SMART goals
So this was originally something I came across while working in the civil service. I came across it years ago at the beginning of my career after leaving university and it's actually over 40 years old, but still we have people not doing this! I have also come across it in a CBT context for setting goals for self-help.
This post is mostly some rough notes after reading through a short chapter on setting SMART goals. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE COMPLETE BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION. For me, it is simply evidence I covered this material at some point and it's something I can look back at to jog my memory from time to time.
Smart goals was not invented as part of CBT, but it reflects an appropriate approach to goal setting which is a useful tool in achieving the positive changes brought about by CBT. While CBT might help us decide the relevant goal, using SMART allows us to make sure the goal has every chance of being positive for us rather than a rod to beat ourselves with when we fail.
Like many tools, SMART is an acronym. Originally it stood for
Specific
Measurable
Assignable (this has changed over the years)
Relevant
Time-bound
To make a goal positive, it is good to ask if it meets each of these criteria and if necessary, to restructure it so that it does.
Assignable and Relevant? That's not what I heard!
Now this was obviously for a workplace, so "assignable" was in there. One would ask themselves, can I set this goal for someone else to do easily? But now 40 years later we normally use these goals for personal goals so "Assignable" is no longer relevant. It is common to change it to Attainable.
Relevant is also often changed to realistic because no longer are we making sure it is relevant to company needs as the SMART goals tool is being self-applied to self-set goals rather than applied by a manager to assignable goals. I am not a fan of "realistic" as a goal, because I think that attainable has mostly the same impact and "relevant" could be used to ask if the goal is relevant to our main objectives in life even though there is no company in this consideration. Sometimes it is rendered as "resource-efficient" which is a good question to ask, but relevant can also cover that. If it is an inefficient use of resources to achieve relevant goals, then we meet the criteria of relevant. Finally, it is sometimes rendered results-based. Again I'm going to throw that out because if something is specific, measurable and relevant then it is going to be results-based.
Questions I should ask myself when setting goals
So to make SMART goals we should ask ourselves the following questions:
Specific
Is this goal specific? Can I easily tell if it was achieved or not achieved? If any of these questions is answered "no", how can this goal be restructured so the answer will be yes?
Measurable
Is this goal Measurable? Can it be qualified with numbers or a black-and-white line? Will the success or failure be fact rather than a matter of opinion? If any of these questions is answered "no", how can this goal be restructured so the answer will be yes?
Attainable
Is this goal Attainable? Is it realistic that I could achieve this goal with the resources I have, in the time I have available? Will this goal be difficult to achieve? Am I more likely to scold myself for failing than praise myself for achieve it? If I am likely to fail to achieve the goal then it could have a negative impact. This means that it could discourage employees, clients or ourselves rather than encourage them/us. If so can we divide the goal into manageable pieces that are more easily attainable? How else can we make this attainable? Can we obtain other resources or people to help us finish the goal?
Relevant
Is this goal relevant to your long-term goals for yourself? Will it help you in the long run? Is it short-term? If it is long term is it relevant to a goal that is likely to change? Could there be changes that effect this goal politically, economically, socially, technologically, legally or environmentally which could render this goal pointless? How could it be adjusted to be more relevant and less potentially pointless?
Time-Bound
When do I want to achieve this goal by? Is it going to drag on? Could I set a shorter goal which is closer to 1-2 weeks? Often if we have a goal hanging around for a while uncompleted it feels like we failed for the whole time leading up to it being completed, even before we ran out of time we are already feeling like we failed, is that going to happen here? How do we avoid that happening? Is there a way to adjust the goal so it won't drag on. I often feel like short-term goals should be set for 1 week to prevent us spending forever setting goals, but longer term goals still should not be longer than a month. Ideally 2 weeks works which is why so many companies have 2 week sprints.
Conclusion
This has formed a small part of my CBT training. Setting positive achievable goals which are relevant is really helpful to us. Having uncompleted goals hanging around for months and months or stuff we can't get on with, makes it very difficult for us to stay positive and often drains us. In CBT we often have a lot of work to do to change natural patterns in our brains and learn new patterns which are more beneficial. Using Smart goals enables us to chip away at that work one goal at a time.
Graeme