Your Goal Is Not Smart Enough!

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Have you ever wondered why you haven’t achieved your goals?

You have planned a lot before, and you may have wasted a lot of paper on your goals and plans that you have written. Maybe you achieve one of them, but other goals that you have set now become dreams.

If you ask me about plans and goals, I have a lot of them in my book and papers. I haven’t achieved them, and sometimes I achieve something that I didn’t write in my goals. 

Which is pretty funny and weird, because that means there is something wrong with my goal planning.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

I have watched a lot of videos and articles about goals. Even so, I still find it hard to achieve my goals because tools are a support for our progress. Not a guarantee for our goal achievement.

The problem is that you might not plan that effectively. You might just write randomly or unconsciously about what you are excited about.

You get excited when imagining the goals. You get excited when you feel like you have achieved it in your mind. 

That’s why you fell into the trap of fulfillment rather than using the motivation from your goals to make progress.

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What happens if you keep doing that?

The problem is that it will become much easier to feel guilt. The next time you want to set a goal, you will doubt yourself and think that you can’t achieve it. You will start to use a negative mindset and not really try to make progress towards your goal.

It is very dangerous because you will feel more depressed and start to think that your life is useless.

Remember that we need a sense of control in our lives. The more you achieve your goals, the more you will feel controlled in life. Which increases your confidence to achieve other goals.

The goals

Remember that you don’t have to set big goals. You can set middle goals or small goals. It depends on you and how you really feel about achieving them. You need to know what you want to achieve and when you will achieve it.

The interesting thing about planning a goal is that there’s a tool that could help you plan your goals.

source

Introducing S.M.A.R.T. goals

The name is pretty interesting. Being smart about planning goals. So, let’s start with this:

1. Specific (S)

Being specific about what you want to achieve. The more specific your goals are, the more likely you are to achieve them because you know what you really want.

If you just write it generally, like “be healthier,” you might find it hard to make progress because it’s too general.

The template that I love to use is:

• I want to complete _______ (my health book).

2. Measurable (M)

The key to being measurable is knowing how to track it. Sometimes I use numbers to make it more trackable and measurable.

If you only use words like “I want to write many articles”, it will demotivate you because you don’t know how many you want to write.

Even if you don’t want to finish writing many articles, it is important to really set a measurable number for the last point, which is the time-bound (T) of S.M.A.R.T. goals.

The template that I love to use is:

• I want to complete (300 pages of)____ my health book.

3. Achievable (A)

Is it possible to achieve that goal? Do I have the resources or skills to achieve that goal? Don’t randomly achieve a goal like becoming a YouTube star without having a foundation of personal brand, marketing, video editing, etc.

Even if you don’t have those skills, you need to know some of those foundational skills.

You can make achievable goals like “I can write 30 articles with my 2 hours of free time every day. “I have my wifi and my skill at writing. I can use the Udemy course to write more and more effectively.”

The template that I love to use is:

• I want to complete 300 pages of my health book ______ (at 8 a.m. every day).

4. Relevant (R)

Is it relevant to my big goals or my purpose? Do I have obligations or any other problems that can hinder me from achieving those goals? How about my health and my time? Do I have enough of those?

If your goals are not relevant, you might waste your time progressing towards them.

The template that I love to use is:

• I want to complete 300 pages of my health book at 8 a.m. every day ______ (because it is one of my big goals).

5. Time-bound

Don’t forget the deadlines. You don’t want to underestimate your goal and not really think about when you will achieve it, right? So, it is important to use deadlines for your goals.

I recommend using numbers.

The template that I love to use is:

• I want to complete 300 pages of my health book at 8 a.m. every day, _____ (before January 5, 2024), because it is one of my big goals

Now you have a good goal to achieve, which can increase your confidence in achieving your goals. You don’t have to write the same as my template does. It is up to you how to arrange the words, but don’t forget to use the five aspects of the S.M.A.R.T. goals.

“I want to complete 300 pages of my health book at 8 a.m. every day, before January 5, 2024, because it is one of my big goals.”

1. Specific: You want to complete 300 pages of your health book.
2. Measurable: You’ve defined a specific target of 300 pages.
3. Achievable: Whether this is achievable depends on the current state of your book, your writing speed, and other commitments. It could be achievable for some people, but not for others. Make sure to assess your own circumstances to determine if this is realistic.
4. Relevant: “It’s one of your big goals”, so it seems relevant.
5. Time-bound: You’ve set a clear deadline, which is before January 5, 2024.

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Conclusion

A lot of people struggle with planning goals and how to achieve them. The more you plan for your goals, the more confident you will be in your ability to achieve them. 

So, it is important to know the tools to achieve that. Using S.M.A.R.T. goals can help you be more specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound on your goals.

“Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.”

–Tom Landry

. . .

I am Kevin Nokia, and I hope that from this article we can learn together and improve together. I hope you guys can give me criticism and suggestions to improve my writing.

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