Setting goals is an important step towards achieving success. Whether you want to lose some weight, get healthier, or start a business first you must have an end goal in mind.  Starting with the end in mind is always the first step, but generalized outcome goals like, ‘I want to rule the world,’ don’t offer much support or direction, and evidently don’t end up leading to much success.  While goals may start with such a broad picture, we need to make them smarter. The SMART Goal is a technique used to help guide the goal setting process. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. A SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria in order to help focus efforts and increase changes of achieving the goal.

S is for Specific

Specific goals, that are well defined, clear and unambiguous have a significantly greater chance of being accomplished than those that are not. To make a goal specific there are five “W” questions that may be considered: who, what, where, when, and why?

A general goal might sound like, “I want to lose some weight.” Whereas a more specific goal would read, “I want to lose 20 pounds within the next 4 months by hiring a nutrition coach and joining a gym so that I can be healthier and live happier.”

Make your goals specific by asking yourself the 5 “W” questions, and then build the answers into your outcome goal.

M is for Measurable

Measurements are necessary to determine progress. A SMART goal will always have some sort of criteria for measuring progress. To make a goal measurable ask questions such as, “how many, how far, or how much?” or, “how will I know if I’ve reached my goal?” or even specifically, “what am I using as my indicator of progress?”

Having criteria for measuring built into our goals not only helps us measure progress, but also allows us to break down goals into smaller parts.

In the example goal we shared above, “I want to lose 20 pounds within the next 4 months by hiring a nutrition coach and joining a gym so that I can be healthier and live happier,” we have an exact number of pounds (20) in addition to a specific time frame (4 months). With this information we can break it down. We want to lose 5 pounds per month, or 1.25 pounds per week.

A is for Achievable

SMART goals should be achievable. Goals set that are not attainable, are simply pointless. Goals can be as big as we can imagine, so long as we can break them down into attainable steps that are achievable, and thus SMART. When setting goals, consider whether or not you have the resources and capabilities to achieve the goal. If not, figure out what’s missing and how you can obtain it.

In the example we’re using, “I want to lose 20 pounds within the next 4 months by hiring a nutrition coach and joining a gym so that I can be healthier and live happier,” the resources include the nutrition coach and the gym. Losing 1.25 pounds a week is also an achievable number. This is an achievable SMART goal.

R is for Realistic

This goes hand-in-hand with being achievable. A SMART goal must be realistically attainable, given the resources and capabilities of the goal setter. Can the goal-setter commit to what it takes to achieve the goal?

T is for Timely

SMART goals are goals that are time-bound, meaning they have both a start and a finish date. When we don’t have a deadline, there’s little sense of motivation and a higher likelihood of procrastination.   Goals should have just the right amount of urgency built into them. There are situations where giving oneself less time to accomplish something can be extremely beneficial. That is not the case with our work. For the sake of learning good nutrition habits and reaching towards body composition changes, we are almost always setting goals far in the future and then breaking them down into attainable weekly, and daily steps. Slow change is lasting change.

In our example, “I want to lose 20 pounds within the next 4 months by hiring a nutrition coach and joining a gym so that I can be healthier and live happier,” we have a built in deadline of 4 months from today.

That’s it. That’s all there is to setting smarter goals.  What are you going to achieve next?

Are you looking for a some one-on-one guidance when it comes to health and nutrition? I offer online nutrition coaching.  Learn more about this by clicking here.