The majority of goals set by people are never fulfilled or at least fall short. If you want the proof; go and check out health clubs in the first 2-3 weeks after New Year. They are so crowded by the people who have made resolution to lose weight, that it is difficult to find free exercise equipment. And then the crowd fizzles out after 3 weeks and only the regulars keep coming.
The reasons majority of goals go unfulfilled are multiple – they are too vague or too difficult or they don’t have any time limit. Because of this, people setting the goals either don’t know how to achieve them or they give up thinking they can never fulfill them.
We came across the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting technique a while ago that can help anyone achieve what they want in a reasonable time period. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Essentially S.M.A.R.T. goal setting ensures that you know what you want to achieve, how to achieve it and when to take actions. Below are the details on how to go about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Specific
You should be able to answer five questions when setting your goals – Who, Where, What, When, Why. These questions ensure that your goals are very specific; which help you find a proper approach to achieve them. An example of a Specific goal is – “Improve sales by $500 per week within six months by increasing marketing and customer satisfaction.” As you can see, this specific goal immediately tells you what you are going to need to do to achieve your goal.
Measurable
A measurable goal tells you when you have accomplished it. In the example above you can track your sales on a weekly basis to find out how you are progressing towards your goal. In the previous blog post we showed you how to go about producing reports to track your business. In addition to setting a final goal; you should also look into setting up interim milestones to see how you are progressing. In the above example you can set goal to improve sales by $100 in 2 weeks, additional $100 in 1 month and so on.
Attainable
Many people aim for the stars when setting their goals. While it is commendable to have high goals; they can also have negative impact on you being able to achieve them. If the goal is so difficult that you will not be able to achieve no matter how hard you try; you will lose motivation and give up after a while. If you do set high goals, make sure you allow enough time to yourself to achieve them.
Relevant
In real life you will not just have one goal; but have multiple ones – some long-term; while others short-term. All of the goals should contribute towards achieving the overall long-term success. For example, if your overall goal is to sell business at a price of $1 million after 5 years; your interim goal of improving sales by $500 per week is supporting it and is relevant.
Timely
As we mentioned in an earlier post deadlines do wonder in helping you achieve your goals. Every goal you set must have a date by which you will achieve it. Without it you may go on forever in trying to accomplish them – which means you will never achieve them.
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