Why You Need
To Set SMART Goals
Welcome to the
Smart Goals
page. This web site is about setting and achieving personal goals. To see more goals articles please go to our achieve your personal goals or setting goals pages.
The key point about setting SMART goals is that any goal you set must be clear and detailed. You must be able to envision your specific goal in your mind - and track your progress towards that goal.
You see slight variations as to what some of the letters in SMART stand for. I give some of these below.S is for SPECIFIC When I set out building this web site I had something quite specific in mind. I didn't know exactly how many pages there would be - but I knew it would be a content-rich site with at least 30 pages, helping people achieve their goals. Had I started with the vague idea that 'I'm going to build a web site' I really couldn't have divided the overall goal down to mini-goals and tasks. Some articles suggest that you need to answer the 6 'W' questions: who? what? where? when? which? and why? M is for MEASURABLE By saying that I would build a web site with 30 pages, or build one page per day, I could measure progress. On the other hand, if my goal was less specific it would not be measurable. Why is this important? Well, knowing that you are 'on target' keeps you focused and motivated. A is for ATTAINABLE or ACHIEVABLE or ACTION-CENTRED You can easily sabotage your goal achieving efforts if you set the bar too high. It's simply de-motivating. So if I said I would build 10 web pages a day I don't think that would be sustainable. Should you set high goals or easily achievable lower goals? Opinions differ, but in my view it's better to set low specific goals. Then it feels good if you beat your target. Or you might say SMART goals should be action-centred. In other words they're not going to happen unless you plan and take specific actions to make them happen.
R is for REALISTICThe way I look on it, this seems pretty much the same as A for achievable. Maybe it's better to make A stand for Action-Centred. T is for TIME FRAMED or TANGIBLE Time-framed means that you should have deadlines by which your goals and mini-goals should be achieved. On the other hand Tangible means your goals must have some concrete existence that can be experienced with your senses. I think it's more useful to relate the T to Time. In my experience if you don't set time deadlines for your actions, you simply don't achieve your goals.
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