In the weeks following losing my job, I managed to complete a 6 month certification in 3 weeks, planned a move halfway across the country, wrote a blog post almost daily, applied for jobs, and studied for the GMAT. My friends were somewhat shocked that I was able to achieve while dealing with a stressful situation like losing a job. I attribute a lot of my success and determination to repeatable principles.
In this blog-post, I want to share some tools and frameworks to make sure goals are followed through on, and encourage others to be more thorough in achieving their goals. To that end, I want to contrast a SMART goal framework from a DUMB one.
One common tool I used is called a SMART goal. SMART standing for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. This framework, rather than viewing goals in the abstract, allows me to turn my wants into actionable results.
Let’s go through each of the letters in the SMART acronym to better understand what each of them mean.
The S stands for specific. The importance of specific goals is essential to success, because it allows you to be accountable with yourself. If it is not clear what you specifically have to do, it’s hard to track whether you’ve actually succeeded in competing the given task. Additionally, making a goal specific makes it a lot more actionable. If your task is something to the effect of “Build a Business”, many wouldn’t have a clue where to start. A lot of larger more complicated workflows or ideas come from interlocking smaller goals. But, without having a specific idea of what the step is, it’s challenging to build your palace, to make your goal real. A specific would look something like this. (“PERSON” will Steps of ACTION, to achieve ACTION)
The second of the letters, M refers to measurable. Similar to something specific, having measurable goals is essential to knowing whether the goal is actually achieved. Instead of something like, we’ll grow the user base, you can define what growing the user base looks like. (Our goal is to have an XXX increase/decrease in YYY). This helps because it can be later used retrospectively to see how your achievements stack up against your initial ambitions.
The third of the letters, A, stands for achievable. It’s important that you can actually achieve the goal in question. If the thing you’re trying to do cannot be done, the act of trying to complete the goal is in vain. You should dig down to prioritize the highest impact things. Instead of trying to do everything, you should use achievable as a tool to understand where you want to point your efforts, and make sure that it has the highest chance of success.
The fourth of the letters, R, stands for relevant. You want the goals you set to actually reflect improvements in your life or business. Trying to tie your goals into the broader context of what you need is essential. It’s also key to visualization. One thing I often do when I’m trying to achieve the goals is imagine my life getting better in a specific way as a result of completing the goal. If your goal isn’t relevant to your other values or considerations, it becomes discordant, getting in the way of more important priorities.
The final letter stands for time-bound. The general principle behind this section is to make sure that you have a deadline, so you can now whether you’ve achieved your goal. If you try to do something for X amount of time and it doesn’t work, there should be a reassessment of why the work hasn’t succeeded, and what to do next. Having time limits and interim deadlines allows you to pivot, and to make sure your goals stay aligned with your broader values or context.
To better understand SMART goals, it may be helpful to understand what I’ve penned DUMB (Discretionary, Unclear, Meandering, Balanced) goals. Whereas SMART goals provide clarity and accountability, DUMB goals eschew it. Let’s break down that acronym in the following paragraphs.
Discretionary goals don’t work because instead of being able to clearly take accountability, you’re able to lump in whatever you’re already doing into your goal psychologically. This makes stasis the path of least resistance, and with discretionary goals, it is often unclear what to do next. It also undermines the repeatability of a given goal. One key part of specific goals is that they may not require a specific person to implement them. However, when something is discretionary and unclear, it becomes challenging to reproduce results.
Unclear goals don’t work because they are immeasurable. How could you know whether you’ve achieved your goal if you don’t know what your goal is? If your goal is uncertain or unclear, it also may not be possible or achievable as a result of a lack of internal consistency.
Meandering goals remove urgency from achievements. If there is something you need completed by next week that requires an intermediate step before the broad goal is finished, you need to have interim deadlines and next steps. A goal without deadlines or accountable parties is dead on arrival, as it’s always possible for a goal to be achieved later, if other things come up, and your goal isn’t a priority. If you can’t make your goal urgent or important to people, it won’t get done.
The final problem with DUMB goals is that they’re balanced. Oftentimes, when you have to tradeoff goals with one another, it creates uncertainty about what to do. If your goals work against each other, success at one means the failure of another. By contrast, when your goals are mutually reinforcing, it increases the chance of success, and puts those responsible for achieving the goal in a situation where they are better able to win.
Isadore Johnson's Website 