Setting goals is a cornerstone of effective time management and fundamental to achievement.
It has become something of a cliche to set SMART goals: goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented and time-bound.
However, is this enough to ensure that goals will be achieved? It certainly helps to be able to write down your goals in the concrete way that this format forces you to do.
Also the documentation and SMART structure allows you to determine, retrospectively, whether a goal has been achieved.
Undeniably, the SMART model can also help to determine progress towards the goal.
However, for all this people (me included) still fail to achieve their goals, SMART or otherwise.
So is there an approach to improving the likelihood of successfully achieving your goals, beyond SMART? We need to look at why goals aren't achieved.
One of the main reasons that goals are not achieved is that they are not relevant to the person trying to achieve them.
It belongs to someone else.
This happens a lot in organisations, but it can also happen with personal goals when you want to achieve something to please someone else: a parent, a spouse or sibling, for example.
So you need to make sure the goal is one that is important to you, that belongs to you and that you desire to come to fruition.
Secondly, in my experience, the "achievability" of a goal is often taken to mean capability or skill.
But it is also necessary to assess whether the goal is realistic within the other constraints that exist, such as time, money and other people who may need to be involved.
Related to this, goals can be missed because of a failure to properly assess the nature and size of obstacles that lie in the way.
If obstacles are sufficiently onerous or large there has to be a compelling reason to overcome the obstacle.
So to improve your chances of achieving a goal you have to assess the obstacles that lie in your path and assess your desire to overcome them, which will be proportional to the strength of your reason (your why) for achieving the goal.
The fourth reason that goals are often missed is a lack of planning, The goal is the end, but what is the means.
What needs to happen in what order to achieve the goal? What is the first step? What are the timings for these milestones? Are all the steps realistic within the timeframe and the constraints in place.
The depth and detail of the plan needs to be proportional to the magnitude of the goal.
Finally, once you've decided that you want to achieve something and you have a plan, then start.
More goals are left undone because of a failure to start straight away than for any other reason.
It's too easy to say I'll start that tomorrow or next week, or next quarter.
If it is important enough to set as a goal, then it should be important enough to start working on immediately.
So there we have five reasons for failure to achieve results, and five steps to ensure that your SMART goals are more achievable: the goal must be Personal to you; it must be Realistic; all Obstacles need to be considered and your ability and desire to overcome them properly assessed; the necessary steps in achieving your goal should be Planned and then you have to get Started immediately - these are your PROPS to help you achieve your goals.
It has become something of a cliche to set SMART goals: goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented and time-bound.
However, is this enough to ensure that goals will be achieved? It certainly helps to be able to write down your goals in the concrete way that this format forces you to do.
Also the documentation and SMART structure allows you to determine, retrospectively, whether a goal has been achieved.
Undeniably, the SMART model can also help to determine progress towards the goal.
However, for all this people (me included) still fail to achieve their goals, SMART or otherwise.
So is there an approach to improving the likelihood of successfully achieving your goals, beyond SMART? We need to look at why goals aren't achieved.
One of the main reasons that goals are not achieved is that they are not relevant to the person trying to achieve them.
It belongs to someone else.
This happens a lot in organisations, but it can also happen with personal goals when you want to achieve something to please someone else: a parent, a spouse or sibling, for example.
So you need to make sure the goal is one that is important to you, that belongs to you and that you desire to come to fruition.
Secondly, in my experience, the "achievability" of a goal is often taken to mean capability or skill.
But it is also necessary to assess whether the goal is realistic within the other constraints that exist, such as time, money and other people who may need to be involved.
Related to this, goals can be missed because of a failure to properly assess the nature and size of obstacles that lie in the way.
If obstacles are sufficiently onerous or large there has to be a compelling reason to overcome the obstacle.
So to improve your chances of achieving a goal you have to assess the obstacles that lie in your path and assess your desire to overcome them, which will be proportional to the strength of your reason (your why) for achieving the goal.
The fourth reason that goals are often missed is a lack of planning, The goal is the end, but what is the means.
What needs to happen in what order to achieve the goal? What is the first step? What are the timings for these milestones? Are all the steps realistic within the timeframe and the constraints in place.
The depth and detail of the plan needs to be proportional to the magnitude of the goal.
Finally, once you've decided that you want to achieve something and you have a plan, then start.
More goals are left undone because of a failure to start straight away than for any other reason.
It's too easy to say I'll start that tomorrow or next week, or next quarter.
If it is important enough to set as a goal, then it should be important enough to start working on immediately.
So there we have five reasons for failure to achieve results, and five steps to ensure that your SMART goals are more achievable: the goal must be Personal to you; it must be Realistic; all Obstacles need to be considered and your ability and desire to overcome them properly assessed; the necessary steps in achieving your goal should be Planned and then you have to get Started immediately - these are your PROPS to help you achieve your goals.
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