

 

In order to do this correctly, download my S.M.A.R.T. goals worksheet here.

 

Let’s begin by breaking down what this all means.

 

·         Specific/Strategic Goal Setting

           This portion of goal setting stresses specificity rather than vague and obscure. Meaning your goals need to be clean and unambiguous. In order to make them specific, it needs to be obvious what is expected so there is a clear understanding of the target. The strategic refers to the reason it’s important and what’s involved.

 ·         Measurable Goal Setting

           This portion of goal setting stresses the need for concrete criteria to measure your progress towards the attainment of your goals. If your goals aren’t measurable, they seem unattainable. If you can track your progress it helps you to move further along to completion.

 

Does this make sense to you?

 

Let’s begin crafting your goals.

We will only be working with the “S” and the “M” today.

Subscribe to my blog and you won’t miss next week’s discussion on how to craft your goals to make them attainable/achievable and realistic.

Here are examples of goals crafted using specific/strategic and measurable language.

Specific

 Bad Example: Find a new job.

Good Example:  Obtain a new job as a 10th grade math teacher at XYZ high school in Anytown, USA so that I can show the children that math is a life skill which is fun and easy to learn.

Measurable

Bad Example: I am going to do whatever it takes to get a new job.

Good Example: In order to obtain my new teaching job as a 10th grade math teacher in XYZ high school in Anytown, USA I am going to complete an online job application, I am going to attend the district’s and the school’s job fair. I am going to begin networking with teachers at XYZ school and in my free time volunteer so that I can showcase my skills and desire to be apart of the teaching team at XYZ school.

 

Do you see the difference in those examples?

The bad examples are vague and don’t seem well thought out. In fact they seem more like passing thoughts than actual goals. Whereas the good examples are clear and detailed. You can read those goals and understand exactly which path you will take.

 

Are you starting to catch on? Do you see how this style of goal setting is better than your average style of goal setting?

Great!

 So your homework for this week is to grab your copy of the S.M.A.R.T. goal sheet and complete the Specific/Strategic and Measurable sections.

 

If you continue to follow this method of goal setting you will increase your chances of achieving all of your goals.

Subscribe to my blog so you won’t miss next week's post where we will begin working on the Attainable/Achievable and Results Oriented sections.

 Also, leave me a comment or ask me any questions in the comment section below. I would love to hear your feedback.

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