How To Set Smart Goals And Actually Achieve Them?

Are you feeling low and unsure as to how you will ever reach your goals? Do you have dreams, but they never seem to happen?

You might even have heard of the idea of setting smart goals but are unsure as to how they even work, and you feel a bit intimidated over the whole goal creating process.

I want to help you to understand how to set goals and how to follow through and actually achieve them, no matter what your goals are.

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Do You Set Goals?

What is goal setting?

For me, goal setting allows me to focus on something and to see those results I’m looking for.

It gives me a purpose and an end goal, something I can define and measure my success.

It can be work focused or personal, goal setting helps you get to a desired outcome.

I want to show you how to write your own goal strategy and succeed.

Set Smart Goals

The idea behind setting smart goals is sound, what isn’t in my opinion is how you take those ideas and see the end results.

I’ve always felt that there was something missing in this acronym, or my interpretation of it.

• S – specific
• M – measurable
• A – attainable
• R – realistic
• T – timely

Specific Goal Setting

Let’s dive deeper into each area.

Specific: the more detail you can give your goal the better. The idea is not to be too vague about your goal.

‘I want to lose weight’ isn’t specific enough you have to be more precise with your goal. ‘I want to lose 10lb’s’ is a better goal because its more precise and detailed as to what you want to do.

Measurable Goal Setting

Measurable: For me, this is something I’ve always struggled with, how can you measure something?

I think for many years I struggled with the concept of measuring a goal, but now I’ve realised this is one of the most important aspects of setting a goal.

You have to have a way to see the goal and where you have to go on that journey to success.

I’m not always a visual person and the idea of creating something visual to track or measure my success was not something I thought about in depth.

But this is the most important part, it encourages you to tackle something having a visual reminder of the goal you want to achieve.

If you want a tracker you need to join my newsletter where you get access to the printable library where you can grab a tracker ready to print off.

Attainable Goal Setting

Attainable: Have you got time to focus on this goal at this moment in time?

This is something that I have to think about when setting goals, I have a tendency to put too much on my plate and then struggle to achieve all that I want to because I literally don’t have the time.

Realistic Goal Setting

Realistic: The goal must be something that you can achieve, you are allowed to push your goals a little bit, something you have to stretch to achieve.

But making goals that aren’t realistic you are setting yourself up for failure.

Let’s look at the weight goal I mentioned earlier. ‘I want to lose 10lbs in two weeks’ isn’t a realistic goal and it certainly isn’t going to be attainable.

‘I want to lose 10lbs in five weeks’ is a more realistic goal to aim for.

Timely Goal Setting

Timely: You have to give yourself a deadline, without one you really don’t have any incentive to actually take action on your goal.

You must have a clearly defined path for your goal.

Evolving And Changing Goals

However, goals aren’t set in stone and they can change and develop over time.

This is a good thing and one of the reasons why I don’t look further than 90 days at a time because it’s a short enough time frame to work with.

Longer than 90 days you are wasting time trying to work out plans for goals that might not even happen.

Yes, you can have longer goals, but don’t plan anything really well past the 90-day mark.

Creating Actionable Tasks

But how do you take a sentence or two and turn that into something you can actually achieve?

I think this is were most plans fail, you aren’t given the tools to help you achieve your goals.

You are given advice on how to plan these goals and then most of the time you are left on your own.

Breaking down this goal into something you can take action on is the most important part of goal setting.

Achieving Your Goals

So, let’s go back to the weight lose topic and work out how to achieve the goal.

‘I want to lose 20lbs in 90 days’ First you put this through the ‘smart’ system and feel that it’s something you can commit to.

Then what? You have to have some actions that will help you reach that goal.

Some suggestions could be:

• Going to a slimming club to get help and advice
• Going on a calorie counting diet
• Increase your water intake
• Increase your exercise

You then need to create these tasks and habits that you build into your day to help you reach your goal.

What Could You Do?

You need the actual steps that you need to do to achieve your goals.

So, in this example I might set up a habit tracker to help me track my water intake. Hydration is so important.

I might look at taking an exercise class once or twice a week and build that into my week.

But the most important part is the tracking to see if you are losing the weight. Having a weigh-in and seeing the direction your weight is going and tracking your progress.

Assessing what you are doing is going to make the difference as you can then adjust your plans to ensure you hit your target at the 90-day point.

Reaching Your Goal

Knowing that you’ve completed your goal and celebrating that success is so important for your own motivation.

Creating smaller goals for just 90 days means there is 4 of these 90-day goals in a year and the amount of progress you can make to the overall yearly goal is amazing.

Yet, you will only be focusing on the smaller goals that you can control and achieve in the 90-day framework.

Daily Goal Setter

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I’m using a daily goal setter that I was gifted from Mal Paper, it’s a simple system that encourages you to look at your goals and then break them down into months, weeks and days.

It’s an A5 size book that looks and feels lovely with high quality paper and instructions on how to create goals.

It’s undated so you can start at any point which I do think is better than waiting for a particular time of the month or year.

What I learnt

My biggest problem was filling up the daily page with way too much stuff that I couldn’t possibly do in a week let alone a day!

But also, my tasks are too big, I’ve discovered since using this goal planner that I’m not breaking things down small enough, so they are finished within an hour or two at the very most.

Instead my tasks are taking 5, 6, even 8+ hours just on one task and that’s not helping me.

So, this goal setting planner has highlighted areas that I need to focus on and tweak when it comes to the weekly and daily level of my planning.

My Future Goal Planning

This is giving me so much more focus on the goals that eventually will get me to the big yearly goals.

But one important factor to note is that I won’t be trying to fit in all my goals in the final few months of the year.

I’ll have been working towards those goals but in smaller more manageable size.

This type of smart goal setting can work in your personal and professional life and what’s most important is that it can work for you too.

Let’s Recap…

You want to set smart goals, but you want to actually achieve them too.

You’ve planned your goals, now what? You have to break those goals down into habits or tasks that you need to complete to actually succeed in your goal.

The most importance aspect of goal setting is being able to measure your success.

It will allow you to see what is working and what isn’t before the end of the 90-day period. This allows for any changes and tweaks you might need to make.

No goal is set in stone, you might need to make changes to your goal or how you reach your target and that’s why it’s important to set short term goals and to track your progress.

Celebrate your success, this will help to motivate you to succeed in your next goal.

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