You’re busy and ambitious. You want to keep growing: becoming a better and better version of yourself all the time. You've got things to do and people to see: but keeping track of it is hard.

They never teach you goal setting in school: they just tell you what your goals should be. The internet is full of suggestions: unbelievably ornate planners, BuzzFeed-stype listicles with generic advice like "learn time management". Let’s be honest — most of it is useless! None of it has to do with actual goal-setting.

This is the first in a series of blog posts dedicated to helping you take your goals, shape them into something actionable, and start acting on it. Get out a sheet of paper or open up your favorite digital note-taker: we're about action here, not just reading.

Let's Cut to the Chase

We both know you opened this up with a goal in mind. Let’s start by writing that down:

I want to…
(e.g. I want to learn Spanish)

The first step to reaching your goals is to have a good goal. Some goals are setting you up for failure. Take a goal like “Learn Spanish” for instance. How will you know when you’ve reached your goal? How are you even going to get started on that goal? Setting goals without giving yourself a path to succeed is doing yourself a disservice. That’s where the SMART framework comes in.

The “SMART” framework was proposed in the 1980s to lay out management goals at the office. It’s since been generalized and is widely used: perhaps you’ve heard of it or even used it before. As with any framework, there are pros and cons. But overall, the SMART framework is a helpful lens through which to approach goal setting. The idea is to define not just the goal, but the path to it.

What's a "SMART" Goal?

The acronym for SMART has changed a bit since the 80s. And different groups have modified it to suit their needs. We’re going to focus on the most common version: “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based.” Let’s make our goal smarter!

Step 1: What's Your Deadline?

Deadlines are a huge part of goal-setting. When was the last time you got something done that didn’t have a deadline? Never? Yeah, me neither.

Find a timeline that makes sense. You’ve probably noticed that “time-based” is at the end of the word SMART, but I’ve moved it up to the very beginning. That’s because the deadline for your goal has a huge impact on how you define your goal.

Let’s talk about our example goal: “Learn Spanish.” We know we need to break it down. Maybe our end goal really is to be completely fluent in Spanish! But to reach that goal we need to set smaller, more achievable goals and hit those first. We want to build a ladder that leads us to the long term goal of being fluent in Spanish. So let’s start with a deadline for when we’d like to reach the first rung of the ladder.

This is a good time to think about why you’ve chosen this goal. Are there any deadlines that present themselves? Are there any obvious steps to reaching your goal that you can assign semi-arbitrary deadlines to? If you’re planning a vacation, that’s a very concrete deadline. If you’re a lawyer looking to better serve your Spanish-speaking clients, the deadline is much more long-term. In cases like that, it might be best to pick a deadline by which you’d like to celebrate a concrete level of success. Maybe a month or a quarter.

On your sheet of paper answer this question:

When do I want to celebrate?
(e.g. I want to celebrate at the end of the month.)

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Next week we'll cover step 2!
In the meantime, know that this little girl is proud of you: