What are SMART Goals and How do they help you?
If you are looking for the answer to this question, What are SMART Goals? Then you are in the right place. In this blog post, you will find what are smart goals and how they help you. You will also find how to know whether the goals you set for yourself are Smart goals or not. So, stay till the end.
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Everyone sets goals for a better future.
You make plans, you make strategies to make everything work perfectly, but life doesn’t always happen the way you wanted.
You work so hard to make things happen and to get results, but sometimes you fail to achieve the goals you set for yourself. You make several excuses for why you failed, why things didn’t work out, what didn’t work out, and so on.
But have you ever wondered that it might be the point you started was wrong which eventually led you to get no results?
Tell me one thing… Can working in the wrong direction lead you to the right results? It cannot happen, Right? It’s like pushing a wall and expecting it to move. It’s a waste of effort.
Think about it this way, if you want to reach a destination and because of X reason you put the wrong address in Google Maps. Now can you expect to reach your destination without troubling yourself? No, you cannot. The same is the case with Goal setting.
Goal setting is the most important exercise that everyone must do if they want to accomplish something in their life. I don’t know why, but many people don’t pay much attention to this, and then complain about not getting quality results. I mean it’s foolish.
Goal setting and most importantly smart goal setting is the most crucial part when it comes to getting good quality results. And in this blog post, we are going to talk about the same.
Let’s start with figuring out what actually smart goals are.
SMART Goals are nothing but the goals that are set to achieve quality results in a given period of time. Usually, they are a group of small tasks, which together help you go one step ahead to achieve the major goal you have in your life.
Let’s get into this a little deeper, imagine your goal is to write an article. Now, there are several things that come into consideration when we talk about writing, and that are research, case studies, keyword research, grammar check, making the article inspiring, and so on.
Now, if you sit to do everything at once, you will go nuts and nothing valuable will come out of it. So it’s better to divide this goal into smaller tasks or short-term goals which eventually contribute to writing the article.
These small tasks that you set for yourself like keyword research are what we call a smart goal. Now the question is, how will you find out if the goal you are setting is a smart goal or not?
There are 5 criteria that come into consideration when we talk about setting smart goals and it’s nothing but this acronym
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic/Relevant
T – Time-bound
How to know if the goals you set are smart goals or not?
S – Specific
The goal you set for yourself should be specific. This is the first and the most crucial part of setting a smart goal. It’s like, if your aim is not right, then how can you expect to get the right results?
Now, let’s talk about what makes a goal Specific.
Imagine you have a website and you want people to come and visit it which will eventually contribute to the growth of your business. Now, if you plan and strategize to increase your website traffic then it will just be a goal, but if you want to make it specific then switch it and decide the number of visitors you want on your website. Is it 5000, 10000, or 50000 visitors per month? Just select a number and start working towards it.
If your goal is not specific that means you don’t have clarity about what you want to achieve. In a situation like this, you won’t be able to decide what to do, and when to do and you will get nothing in the end. Setting a specific goal basically gives you a clear direction to where to land.
M – Measurable
The goal you set for yourself should be measurable.
When I say measurable, that means getting the results that you can count in numbers. As we all know numbers are very easy to track and you can use them to figure out what’s working and what’s not. According to this analysis, you can make the necessary changes to your plan.
If we take the previous example of increasing your website traffic, then setting a goal to get 5k, 10k, or even 50k visitors is a great way to track your growth. You can track the no. of visitors to your website using Google Analytics which is a free tool used by almost every marketer in the world. By tracking the no. of visitors to your website, you can make decisions on what to do next.
A – Achievable
The goal should be achievable.
Set a goal that you can achieve by putting in your efforts and hard work. Don’t set a goal that is unachievable because it will do nothing but make you feel horrible when you fail.
Like setting a goal to get 5 million subscribers on YouTube overnight. It’s not achievable and to some extent, it’s insane. Yes, you can do it providing you post some extraordinary content that goes viral and makes you a star overnight. But in 99.99% of cases, it doesn’t happen. So don’t set a goal is which you cannot achieve.
If you really want 5 million subscribers on Youtube, then plan everything in advance. Put in all your efforts and make good quality content, built-up your audience, and then scale it over time. You surely can do it providing you do all your work perfectly.
R – Realistic
The goal should be realistic and relevant.
You cannot set a goal that is impossible to achieve like becoming a swimmer who can breathe underwater. Obviously, you can do it with all those oxygen cylinders that you can carry with you but you cannot do it on your own. It’s beyond human potential. It’s not realistic.
Setting an unrealistic goal is just a waste of time and effort. You don’t get results and you feel bad about it too. So, what’s smart about it? Just think to yourself.
T – Time-bound
The goal you set for yourself should have a time limit. When you set a goal without any time limit, you are more likely to fail to achieve that goal.
When you set a goal and have no time limit, you tend to procrastinate and keep delaying it because you don’t have any pressure on yourself to take action. It’s not your fault, it’s human nature. You will get involved in your daily household chores and will find gazillions of reasons why you couldn’t take action. But let me tell you this doesn’t help you get any further to achieving your goal.
If your goal is to write a book then set a time limit and commit to yourself that you are going to complete the first chapter in a 2 or 3-month period. Because if you don’t do that, you won’t be able to complete that book ever. It’s a fact, and it doesn’t matter how much you are committed to writing that book.
So whatever your goal is, set a time limit to complete that goal and try to follow up with that.
How setting SMART Goals can help you?
Setting smart goals can help you in many ways.
It gets you quality results
I believe this is the main difference between setting a goal and setting a smart goal. Smart goals help you get quality results. You can track them and can tell what’s working for you and what’s not. And then you can make changes to your strategies accordingly. This is what you cannot do by setting a random goal.
It increases your productivity
You often have heard from others that they can’t find momentum and the rhythm to keep going. But when you set a smart goal and get quality results for yourself, what actually happens is you create momentum for yourself.
You put in the right efforts and you get quality results and the cycle goes on and on. Though it’s not as easy as it may sound but it’s not impossible too.
It gives you mental peace
When you are stress-free, it gives you mental peace; there is no doubt about this fact. You feel a great level of satisfaction when you are stress-free.
Smart goals are easy to achieve because it is not something that’s unrealistic. You can achieve them without any stress on your mind. It works like this, you set a goal, you achieve it and then you move forward and this just keeps happening, providing you don’t miss putting in the effort.
Conclusion
Goal setting is the easiest and the most difficult thing, both at the same time. If you know what you are upto, then it’s the easiest and if you don’t then it’s the most difficult thing to do.
In the above post, I talked about what are smart goals and how to know whether the goals you are setting are Smart goals or not. Also, we discussed how they can help you.
Now, do let me know in the comments below, what your takeaways are and what techniques you use to set the goals that work for you.
Keep Hustling!
