Against “SMART” Goals
In the productivity world, there’s a popular framework known as SMART goals. The acronym stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
The idea is that these types of goals are especially helpful in accomplishing more with your life. For example, if you’re an author, instead of saying, “I will write more,” you should say, “I will write 1,000 words a day.”
SMART goals are definitely an improvement over the goals people typically set for themselves. Typical goals are often little more than a wish upon a star. SMART goals help people develop a plan with concrete steps that they can regularly act on so that they incrementally move towards success.
That said, I’m not a fan of the SMART acronym for a couple reasons:
First, the S and the M are redundant. If a goal is measurable, it’s also going to be specific, at least specific enough that you’re able to quantify your progress.
Second, the M and the T are also mostly redundant. Any decent measurable goal will also probably be time-bound. For example, if someone’s goal is to walk 10,000 steps... they’re also obviously going to specify the time period. 10,000 steps per year? Per week? Per day?
If three of the letters in your five-letter acronym basically express the same thing, maybe you should come up with a different acronym. In the next post, I’ll describe my alternative: MMM goals.