SMART-ly Redefine Your Career Goals

Whether we’re in search of personal or professional development opportunities, many of us spend the early parts of a new year dreaming up big goals. Learning something new, getting that promotion, expanding your skillset or your network; these things all require a big imagination and the patience to make things happen.

Once you have your goals defined (I strongly encourage getting them down on paper!) it’s time to focus on planning. How can we focus in on a lofty goal—even an unconventional goal—and take the appropriate steps to make it happen?

This is where SMART goal planning comes in. SMART is an acronym you may have heard before, and it signals that your goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. In order to craft a SMART goal, we’ll need to define the specific actions that will help us achieve our goal and plan realistic and attainable next steps.

Setting a SMART goal

Once you’ve identified a general, high-level goal, the next thing thing you’ll need to do with that high-level goals is make it SMART.

• Specific: Avoid setting goals that feel too general. When you’re trying to measure your progress, you’ll be happy you got specific!
• Measurable: There are certain metrics that can signal whether or not we have achieved our goal (and even tell us whether we’re on the right track).
• Achievable: Think of something that’s ambitious, but not unattainable
• Realistic or Relevant: Your goal should be realistic given your context, location, abilities, time of year etc., and it should be relevant (to your career trajectory, personal interests, or academic pursuits).
• Time-bound: This one is easy. Make sure your goal has a deadline!

Take a few minutes now and make your own goal SMART, checking the list above to ensure it meets all of the criteria.

Brainstorming your actions

Once we have a SMART goal, we have to figure out how to achieve it by identifying which actions will get us there.

Think comprehensively! For example, if your goal is perform well in a bike race, this isn’t only dependent on making time to practice. Of course, logging time on your bike will be important, you’ll also need to set smaller goals around maintaining healthy sleep and eating habits. Similarly, if your goal is to have quality conversations in Spanish, it isn’t just about drilling vocabulary words; maybe it means watching a movie in Spanish, or or listening to merengue, rumba, salsa, or other types of Latin/Spanish music.

As you do this for yourself, notice how most of the example actions are also SMART. This will help in balancing your plan and also setting milestones along the way. Revisiting the example of “I want to have quality conversations in Spanish,” it’s not just about learning 300 vocabulary words in six weeks. Perhaps you set a smaller weekly goal of 50 words per week and reviewing all of the ones we have learned so far at the end of every week. SMART actions will allow you to check on your “Measurable” progress every week and will prevent you from “cramming” to reach your goal at the last minute. You want to avoid the possibility of feeling overwhelmed and discouraged and just not doing it. Go ahead and do this now.

Planning out your actions

Your planning format must be useable—you have to want to use it. I love spreadsheets, and a solid to-do list keeps me motivated. That doesn’t mean you love spreadsheets and to-do lists. Use whatever method feels natural and accessible to you. If you use a paper planner or Google Calendar for everything in your life, then integrate these goals into that system.

A few reminders and things to think about before planning out your timeline and milestones:

• Stay present and focused: Multitasking can be feel very helpful as we work toward our goals, but it can just as easily be a distraction from the thing you’re trying to achieve.
• Identify what you need from others: Bring your circle into this process. Explaining how important a goal like this is to you and what others can do to support you will help ensure success.
• Dedicating time: Some goals will require more dedicated time than others. After creating your plan, review it to make sure it is still “Achievable” and if not, tweak your SMART goal and go through the process again.

Take some time now to start planning when you will work on and complete each of your action items. I normally plan out a week at a time and review my progress and plan the next week every Sunday, but think about what will work best for you.

Create accountability

Once you have taken the time to do these steps and have dedicated yourself to the process, the last planning step is to create some accountability. Often times, planning is the fun part, but the doing can be harder.

As I mentioned above, a great method to keep yourself accountable is by sharing your goals with friends and family. Ultimately the more people in your life who ask you “how is training for the bike race?” or “how is the Spanish coming along,” the better.

***