Master Habit Formation with SMARTER Goals: 3 Techniques You Can Start Today
Feeling stuck in your goal-setting journey? Not sure if your habits are propelling your success or hindering it? Worry no more. Today, we explore how setting flexible and smarter goals can transform your productivity and make habits that last. Keep reading as I unveil my top three techniques for SMARTER goal-setting.
Understanding SMART Goals
Whether you've been in the workforce or a school setting, you've likely encountered SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. As an avid student of productivity, I've leaned on this framework throughout my journey. However, life changes led me to wonder if something was missing from what seemed like a comprehensive list of goal characteristics.
Introducing SMARTER Goals
Enter SMARTER Goals, an enhanced version of the SMART framework that includes two new components: evaluated and rewarded. You might not have heard of them, but I'm here to shed light on why SMARTER Goals surpass SMART Goals, coupled with three key techniques for making the transition.
Breaking Down SMARTER Goals
First, let’s do a quick overview of the SMART goals framework to ensure we’re on the same page.
1. Specific: Avoid vague goals. Instead of setting a goal to "earn more money," aim for something like "increase my income by $5,000." The clearer your goal, the more your subconscious will find creative solutions for you.
2. Measurable: Quantify your goals so you can track progress. Whether it's a number, percentage, or range, ensuring your goals are measurable is critical. Goals that are not measured are rarely achieved.
3. Achievable: Can you realistically accomplish this goal? Consider any required skills or resources, ensuring you're well-positioned to succeed.
4. Relevant orRealistic: Align your goals with your values and assess if they are relevant to you. Avoid setting goals that don't resonate with your core values.
5. Time-Based: Set deadlines for your goals. Avoid nebulous timeframes like "someday" and aim for specific dates, allowing some flexibility for life's unpredictability.
Evaluating and Rewarding Goals
Now, let’s review the -ER in the SMARTER goals framework.
- Evaluated: Regularly review your progress. Adapt your goals as life evolves and use new information to fine-tune your objectives. It’s often difficult to know how far along we’ve come and how much further we have to go if we don’t take the time to evaluate the progress we’ve already made.
- Rewarded: Positive reinforcement can help keep you motivated. Reward yourself for achieving goals, ensure these rewards align with your objectives and avoid rewards that are contradictory to your goal, for example if your goal is to lose five pounds, don’t reward yourself with a piece of pie.
Techniques for Smarter Goals
Now, let’s talk about three specific techniques I use in combination with SMARTER goals to give my goals the upgrade they need and help me stay focused.
1. Flexibility: I use deadlines wisely. Instead of a specific, singular date, I set a date range to account for life's unpredictability while prioritizing the earliest time frame. This decreases the chance of me procrastinating and ensures commitment. But rest assured, I’m human, so I still have my moments.
2. Intentionality: I review my progress regularly to prevent wasting time and to make any adjustments based on new information. Proactively and intentionally adjusting my goal helps minimize disruptions or unexpected influences - for example the vacation I forgot to account for - which reinforces my belief that I will achieve the goal as well as reduce the chances of (projected) frustration.
3. Normality: I normalize my goals within my support network by talking about them. I specifically share the envisioned rewards instead of my exact goals to foster understanding and support from those around me.
By employing these techniques, you can shape SMARTER goals that build enduring habits. Read the next post in this series, where I will guide you through how I turn my goals into actionable habits. Remember, I'm always in your corner. Until next time!