Let’s talk goals! Often times, at the start of a project or the start of a new year, you may create goals for yourself. As time passes, you realize you have not completed hardly any of the goals you set out to accomplish. It’s safe to say we have all probably been here. Clearly there are good intentions behind the points you hope to achieve; however, maybe you aren’t giving yourself the right goal. In other words… work smarter not harder. Outlined below are strategies to help you achieve your goals!
Setting SMART Goals
A “SMART Goal” is a strategy that will help you to dissect your goal into measurable metrics.
- Specific: who, what, when, where, and why?
- Measurable: How will you measure your progress? What are your metrics to measure?
- Attainable: Is this something you can get done with your skill level and time?
- Relevant: Is this relevant to my overall goals for the future?
- Timely: What is your deadline? Why is this your deadline? Is it realistic?
Often times, we create goals that are vague and not measurable, such as: “We would like to increase our engagement with our audience by next year.” While this is a great goal, how do you know you have succeeded? A SMART Goal has metrics within them that you can point to and assess whether you have achieved them. For example, a SMART Goal would be, “Our team would like to consistently increase our monthly revenue of our Spirit Box by 5% before the end of May through increasing our marketing efforts by creating social media accounts for our Spirit Box. The additional funds will go towards our DECA programming.”
Strategies
Now you have your goals set…what now? It’s time to take action and create strategies that need to be completed in order to reach your overall goal. Your strategies are almost like “mini-goals” to be able to fulfill your larger goal.
Outlining strategies can be intimidating. You may be wondering where to even start. The best way to figure this out is to start at the end. Another way to call this is to reverse engineer your project. What exactly does this mean? In a nutshell, you start at the end of your goal as if it was accomplished and successful and you dissect what exactly needs to be done in order to reach this success. Here is how to outline your strategy:
- Draw out a timeline
- Write your SMART Goal at the end of the timeline
- Now, work your way backward. What is each step that needs to be completed in order to accomplish your goal?
For example:
Ready to get started? Click here to receive our SMART Goals Worksheet and a Real-World Example.
