MMM Goals
In the last post I critiqued the SMART goals framework. It’s helpful but also somewhat redundant. Here, I describe an alternative, MMM goals, which stands for:
Meaningful
Manageable
Measurable
I. Meaningful.
Goals should be meaningful. What this means is that they should align with your underlying values. One common mistake occurs when people unthinkingly adopt the goals dictated by those around them. A student might pursue medical school to avoid disappointing their parents. Or an employee might engage in some malfeasance because their boss told them to.
Whatever the case, it’s worth asking why you have the goals that you do. Is the source of your motivation coming from within you or from some external pressure? If it’s the latter, you risk burning out from exhaustion and cynicism. That kind of motivation, where you’re constantly trying to please someone else, is less sustainable than one that comes from genuine excitement and personal conviction.
A second kind of mistake occurs when people pursue goals that are only loosely related to their deeper values. Suppose you want to learn a new language to speak with people abroad. It might not make sense to focus so heavily on complex grammar or reading/writing. Instead, a better strategy might be to drill the 500 most common words and have practice conversations with other foreign language learners. In short, when your goals are only loosely related to your underlying values, you progress is slowed and your plans feel less meaningful.
II. Manageable
When someone is facing a challenge in their life but they say “they’ll manage” what they roughly mean is that a) they recognize it might be difficult, but b) they have the capacity to overcome that challenge. This also describes a good goal in general: make it ambitious but achievable.
It should be ambitious so that it stretches you to your limits. The goals that are right at the edge of your abilities are the ones that force you to rise to the challenge. You might be surprised to find that you’re more capable than you think. And after you’ve proven to yourself that you can overcome difficulty once, you can keep pushing those frontiers to grow ever stronger and more ambitious.
And yet your goals should be achievable too. They should be more than idle fantasies. For example, you should not seriously plan on winning the lottery. It might be nice to dream about, but that’s not the road to success. Effective goals involve acting on what you can control, not dumb luck.
And just as important, you should not seriously plan on writing a 30-page term paper in a day. Effective goals do not assume that you have super powers. Instead, they take your physical, cognitive, and emotional limitations seriously. It’s ok to form stretch goals that promote your growth. But they should not stretch you so much that you snap.
III. Measurable
Finally, your goals should be measurable. Usually, this will mean there’s a specific number to track your progress.
Bad: Be more charismatic.
Good: Talk to 10 new people a day.
Bad: Study harder.
Good: Get an A in every class this semester.
There are two main reasons to track your progress:
1. Build awareness
It can be hard to tell whether you’re succeeding if you have no metric to compare your previous and present selves. And even worse, humans have a bias towards evaluating themselves favorably, so mere introspection can lead you astray.
Tracking yourself quantitatively helps avoid these problems. It allows you to get a more accurate understanding of your progress. And this, in turn, allows you to better adapt your strategies accordingly.
2. Build motivation
Having a number to focus on can boost your motivation too. It can either a) create a sense of urgency if you notice you’re falling behind or b) instill a greater sense of self-confidence if you’re crushing it. In either case, you can get additional energy to keep making progress towards your goals.
Conclusion
The Meaningful Manageable Measurable framework describes a simple way to form goals tailored for success. And crucially, each element of the MMM goals framework is conceptually distinct, making the acronym clearer and more practically useful.