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As cliché as it might be to write about goals in January, it’s also an appropriate time: with New Year’s resolutions on everyone’s minds, I might as well write about how to be more effective—that is, how to be SMARTer—about making those goals and with sticking to them. Among other tricks and techniques, one simple way to be more effective in your resolutions is to make them into SMART goals.

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Coming from the business world, SMART is an acronym reminding us of the key qualities of effective goals. To increase the likelihood of growth and success, goals should be
Specific,
Measurable,
Achievable (some say Attainable instead—different word, same idea),
Relevant, and
Time-bound (some say Timely—again, same idea).

Let’s take a look at each of these.

Specific

First of all, goals should be specific. You need to be as precise and concrete as possible when setting your goals so that you know exactly what you need to do. Consider the most common New Year’s resolution: be healthier/get fit/lose weight (or some variation thereof). That is a very worthwhile ambition. But it is a terrible goal. Losing weight is a somewhat specific goal, though to make it better, you should specify a target amount of weight to lose or a target weight to hit. Getting healthy is even more vague—too much so to make an effective goal, since health encompasses a broad spectrum of considerations, from the physical to the mental to the relational. Does being healthier mean losing weight? Does it mean increasing your energy? Do you want to have a healthier diet? Are you aiming to improve your mood and well-being? Do you want to be a more intentional friend/spouse/sibling/etc.? I imagine you’re beginning to see the need to specify. So take your broad objective and carve out a concrete goal that serves that objective.

Let’s look at some examplee. Maybe your specific goal for the objective of being healthier is to be able to run an entire 5k. That gives you a very specific target to aim for: you want to do a 5k and you don’t just want to cross the finish line, but you want to run the whole time. Or maybe your specific health goal is to eat healthier by making sure you get at least eight servings of produce a day. Or maybe in aiming to have healthier relationships this year, you make it your specific goal to make sure that you text your core group of friends at least once a week to stay in touch. These are all specific, actionable things you can do to move yourself towards that objective of being healthier. You’ll also notice that these examples are all quantifiable. That is, you can easily measure whether or not you’ve succeeded, which is the second quality of SMART goals.

Measurable

There’s a sense of satisfaction, gratification, and pride that comes from accomplishing something, whether that’s as simple and satisfying as crossing something off your “To Do” list or as monumental as graduating or landing a big promotion. These things are satisfying because we know we’ve completed the task; the outcome is measurable; you either did it or you didn’t. Goals work the same way. But if your goal doesn’t have a quantifiable element, how will you know if you’ve accomplished it? Even if it’s a relatively specific goal, like eating more produce this year than you did last year, how will you know when you’ve hit that goal? Do you know how much produce you ate last year? So make sure you give yourself a numerical target to aim for, as with the earlier examples: running an entire 5k (not 4, not even 4.5, but 5); eating eight servings of produce a day; texting your friends at least once each week.

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However, there’s a caveat: make sure you don’t overreach. As empowering and encouraging as it can be to accomplish goals, it could be equally as discouraging and demotivating to fail to achieve a goal. So as you set your quantifiable, measurable target, make sure it’s a realistic target. Make sure it’s something that you can achieve.

Achievable

Research in positive psychology has taught us that expectations can empower achievements: if you dream big, you’ll achieve big. (I talked about that in an earlier post.) However, there’s a limit to this if-you-can-dream-it-you-can-do-it mentality; reality is still a limiting factor. Even if I really wanted it and if I worked my tail off to get there, I will never be an Olympic gymnast; I missed the window on that. By a long shot. Other goals can be similarly unattainable. If you’re new to working out, it would be a pretty unrealistic (and probably unachievable) goal to suddenly start going to the gym six times a week. It takes time to build a habit to that degree of regularity. So start small enough to be realistic. Two or three times a week would be a much more achievable goal—and would still be more than enough to help you be healthier.

That being said, don’t make the goal so easy that it’s trivial. If you already go to the gym five days a week, don’t make it your goal to go five days a week. If you already read four books a month, don’t make it your goal to read four (or probably not even five) books a month. Make it so that your goal will require at least some effort on your part and be at least somewhat challenging, because challenge brings change. And isn’t that the point of resolutions and goals—to change? So make sure it’s going to stretch you, change you. And make sure it’s going to change you in the way you want, which means making goals that are relevant to your larger objective.

Relevant

This is probably the hardest dimension of SMART goals to understand. After all, if you’re making a goal for yourself, that means it’s something you want, so doesn’t that make it relevant? Yes…to a degree. But is it the most relevant goal for how you want to grow? Not necessarily. Consider whether your SMART goal actually relates to and will produce change in the broader objective you want. For example, maybe you want to be happier this year. That’s a fantastic objective. But as important as it is to have a healthy diet, eating healthier would not be the SMARTest goal for the objective of happiness. Yes, nutrition plays a huge part in mental health (check out this video for more on that topic—fascinating stuff!) and could improve your overall mood and well-being, but there are arguably more effective and relevant ways to achieve greater happiness, such as decreasing stress, increasing gratitude (see my earlier post on gratitude for more on that), or mindfulness practices (oh, hey, I have posts on that, too: one on mindfulness and one on flow). So perhaps a SMARTer goal for being happier would be to keep a gratitude journal and to daily write in three things that you’re grateful for.

I would argue that relevance can also go the other direction, inspiring you to achieve certain goals because of the greater purpose they accomplish. This becomes your why and motivates the otherwise unpleasant, daily grind of working towards the goal. For example, there are a lot of arguments that can be made for why we should spend less time on (social) media. But facts and figures don’t usually motivate us all that effectively. Instead, what might motivate you to cut back on (social) media is how you will be able to spend that time elsewhere. For example, maybe you eliminate all Facebook time at home in the evenings so that you can spend more time with your spouse and/or child(ren). Or maybe you cut back on Netflix (or YouTube or Instagram or whatever), devoting that time to a hobby instead. Now you’re no longer eliminating these things for the sake of eliminating them; you’re eliminating them as a means of achieving something more important. You’ve given them relevance, purpose.

Time-bound

The last quality of SMART goals to consider is the element of time. Often, this comes in the form of a deadline: complete objective x by date y. That makes perfect sense. It goes back to the previous ideas of specificity, achievability, and challenge: if you give yourself too much time, you might (since it’s human nature) be lazy about it until it’s too late to do anything. Conversely, if you don’t give yourself enough time, you’ll never be able accomplish it. But a realistic deadline gives some gravitas to the goal; it makes it seem closer, realer, more tangible. As the date approaches, it reminds you that you have work to do.

But other goals aren’t necessarily the one-and-done kinds of things with associated deadlines; they’re more along the lines of behavior change or habit formation. As such, these kinds of goals don’t always lend themselves well to deadlines (e.g., the gratitude journal and going to the gym examples). For these types of goals, it makes more sense for the time element to be how often you want to engage in the behavior (e.g., writing in the gratitude journal daily, going to the gym three times a week). Though you could also add a deadline, specifying by when you want to be regularly engaging in that behavior.

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Additional Considerations

I plan to write another post on motivation in the near future in which I’ll talk about some of the psychological principles behind goals and motivated behavior, so I won’t go into too much detail about that now. But I will say a few things.

First, it can be helpful to incentivize your goal with rewards. Is there that something that you’ve been wanting to buy yourself for a long time but you’ve been having a hard time justifying the purchase? Maybe save that as a reward for when you accomplish your goal. When you achieve your goal, treat yourself to that much deserved reward.

Secondly, for big goals that will require long-term, sustained effort, it can be effective to break the goal down into shorter, smaller milestones. Let’s come back to example of going to the gym. If you’ve never really been into fitness and have never had a gym membership, it’s unrealistic to expect yourself to suddenly start going five times a week. So start small. Set a goal for yourself to be regularly going to the gym two times a week by the end of two or three months from now. Then, after another two or three months, aim for three times a month. Then bump it up to four for the next two- or three-month chunk. This takes the big, ambitious goal and breaks it down into realistic, bite-sized chunks, with each chunk being its own SMART goal. And then the success of achieving those smaller SMART milestones will give you momentum as you keep progressing towards the final goal.

Thirdly, take steps to make the goal (or the deadline) more tangible. This will make the goal feel psychologically closer, and that’s been shown to help increase motivation. (This’ll be some of the motivational psychology I’ll get into in the upcoming post I mentioned earlier.) This could be something like marking the deadline on a wall calendar and hanging the calendar someplace where you’ll see it every day. Or it could be having an inspirational reminder of why you set your goal (e.g., a picture of your grandkids, because you want to be healthy enough to enjoy your time with them; a picture of the reward you’ll treat yourself to when you hit your goal) and hanging it somewhere where it will daily remind you of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Derek, of the YouTube channel Veritaseum (he has such great videos; you should check out his channel), has some other ideas for this—along with a lot of other good info and tips on goals—in his recent video on New Year’s resolutions.

Finally, accountability is key. What—or, ideally, who—do you have in place to make sure you stay on track with your goal? The simple act of writing down goals increases the likelihood of achieving them by 40%. Telling a goal to someone else increases that likelihood to 65%, and it goes up to 95% if you set ongoing accountability appointments with that person. That is the power of accountability. So write down your goals, Better yet, tell them to someone. Best yet, invite someone to regularly check in with your progress, or even to join you in pursuit of the same goal.

Putting this all together, be SMART about setting your goals and be SMART as you work towards them:

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Example Goals

Now, for the sake of accountability and honesty, and to practice what I preach, I’ll tell you some of my goals for the year.

Objective: Read More Books.

SMART goal: finish at least two books each month this year (if I cut back on how much time I spend watching on Netflix, this should be plenty realistic)

Objective: Get Leaner

(I know it’s a bit vain, but for once in my life, I want to look as good as one of the Marvel superheroes)

SMART goal: get to under 11% body fat by my next birthday (March 15) (I’m probably at around 15% body fat right now, so to lose four percent in two and a half months is healthy and doable)

• I’ve incentivized this goal for myself: I have a pair of fun new workout leggings that I will only get to wear once I hit the target body fat percentage; they’re hanging up in my room to remind me of this goal.

If you’re feeling ambitious and authentic enough to be accountable, share your goal in the comments. And hopefully these tips about goal setting will help you achieve yours. So let’s SMART about and successful with our goals this year! Godspeed!

Yours truly,
D. R. Meriwether, Ph.D.
Renaissance Man and Abundant Life Liver

More Examples of SMART Goals

Objective: Be Healthier (Exercise Domain)

SMART example: get x minutes of activity n times a week

• If you’re brand new to working out, consider 30 minutes of light to moderate activity (e.g., walking) two or three times a week; if you’ve been working out for a while, you can scale those numbers and intensity levels up accordingly.

Objective: Eat Healthier

SMART Example: two times a week, replace lunch with a salad

• One or two a week would be a realistic place to start; eventually, you could work towards eating four or more salads a week

SMART example: cut back on one of your unhealthy snack vices to x times a week/month

• It would be unrealistic to suddenly cut yourself off from all of your indulgences, so pick one to start and aim to reduce how much you indulge in it during the week (if you normally have it every day, maybe cut back on how much of it you have each day or on how many days you have it); if it’s more of a secondary indulgence, maybe you could try cutting it out completely

Objective: Be Happier/Be Less Stressed

SMART example: write down three things each day that you’re grateful for

SMART example: engage in a mindfulness practice for x minutes n days a week

• An easy—and still effective place—to start could be one minute five days a week. As you get comfortable with this/build a habit of this, you can increase either the length of time and/or the number of days a week.

Objective: Have Better Relationships

SMART example: reach out to your friends via text at least once a week to keep in touch

• For the people closest to you in your friendship circles, this might be appropriate; for those further out in the circle, but with whom you’d still like to keep in touch, a monthly check-in might be more realistic.