Should Goals Be Strictly Measurable?

Most theories about goals claim that goals must be specific and measurable. This seems to be logical for goals in organizations where the boss or owner needs some clear line to judge if the goal was met or not. In most organizations that’s the only way that it could work. But what about personal goals or solopreneur goals?

I’d say some goals are quantitative while some aren’t. You don’t need to measure everything to be happy with result.

In my experience quantitative goals usually are short-term, financial, or over-specified:

  • Short-term goals are often very specific because you’re looking for immediate result. Obvious example is to get rid of extra 3 kilos gained in winter to fit into your favorite summer outfit, challenges (like 100 pushups challenge), etc.
  • Financial goals indeed require measurable result. When you want to have an emergency fund covering your 6 month expenses you have to have the number for such a goal. Same is true for long-term financial goals. Planning early retirement or fund to pay for a college for your children requires exact numbers.
  • Over-specified goal appear when we try to follow this “goal must be measurable” approach and be very specific when it’s not really needed. For example, unless you’re professional athlete, I don’t see a point in setting specific time goal when you run a mile. Let’s say your goal is 6:45. If your best time is 6:50, does it matter that much? To me it’s more reasonable to have a goal running consistently rather that running to specific best time.

I believe that it’s completely fine to use vague defined measure for goals. It’s fine to define expected result in broad and intuitive expressions. These could be:

  • Relative to current or past. This is good when you want to fix or enhance some aspect of your life. About five years ago I got overweight for around 10 kilograms. I could use a goal like “Loose 10 kilos by the end of the year”. Instead I took jeans I stopped wearing because of having extra weight and put a goal “Be in a shape to wear this jeans again by next spring”. For me this sounds more emotionally connected. This made this goal appealing to my desire to get back to my optimal weight.
  • Approximate number. Give yourself more space to success in achieving the goal. This decreases the stress and helps along the way. At some point I decided to build a habit to walk in the mornings. My goal was to walk approx. 1 hour every workday in the morning. Using “approx” means that a day when I was walking 40-50 minutes counts as well. I didn’t have a pressure to walk exactly 1 hour in days when I overslept or have some appointment earlier than usually. This helped me a lot to adopt such a habit.
  • Measure only some aspects of the goal. There are some cases when quantitative goal could even hurt. Let’s say you want to be in touch with your old friends. One week you could spend an hour in a chat while the other week a chat is just a few phrases. So putting a measure on frequency (once a week) sounds reasonable. At the same time quality (how long is the chat) is better to leave without any strict expectation.

In many cases enjoying the process and being emotional (instead of quantitive) about result is better option. At least that’s my point of view on defining and achieving goals.