Writing SMART Goals
Let me ask you something. Are you the type of person who sets goals? Or, are you the type who prefers to flies by the seat of their pants? Unfortunately, for the majority of my life, I have fallen into the latter category. In actuality, I’ve been the type of person who tends to take things as they come. In writing, I would be considered a “pantser.” In that, I write/fly by the seat of my pants. Rather than a “plotter,” which is someone who plots things out.
In life, a plotter would be a goal planner. While a pantser would be someone who has an overall goal, but not intermittent ones.
If I want to switch, from being a pantser to being a plotter, I need to start setting goals. What would that look like? One method would be to create SMART goals. “What is a SMART goal?” you might ask. I’m glad you asked.
Goals should be specific.
Before starting, you need to be motivated to want to achieve a goal. If there is no purpose or motivation in achieving it, the goal may fail before work even begins.
In order for a goal to be a SMART one, it needs to start off by being specific. When I say specific, I mean just that. For instance, I’m a husband and father in my mid-forties. And I have built a mass around my waist that I’d like to lose. A goal that simply says, “I want to lose weight” is not specific. Honestly, if I lost one pound, I would’ve met that goal.
But I don’t want to lose just one pound. Rather, I’d like to get back down to the weight that I was when I left the Army in 2010. Since I left the Army, I’ve gained twenty-five pounds. Therefore, my goal needs to start with, “I want to lose twenty-five pounds.”
However, it needs to be measurable. Meaning there needs to be a timeframe associated with the loss.
Goals should be measurable.
By adding “twenty-five pounds” to my original goal of “I want to lose weight,” I’ve gotten closer. Though it is still not measurable. So, I want to lose twenty-five pounds. By when? Can I take the next twenty years to lose that weight? No way.
I don’t want to wait. I want to lose that weight now. Therefore, I need to set a timeframe for when I want to lose it by.
If I want to lose twenty-five pounds, I won’t be able to lose it all at once. I’m not sure even liposuction would remove that amount of weight in one operation. I’d think it would take several operations to remove that much extra weight.
The same thing goes for losing it without surgery. It will take time. Hence, my goals need to be such that they include amounts in specific periods of time.
For instance, I could create a goal that says, “I plan to lose five pounds in the next thirty days.” That’s both specific and measurable. But is that practical?
They should be attainable.
When setting goals, they must be attainable. A goal like, “I want to earn one million dollars a month, starting next month” might not be attainable or even practical for someone who makes $5,000 a month now.
In my goal of losing twenty-five pounds, I need to create a timeframe that is attainable. Perhaps I need to break that overall goal into sub-goals even. My overall goal might be to lose twenty-five pounds. But a sub-goal might be to lose five pounds in the next thirty-days.
To go even further down, I could even break that goal down to 1.25 pound per week. And I could set that goal if I had a digital scale. Which I do.
Therefore, I could have a goal to lose 1.25 pounds per week or five pounds per month. The next question should be, how am I going to accomplish that goal? Just wishing to lose weight, and not making any changes, won’t help me to achieve my goal.
Being results-focused should be a part of your goal.
My goal must be results-focused. It needs to be measurable. If I decide that I want to lose 1.25 pounds per week and five pounds per month, I need to make sure it is measurable. How would I measure that?
I can start by weighing myself once a week. It should be on a specific day at a specific time. Preferably in the morning before breakfast.
If I really want to ensure I’m on track, I could weigh myself every morning. By doing this, it would help me to identify if I’m on track or not. Nothing worse that waiting the full week to only see the scale go up and not down.
Perhaps, instead of every day, I only want to weigh myself five days a week. That breaks down to .25 pounds per day. Do you think that’s doable? I do.
There should be a timeframe associated with your goal.
Finally, in order to hold myself accountable to the overall goal, I also need an end-time when it should be complete. It will need to be time-bound. Yes, I want to lose twenty-five pounds. But without a measurable timeframe, it might not ever get accomplished.
Would five months be plausible? Well, since I’ve been trying to lose the weight for more than a year now, something significant would need to happen to reach that goal. Then again, if I don’t set an end-state, it will never happen.
I will set a goal of six months. This will allow me to factor in any unknown variables. Twenty-five pounds in six months (25 lbs. / 6 mo.) equates to 4.17 pounds per month or 0.96 pounds per week (25 lbs. / 26 weeks).
Therefore, my SMART stated goal will be, “I plan to lose twenty-five pounds in the next six months. In order to accomplish this, I will accomplish this by losing 0.96 pounds per week. Furthermore, to keep myself accountable, I will record my weight every Monday morning.” It’s specific, measurable, attainable, results focused, and time-bound.
The changes I will make to accomplish this goal will have to be saved for another time.
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