We have all heard of the SMART method for setting goals. While this approach of making goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely works great to bring clarity to the goal it doesn’t provide a framework for the entire lifecycle of a successful goal. Achieving your goal starts with deep reflection of your current baseline, setting and committing to a goal, and reviewing progress and direction frequently. It is this last part that is key to maintain motivation and unlocking the desired outcome of your goal. Here are 3 exercises to finally set and achieve your biggest goals.
Set goals starting with your baseline data
One of the most common mistakes people make when setting goals is picking the latest trend and making it their goal. For example, “buy a home” is a great goal to have when it makes financial sense or if you wanted a home in the first place. So instead of going with the goals society or family has set upon you, start by taking some time to reflect and discover goals that are aligned with your current values.
Start by rating your baseline
Life is a carefully curated balance of a few main categories; health, money, relationships, community, and career/personal development. Depending on who you ask you may add or take away from these categories but the point is to obtain harmony amongst all of them. To understand how to achieve that harmony, start by rating your happiness in each category from 1-10 based on YOUR idea of success. Try to pick a number quickly to ensure you don’t overanalyze it. The idea is to get a first-level understanding of your current state in these areas of your life. Write this number down as we will come back to it later.
Once you have rated each category take a step back and try to understand, and ideally write down, what a perfect 10 looks like for YOU. To better understand this, ask yourself these three questions in each category X (health, money, relationships, career, etc.):
- Who is someone who I know is killing it in X?
- Why did I pick them? What actions or memory of them comes to mind when I think their success in this category?
- Which of these actions sounds enjoyable to me?
For example, for health, I have a friend who I always think of as very healthy. When I ask myself why she comes to mind I think of how she runs every day, is vegetarian, proactively checks on her health, and she is kind and in control of her emotions. The point is to pick someone you have access to so you can have a vision.
Set goals that are realistic and quantifiable
Review each category and reflect on your current state. Now, envision what your dream state would look like, but be realistic. When I think of my healthy friend I know I won’t become a vegetarian, that’s not me, BUT it also tells me that I consider her healthy because she eats a lot of vegetables. The goal is to increase your baseline rating up at least one level. So my health goal would be, eat more vegetables. I know that if I achieve this goal I will become “a person who eats vegetables” which to me is a trait of a healthy person.
Taking it one step further, we have to make our goal quantifiable and as the SMART goals method states, measurable. How can I measure if I eat vegetables every day? To make it clear “eat more vegetables” would become “eat 1 cup of vegetables every day”. This forces me to complete a specific amount (1 cup) at a specific frequency (daily). Either I ate the cup today or I didn’t. All of your goals need to have an AMOUNT and a TIME boundary. This forces you to make the goal true or false which will help with motivation as we discuss later on.
Complete this process for every category, setting no more than three goals in each. By evaluating your current state and envisioning your dream state you can make more realistic goals that you are driven to achieve based on your personal values. This also helps in making realistic goals, shoot for 1% better than your current baseline. Overshooting our goals will only leave us feeling demotivated and drained.
Set it and don’t forget it
After setting your goal you have to make it your bestie. You have to talk to it everyday and keep it updated just like you would your best friend. Otherwise, it becomes another lost promise. To achieve your goals you must check in daily with your progress. A simple habit tracker can help you document your journey.
Measure your progress every. single. day. Over time you will be collecting data and all data is good data. Especially days that you did nothing towards your goal. This gives you insight into your patterns which we will review later.
Review, reflect, and refresh your data
After at least 30 days, review your habit trackers and quantify your progress. Going back to my “eat 1 cup of vegetables every day”. To quantify your progress don’t look at the 30 days with a focus on the days you didn’t achieve your goal or did but take a holistic view of your month as a whole by giving yourself a grade. Follow these steps to review your progress
- In 30 days how many days did you achieve your goal? Lets say I hit it 20 times.
- What percentage of your goal did you achieve? Assuming a 30 day review period I hit my goal 20 out of 30 times so ~67%.
- Do this for each of your goals.
Reflect on your “grade”. In the example above I technically got a D, rather than trigger any traumatic experiences from school grades consider reflecting on the percentage itself. More than half of the time you hit your goal. Ask yourself what prevented you from getting to the next “grade”. Did you slump on the weekends? Did you get sick or have a vacation? On the days you did achieve your goal how did you feel? How about the days you didn’t? Did you notice a difference in your mood, energy, or overall well-being?
Refresh your goal after reflection. Depending on your answers to the above questions decide how you are going to refresh your goal. If you found yourself bending over backwards to hit the 20 days, adjust your goal down to 20 and maintain that until that becomes your new baseline. If you saw you had to do minimal effort to hit that value maintain your goal at 30 days. Use this time to fine tune your goals AMOUNT (1 cup) or FREQUENCY (every day). Until you get to a quantity that is SUSTAINABLE for you today. You can always review next month.
Many people will shrug off the power of data and tracking their actions. Hopefully I have convinced you of the power of tracking your own data as a means of designing your own path. These are good points in time to complete this process of review, reflect, and refresh for maximum traction towards your goals:
- Daily tracking
- Weekly intentions
- Monthly reviews
- Quarterly renewals
Follow the data
The beauty of collecting all the data is over time you can see direction. One data point doesn’t tell us much but two data points becomes a trend. Trends are powerful they propel us and motivate us to stay the course. Why do you think the tech companies have gained so much momentum? From Google to Instagram the success of these companies is solely based on the data we provide them. They know our patterns they know pitfalls and they use it to their advantage.
Take a few minutes each day to make your data work for you. Start your journey of self discovery by finding your trends. We are creatures of habit so creating a trend leads to a path. Which leads to a journey. Which leads to a destination, the place where you achieve the goals that bring you true joy.
Let me know what data you think will help you achieve your goals in the comments!