User:EverythingCounts/Sandbox/Smart Goals

SMART goal setting is a productivity method designed to help you achieve your goals by improving the goals themselves. By ensuring goals follow the 5 SMART criteria, you can create better goals and have a better chance of achieving them.

The SMART criteria are:
 * Specific
 * Measurable
 * Achievable
 * Relevant
 * Time-bound

Specific
Having specific goals helps make sure they're measurable and meaningful. If goals are too vague, it can be hard to know where to get started and how to track your progress.

These are examples of goals that are too vague:

Instead of those goals, consider these:

If your goal description adds too many unneeded words or descriptors, then it might become less appealing to try and work towards. A goal like Keep my 2-story farmhouse neat and tidy by spending at least 30 minutes every single day cleaning and organizing in order to prevent allergen buildup and to keep my precious things orderly and organized so I can be happy is way too specific and could do with less description and specific identifiers. A better way to say phrase that goal would be Spend at least 30 minutes a day cleaning, dusting, and organizing my house.

Whenever you are trying to make a goal specific, remember to ask yourself these types of questions:
 * Can someone else understand what I am trying to achieve?
 * Could I make this goal more concise but still be able to understand the original goal?

Measurable
It's hard to track progress on your goals if they aren't measurable. Having goals that can be measured helps you see your progress and can be very motivating! You don't necessarily need to use numerical or quantitative measures, either. Qualitative measures are still measures so long as they have meaning to you!

Examples:

become

Make sure the measures you use are appropriate. If your goal is "Get healthy," (which, by the way, is a little too vague), don't measure purely by weight. Try alternative measures to ensure you're getting the whole picture and not focusing on the wrong thing.

Achievable
The goal should not just be realistic, it must be realistic for you. Different people have different capabilities, and just because a goal is suitable for someone else doesn't mean it isn't too difficult or too easy for you.

Don't be afraid to aim high, but it's often best to start small so you don't lose motivation in the face of a huge goal. This can be done by breaking down big goals into smaller ones.

Relevant
This applies not only to the goal itself, but also to the way you measure it. Make sure the goal you're working toward is something that is tangible and important to you! "Make my bed every day" might be a good goal for many, but if you really, truly find you feel no better coming home to a made bed, skip that one. Find goals that matter to you.

Timely
Most goals should have some kind of reasonable time limit to keep yourself motivated and prevent stagnation.

might be more motivating and achievable than

Another optional way of making goals timely is to add regularly scheduled status/progress checks using Dailies into the goal. An example would be:

You can make a Daily appear every week by making it repeat every 7 days.