SMART Goals

How to effectively set up and organize your New Year's resolutions.

Happy New Year! With a new year comes resolutions and new goals. There’s a lot of misconception about goals out there, and many new year’s resolutions fall short. This month, I’m going to focus on setting goals and making the space in your life to achieve them so you can be sure your resolutions stick.

SMART Goals

You’ve made your New Year’s Resolution, but is it a SMART goal? Is it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound? As a middle school teacher, I’ve spent many years teaching my students how to set smart goals. I’m here to break down each step so you can set goals you’re sure to achieve.

Short-term vs Long-term

Many people set a long-term goal (as with resolutions) for the whole year and hope to achieve it, but become unmotivated when they haven’t changed their habits after a few days or weeks. An important thing to consider when setting your goals is to set both long-term and short-term goals. If you want to write a novel in a year, or drop 20 pounds in a year, you need short-term goals in addition to that long-term goal to step your way to success.

Let’s take a look at the novel example. You want to write a novel over the course of a year. This will look different for someone who has never finished a novel and for someone who has written several, but let’s say you’re someone who hasn’t finished a novel, you’ve never written 50,000 words in a month, and you struggle to write on a consistent basis.

You can make a goal of finishing a novel in a year, but you also need to look at the shorter-term goal. How much of that novel do you want to write in the first month? We’ll make the math easy and say you want to write a 120,000-word novel in a month. (Industry standards for length is a different conversation.) That means in the first month, you need to write 10,000 words, or about 40 pages. You would set a goal to write 10,000 words for a month.

Let’s break that down even further, because it takes three weeks to make a habit. And since our lives cycle on a daily and weekly basis–Monday gym, Tuesday therapy, Wednesday and Friday soccer–any goal you make to start a new habit should have a daily or weekly short-term goal.

This 10,000-word per month goal would break down to 2,500 words per week. (Yes, I’m assuming four even weeks. You’re welcome for the extra break days ;) ) Or 500 words over 5 days of the week. (That’s about 2 pages, double-spaced, per day.) If you want to make yourself a daily habit, that’s about 360 words a day.

Doesn’t 360 words feel a lot more manageable than 10,000? Yeah, our brains actually struggle to comprehend large numbers. It’s why, as a science teacher, I always use scale models of the solar system with my students. And for reference, this post, up to the period before this sentence, is 504 words. Now that you have a concept of how much writing you need to do everyday, or every week, you’re ready to set your SMART Goals.

Specific

The first step to setting a SMART goal is to choose something Specific. But Specific has a deeper meaning than just “be precise.” This goal has to be something that you have control over. Many of my students would set goals based on what grade they wanted to get. “I want to get a B.” It sounds specific, but do they have control over getting a B? Arguable. This goal isn’t specific enough. What does the student have control over? They can pay attention in class, they can raise their hand and participate, they can take notes, they can complete assignments and homework. They can answer in partial sentences with the least amount of information they think they need, or they can choose to add more detail.

Yes, your goals need to be THAT specific.

As another example. Let’s say someone wanted to drop 20 pounds in a year. We know how many pounds and we know how long it will take. It *sounds* specific. But like the grades example, it gives no hint at how those 20 pounds are going to fall off. (It really would be nice if we could just lose them by taking a couple of quick turns on a long walk, wouldn’t it?)

You want the specificity of your goal to be minute enough to name what you have control over. Specific enough that you can build an activity into your life to make this goal happen. What can you do to lose 20 pounds? You can eat healthier, count your calories, you can go to the gym, you can add more exercise by walking, and if these things aren’t working, you can get your hormones checked to make sure something isn’t preventing you from dropping the weight.

Start with smaller specifics.

Choose things you have THE MOST control over to start your goals, and pick what is easiest for you to change.

Yes, you need a specific goal, but you need to make sure it’s specific enough that it is something you have control over. So, take a look at your goal and brainstorm what you have control over and choose one thing you can change right now.

Measurable

The second part of a SMART goal is that it is measurable. Once you decide on the specific goal you can control, you can make it measurable. Say you want to participate more in class. Now you need to decide how often. Once each day? Three times per week? If you plan to write a certain amount of words, how often will you do that? Think about measurable things you might put on a star-sticker chart. How many times will you commit to testing out your goal, how many chances will you give yourself to earn a star sticker?

Remember to start with change at a small level, like every day or five days each week.

Smaller, more frequent goals you know you can achieve are going to give you the motivation to keep going toward the bigger goal for the year.

So, if you want to drop those 20 pounds, start by adding an extra 500 steps every day, or five days a week. And pick a time where you know you can add those steps. If you want to write a novel in a year, start by writing 200 words for five days each week. If you want to raise your grade to a B, start by writing out two sentence answers, or raising your hand three out of five days a week to answer the teacher’s questions. Maybe make sure you turn in two more assignments each week. Planning to walk for 20 minutes, three days a week? This is a perfectly measurable goal.

Measuring goals and coming out ahead of my goals is a huuuge motivator to me!

Notice how measurable goes hand-in-hand with specific? Once you identify the specific item in your control, measurable is how often you commit to doing that thing. It’s something you can measure, so go ahead and make your start chart!

Achievable

In a way, we’re already addressed this. A very specific goal, that focuses on items within your control will already be achievable. But it’s still good to give this goal a check-in with your life. You don’t want to go overboard. If you create a goal that is too hard for you to change your habits to meet, it becomes very unmotivating. You might want to go on a 20-minute walk 7 days a week, but there’s three things you’re already committed to on Saturday that leaves you completely drained. In this case, 7 days a week isn’t achievable.

When I make goals, I tend to low-ball them. I look at what I know I can do and set my goal a little lower than that. I know I can write 800 words per day, so I might make a goal to write 600 words. This way, if I have a very crazy, hectic day, I have some wiggle room so that my whole progress toward my goal doesn’t crash. I’ll have days where I’ve written 800 words or 1,000 words to balance out one where I can only sneak in 200. If I then look at my progress over a month, I can still meet my monthly goal even if I miss my daily goal.

Setting your goals up with what you know you can do, and not something that is a stretch for you, helps build small successes. And it’s those small successes that are key to big changes. So, take a look at the fledgling goal you have, and drop it just a little bit.

Relevant

A relevant goal is one that sits within the bigger picture. Really, this step comes first. At this point, if you’ve done the work of narrowing down your specific goal to one that is within your control, and breaks down a longer-term goal into a smaller stepping stone, then your goal should already be relevant. Focus on what you can control, and the work to create a smart goal is mostly done.

Time-Bound

I’ve already talked about short-term goals that act as stepping stones for your long-term goals. So this is the place where you decide how long is good. If you are trying to develop a brand new habit, you might want to set a couple of SMART goals for the first three or four weeks. It takes three weeks to get into a habit. After that, you might continue the weekly goals or try a few bi-weekly or monthly goals. Before you know it, you have yourself a series of SMART goals that develop new habits and conquer those new year resolutions!

Example SMART goals

A student who wants to raise their grade from a C to a B:

SMART goals:

I will answer questions in two complete sentences on three assignments for one week.

I will raise my hand and answer questions in class three times while also answering questions in two complete sentences for one week.

I will answer questions with three sentences, raise my hand once each class, and turn in every homework assignment for three weeks.

A person who wants to lose 20 pounds in a year:

SMART goals:

I will walk 20 minutes three days a week for two weeks.

I will walk 20 minutes five days a week for two weeks.

I will eat a salad for lunch two days a week for two weeks.

I will walk 20 minutes a day for five days and eat a salad three days a week for one month.

A writer who wants to write 120,000 words in a year:

SMART goals:

I will write 200 words a day for five of seven days for two weeks.

I will write 300 words a day for five of seven days for two weeks.

I will write 400 words a day for five of seven days for one month.

You now have the tools you need to make a SMART goal. Stay tuned to my next post that gives you four steps to carve out time to make sure these goals happen.