There are plenty of ways to define your goals. One of the most known is S.M.A.R.T. (although it’s definitely not the only one). The idea behind it and similar approaches is to make goal definition precise. Personally I find this not such a good idea for personal or small business goals.
I believe that goals should have personal flavour and resonate with the person. Many techniques (such as SMART) make goal definition to look dry. Also you end up with goals that are over-formulated in a world of constant changes. This can easily lead to very bad feeling if something urgent in your life distracts you from the goal. Having a goal with carved in stone definition, it’s easier to give up when you realise that it’s too challenging (or even not possible anymore).
My idea behind goal definition is to keep it simple and appealing. Here is how I do this:
- Short definition (usually up to 5 words). When it’s short then it’s formulated in simpler manner and it easily stucks in my head. It’s simply just a core meaning of the goal. For example, instead of “I will post a 1,500-word article on my blog each week for a year, culminating in fifty-two blog posts and increased traffic to my site.” I would say “Publish 52 posts by next April”. Details (like publication schedule, length of the post, number of posts per week, etc.) I would include to the strategy for the goal.
- Clear visual connection to area of responsibility. In my system each area of responsibility has its color. I use same color for related goals. For example, “Health” area is coded with purple and looking at my list of goals right now I see four active goals related to this area. Moreover projects related to goals follow same color code. So I can easily see the relation throughout the system.
- Based on outputs I can control. Goal should be actionable and controllable. Formulating it in a way which depends on others, you loose control over achieving it and you have no clear action in the goal. E.g. goal “Get 5,000 subscribers in 3 month” you cannot control. It is purely based on the will of other people. Instead with “Publish 25 newsletters this summer” you’re in control. Your intention still can be getting 5000 subscribers. Whether you have them or not is a different story. At the end of the day even 700 subscribers with 25 newsletters is more than you had before. That’s completely different perspective on the goal.
- Loosely measurable. I prefer goals to be relative to current or past, approximate, or quantify frequency. You can read more about this here.
- Slightly less challenging than I would have in ideal world. Most people advise to have challenging goals. Many set really challenging ones. I (as a family man) know that my current season of life has a lot of unexpected things happening. I need to have room to slip a bit on a goal and then catch up. So I define my goals with this in mind. Let’s take this blog as an example. As I’m just starting out I should write as many post as possible until Google picks up my blog. In ideal world I would write at least four posts a week. In real world I can sustain only two. So that’s my goal.
Keeping goals simple enhances clarity, actionability, motivation, and reduces stress. By embracing simplicity, you increase your chances of success.