Creating goals is a necessary step towards building and growing your future self. At any given time, you should have sets of goals you are working towards. These would include financial goals, fitness goals, career goals, and health goals (just to name a select few). Each aspect of your life you would like to improve should have some type of goal set, perhaps some more formal than others. Creating these goals benefits from some processes and perspectives to ensure that the goal captures the needed elements for the highest odds of success.
SMART Method
One of the most well documented methodologies for creating and structuring goals is the SMART method. Completing a quick Google search will return countless resources on the topic. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound (depending on the resource you check, these words may vary slightly, but the essence is the same). The intent is to make a clearly defined goal that you could actually complete, which has a well defined due date. This method is great, but I have found that it is essential to keep individual goals as small as possible. When a goal is set for a long time range, perhaps 12 months or more, it is easy to lose sight of the target and miss on delivering on the goal. Taking this long range approach to building your goals often leads to a failure to execute and achieve the desired outcome. There are certainly long range goals everyone has (retiring early, career aspirations, etc.), which is where iteration comes into play.
Iteration
When you are looking at building a long range goal, it is important to look at that goal in small chunks. These small chunks should be the short term goals that build upon each other to lead you to your desired future state. This method of iteration then uses your SMART goals to build upon each other (like a set of stairs). By taking this approach you can focus on achieving smaller victories, preferably in time chunks of 90 days or less.
Learning is a lifelong skill, and approaching your goals as opportunities for individual learning is a great way to reinforce behaviors and leverage skills.
Learning New Skills or Information
When your SMART goals are built around learning new skills and information, as many do, it is important to take into account proven methodologies for learning. Thinking back to your time in school, you will notice that there is a standard underlying methodology utilized in nearly every class you have taken. This is how it breaks down:
- Learning the Content
- Required readings
- Class lectures
- Practicing the Learnings
- Homework
- Projects
- Labs
- Demonstration of Learning
- Exams
- Final Projects
These core functions have existed for decades, and have remained unchanged over time due to their effectiveness. Therefore, when we are looking at building our SMART goals for learning a new skill or piece of information, we should leverage this same framework for building your goal. The benefit of this being a goal instead of school is that YOU get to decide what and how you will execute on the deliverables throughout the process. I have used the following framework with my team to help them structure their goals, along with some suggestions of how they could be achieved:
- How will I learn it?
- Online courses
- Read a book
- Attend a webinar or lecture
- Shadowing
- How will I practice it?
- Building a lab/demo environment
- Completing tasks within a workflow (i.e. resolving support tickets on a specific topic)
- Reverse shadowing (you do as a mentor watches)
- How will I demonstrate what I learned?
- Presentation to a peer or supervisor
- Teaching someone else
- Completion of a defined project
Learning is a lifelong skill, and approaching your goals as opportunities for individual learning is a great way to reinforce behaviors and leverage skills.
Pulling it All Together
When executed properly, a goal could potentially fit into all three topics outlined above. Not all goals will, based upon the desired outcome or topic of the goal. However, many of your goals will be SMART goals to learn a specific skill or information, which will iterate to the next SMART goal which builds upon that new knowledge. Take the time to document these goals and then hold yourself accountable for executing upon them. For some, the help of an accountability partner can be a great tool to drive your execution. However, discipline is always the key to success.