All of these present problems in different contexts
Specific: This assumes that the picture you currently have of what you want is the thing you actually want. Do you want faster horse, a Model T, or swift reliable transportation of a form you've not yet imagined.
Measurable: If you only value that which has a number, you'll lose sight of what truly matters in life because of the Streetlight Effect[1]. Consider the ridiculousness of the question "What NPS score would your children give you?"
Attainable: There is a limit to the degree to which you can "be sure" of anything, especially without 2020 vision.
Relevant: This requires really knowing what your values are so that you can practice the subtle art of not giving a fuck[2] about other things. Determining those can be hard emotionally-painful work, but in any context it is a good problem you want to have solved.
Time Bound: Sometimes deadlines spur action, sometimes they paralyse or cause you to lose sleep. Sometimes, they are so far off in the future that you don't think about them until it is too late because you thought you could do them. If you're looking at a timescale longer than 6 weeks, consider instead that you might want a CGP-Grey style Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE
I think you're assuming that long-term goals can't change. Just because I have a goal to do X in ten years, that doesn't mean I am forcibly committed to reaching X even if I no longer want to.
Let's say I have a vague dream of becoming a sailor. Consider these four scenarios:
- Scenario A: I make it an explicit goal. In year 1, I read some books, take a sailing class, and forgo some luxuries to start saving up for a boat. In year 2, I buy a boat and sail. Dream attained!
- Scenario B: I make no goal. In the absence of a concrete goal, I don't read or save in year 1. In year 2, I still long to sail but am no closer to getting there. Eventually I run out the clock on my life.
- Scenario C: I make it an explicit goal. In year 1, I read some books, take a sailing class, and forgo some luxuries to start saving up for a boat. In year 2, I decide I am no longer interested in sailing. I remove that long-term goal, and spend the money I saved on something else.
- Scenario D: I make no goal. In the absence of a concrete goal, I don't read or save in year 1. In year 2, I lose interest in sailing. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
The two failure modes are B and C. If you fail to pursue a long-term goal that doesn't change (B), you are eternally unfulfilled. If you pursue a dream that changes before you reach it (C), you have some lost opportunity cost for the work you put into that dream that is now not relevant.
For most people, the latter is a much smaller harm than the former. It's more rewarding to strive towards something meaningful even if it ends up not panning out than to abandon your dreams pre-emptively.
Of course, the ideal is A or D, but none of us have a time machine to determine who our future selves will become. So the only choice you can make today is A/C or B/D.
I think the problem with long term goals is not that your preferences may change but you don't update your goals. I think the problem is procrastination.
Consider this variation of your Scenario A: You make explicit goals to read 3 relevant books, take a sailing class, and save $10,000 for a boat. You find yourself in mid October having only read 1 book and saved up $2000. You end up not sailing until year 4 even though year 2 was certainly achievable.
A better variation of Scenario A: Breaking the big goal into smaller ones can prevent this type of procrastination. Instead of save $10000 by end of year, make 26 goals to save $385 every payday. Then make a goal to sign up for the sailing classes by June. Then based on that June date, decide to read book 1 by Feb 28, book two by April 30, and book 3 by June 30.
In the second variation, I assert you'd be much less likely to procrastinate to the point that your year end goal becomes unachievable.
Perhaps you assumed in Scenarios A and C would do that. Your post would make more sense that way. But I find most people do not do any breakdown. They'd just set the end of year results as the goal the reach a point where they realize it is impossible to achieve any of it.
>"If you only value that which has a number, you'll lose sight of what truly matters in life because of the Streetlight Effect[1]"
I don't think that's the intent. The intent is to look back and see if you accomplished your goal or not. If you don't have a measurement, then you don't know if you've meet your goal. Something such as 'I want to be a good parent to my kid' Isn't specific, nor is it attainable. Setting a goal of 'I want to spend an hour of time a day with my child' is both specific and measurable.
>" Sometimes, they are so far off in the future that you don't think about them until it is too late because you thought you could do them."
Seems like the contradicts the 'Relevant' part of SMART.
I see this as a framework to help you focus in on your goal instead of making wishes at the start of ever new year. 'I'm going to lose weight this year' Okay, how are you going to do that? Are you going to exercise and eat less? Okay, how much or both and how will you know if you met those micro goals? Given what we know about weight loss at the moment, what's a reasonable goal weight for March, June, August?
> 'I'm going to loose weight this year' Okay, how are you going to do that?
About this goal specifically, I found it beneficial to stop thinking about a target weight. Instead think about: What level of fitness do I want? What kind of health do I want? (the two are related, but not the same)
Main reason: If you take up exercise and are not obese or at the higher end of "overweight", you may not lose weight for the first couple of months (or ever!) depending on the style of exercise you've selected and your body's tendency to build muscle. If you take up weightlifting, and are overweight but not obese, you could see your body composition basically trade, nearly pound for pound, fat for muscle. You will look better and feel better but not achieve the weight goal, which can be disheartening to people who have an explicit weight goal even though what they've done has measurably improved their fitness and health. And if you take up running or something similarly cardio intensive, you may gain weight (building up leg and core muscles with running, for instance) in the first few weeks before any weight loss begins. This is similarly disheartening and demotivating.
Instead, think about what fitness or health level you want and why, then work towards them.
My fitness goal was predicated on being able to play back-to-back soccer games (rec league, 70 minute games). So I needed to be able to sustain nearly 2 hours of continuous movement including sprints and extended periods of running/jogging. So I took up running and got my 5k time below 25 minutes, then upped it to 10k runs. A single game left me feeling like I'd just finished a warmup, the second game would leave me feeling like I'd actually exercised but not fatigued.
My health goal was predicated on getting off a statin and reducing my blood pressure (largely work stress induced, but my weight and fitness at the time pushed it into the pre-hypertensive range). So I ate better in order to achieve that, and reduced (not eliminated, still drink coffee black) caffeine in order to improve sleep (both improved sleep and reduced caffeine also helped reduce my anxiety levels and my periodic panic attacks at the time left me, happy side effect).
Both of those left me at a lower weight than I started at, but I had no explicit weight target. If I had, I could've been demotivated by early weight gains (when I started running I went from 215 to 220lbs) or later weight gains (when I added BJJ to my exercise regimen I went from 175 to 190). Both of those were the result of increased muscle mass, but they both took me in the "wrong" direction if weight loss and a weight target were specific goals.
Coming at this from opposite direction as you, I nevertheless wholeheartedly agree.
I've spent large chunks of my life as an extremely fit ultra-endurance athlete. I've done events that other ultra-endurance athletes called "insane". I wasn't at the front of the pack, but I was at the front of the middle of the pack.
These days, I'm not interested in racing. I'm not even interested in training. But if I do think about "fitness" or "health" goals, it's definitely structured around what I'd like to be able to do, rather than specifics of my body.
For example, one standing goal I've had for a long time is to remain fit enough be able to go out and run a half-marathon more or less on a whim, and still finish in 1:45 or less without hurting too much.
More recently, having moved to 6000' as a home elevation, as well as being very sedentary from work/life stuff, I'd like to be able to keep up runs uphill without stopping, regardless of the pace I'm moving at (currently impossible).
I think structuring things around "what I want to be able to do, and how I want to feel after I do them" is an excellent framework, and far better than "lose N pounds" or "cut X minutes off my time for Y".
I'm also living at a higher altitude (moved to CO last year) and our house is at 7k feet, it's changed my objectives as well. I doubt I can get back to 25 minute 5k runs anytime soon, but I would like to get back to 5k runs and completing them without having to stop. Good luck to you and your uphill battle.
> Something such as 'I want to be a good parent to my kid' Isn't specific, nor is it attainable. Setting a goal of 'I want to spend an hour of time a day with my child' is both specific and measurable.
There are so many factors that play into being a good father that "I want to spend an hour of time a day with my child" is essentially useless.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean that to be an exhaustive list of how to be a good parent. It was meant to be an example of specific and measurable sub goal on the path to what someone feels leads to being a good father.
It's off topic, but you seem to have some insight into this. What steps would you take to achieve a goal like that?
The point of SMART is that it's a framework to help you communicate your goals. They are often used in management because if someone says "i wanna build x" you and that person may have a different definition of what that means. If you agree on specifics and how you will measure done you've clearly communicated.
If you can't communicate what you will deliver and by when how can someone know if you've done what you've set out to do?
yea. SMART is a tool with flaws that are more or less relevant in different contexts. Being aware of the flaws helps you use the tool better and helps you decide when to choose a different tool.
1) Write out your goals in the form of a personal letter to yourself. Focus on the things you think are making you unhappy, not what you think will make you happy. Read it out loud in private. After that, hide it away for a while where only you will find it.
2) Keep your goals private. Especially keep progress private. Trying to stop smoking/drinking? Folks will notice, but politely decline to answer that infamous "how long since...?" question. Don't externalize the rewards.
3) Focus on very small results. Find a way to make them stick. Build on that and in time you'll find that amounts to a LOT more progress and personal satisfaction.
IMO build from the ground up and the fancy big goals will come more easily and naturally. You won't have to game it.
Definitely agree with #2, especially with big goals (or what they call BHAG in the article).
Seriously, go around and tell people that you want to write a new york times best seller and see what kind of reactions you get lol. Talk about destroying your motivation quickly.
I think it's a trap either way. The flip side can also be just as problematic.
Having people sincerely wishing you the best, congratulating you on your initiative and dream-chasing tends makes it feel like you're doing something positive. All you've done, however, is talk about it and are already getting rewarded. That undermines real motivation to start/continue far too easily.
Let those rewards come naturally and from within with actual progress.
There was a discussion here on HN perhaps 8 or 10 years ago that led me to realize I was doing essentially that. I talked about getting in shape and other goals, and got an emotional high (of a sort) from the response I got and from thinking about what I would do to get in shape and be able to do once I was in shape. But I never followed through.
Then I shut up about it, and actually got in shape. And when I ran into some people who I rarely saw, and they were shocked by my 40+ lb weight loss and how good I looked, I got that same emotional reward but also the actual reward of being in shape and being able to do the things I'd only imagined being able to do.
Now I discuss what I'm doing with some like minded friends and we keep each other accountable (Hey, how's the running going? Made it a full 10k yet?). But I don't discuss it with other people in general unless it's brought up by them. A kind of happy-medium between the talk-too-much and just-shut-up-and-work modes of operation.
I also find that setting goals from ground up works better for me.
I find it very hard to believe in audatious goals so that makes them really unmotivating. But there are many directions where you can achieve small victories.
I think happiness comes from contentment more than achieving goals.
I attended training at my work where they changed M to Motivating, and I use that with all of my employees' objectives. One might say that if it's Relevant then it should be motivating, but when I ask them if it's motivating I often get an honest no. I find if the person doesn't like the goal despite it being SMART, then they tend to avoid it.
The other question I learned to ask for Attainable is "do you think there is an 80% chance or better you'll hit your date--if not it's good to dial the goal back.
>> 'I want to spend an hour of time a day with my child' is both specific and measurable.
This is probably not a goal but a system and systems are much preferable to goals. This has been discussed elsewhere and I personally prefer to have systems than goals.
I have still not reached a stage where I can define systems without a goal as a starting point. Even then I let the system make the goal fade into the background and eventually make it invisible/irrelevant.
The key difference is systems eliminate the end stage of a goal and the resulting emptiness after completing a goal.
I don't quite get the advice to come up with a "big hairy audacious goal (BHAG)" for one's self. It's one thing if one already has a personal BHAG, but going through a process to develop one as a personal goal seems almost... backwards to me. I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to come up with something so specific that "sums up" the way I'd like my life to turn out, but maybe that's just my personality.
Christ I hate the word 'overwhelm'. It's SO jarring. It's like when people say "I'm feeling melancholy". NO! You're feeling melancholic! You did something "on purpose" and not "purposely"! And the world is not full of overwhelm. It's full of emotional overload[1] perhaps.
> It's like when people say "I'm feeling melancholy". NO! You're feeling melancholic!
While I fully agree with you and it sounds incredibly weird, dictionaries don't agree with you on this one. They consider "melancholy" a synonym of "melancholic".
Yep, and they state that purposely is a real word that's been in use for 500 years. I'll fight them to my grave! My beef with it has always been that two perfect words exist already: melancholia and melancholic. Between them, they cover all the ways in which I wish to use the word.
This article is the first time I've seen it used as a noun. It stopped me in my tracks (so I could duckduckgo it), then it made me consider that maybe the article wasn't written by a native English speaker, then (finally) I read the rest of the article.
Note that a person who is likely to feel that way is also likely to be less well-equipped to predict your specific preferences for how to express that.
Fair enough, although in writing such a post, the author does take up the mantle of having some kind of expertise in the first place that enables them to preach to others. As in, the advice presumably works for her to not feel overwhelmed.
Here's the question I struggle with: How do you set "goals" when you don't know what you want? I have been stymied by this time and time again. If you don't know what you want to accomplish, how do you set any "goals"?
You set a goal "find out what I want" and start working on that goal on a daily basis.
The OP lost me at "SMART" which is the very first word in his article. SMART goals are not smart. They stem from "management by objectives" and are not a good way for individual personal goal setting.
SMART Goal: Spend 30 mins on Sunday researching what new thing I will try that week. During that 30 minutes, identify the smallest reason why I find that thing interesting. Repeat for 8 weeks.
I have few long term goals, primarily health/fitness (now at the sustainment phase of this) and financial (to be able to properly retire without needing supplemental income). Most of my goals are near-to-medium term. I base them off of things I want/need to do but cannot for some reason.
I cannot, presently, understand the systems at work to the extent I want to (astrodynamics, satellites and such; calc, linear, and physics are 15 years in my past). So I'm deliberately setting aside time to study and practice those topics to enable my understanding of astrodynamics and what we do at work. I don't intend to master it (that is, to the extent of the literal rocket scientists in the office), and I don't know that I'll need or use it after this current position. But I do want/need to know it now so I've established goals around it.
I want to make furniture, and have the ability to do decent work. I took some courses and enjoyed it, and demonstrated to myself I wasn't incompetent at it. But I have no equipment in my home to do it. So I'm setting aside money to buy some basic equipment, and planning to set aside time to spend on it once I do.
What, in your life, is currently blocked from you or are you not at your desired level? Create near-term goals to remove the blockers or achieve your desired capability/level. If you start to make a habit out of thinking this way and developing routines and systems to enable these goals, it may become easier to make long term ones. Or you may never really make long term goals, we don't all need them.
Don't set a goal of running a marathon or losing x pounds/Kgs but rather run every day x distance and eat / don't eat every day x healthy food / y unhealthy food.
Once a process or habit is in place, you can look at goals and more ambitious processes. Small goals are good to start with and having huge life goals is fine (having a "purpose").
Im not the type of person to worry about, or try to optimize for, productivity, because I think it can turn insidious or unhealthy quickly, but from the little that I _have_ read about goal setting and whatnot, this seems like a great explanation of how to quickly get started implementing a system for personal growth.
Im glad that it wasn’t biased towards specific systems, but rather general concepts which anyone can implement however they like. This feels like non-bullshit content marketing. Well done, doit.
From what I get, this is focussed on SMART, which is good. For goals like the ones that are mentioned in the article ("Workout 3-5 times a week") what I found though, and what did wonders for me, was additionally considering the results of research in habit forming. Especially binding the activity to a trigger instead of a certain date and time was really effective.
Can you elaborate on the trigger part? As many, I have established some goals for this year and it already feels like the existing habits are reclaiming their spots.
The video I linked below might help. I references the papers it used as sources. I linked right to the part where it gets to the "events not times" topic.
The post mentions Accountability Tools. I offer my services as an accountability coach. I’m geared towards helping coding project type goals, but, I’d help with most anything. If folks want help getting their projects across the finish line, I can (personally) help!
I think your URL is a fantastic choice and hints at what a lot of "accountability coaching" really is:
Camaraderie
An easily-imaginable person who acts as a reward model[1] you can imagine saying "yea! Make progress on the thing! You're on the right path[2]! Keep going." When you anticipate [social] rewards for an action, that action is motivating.
If you watch Dr. Andrew Huberman's talks about the roles of Dopamine in the brain, he'll say it is not a signal of reward, but of anticipated reward. It does spike when you recognise a surprisingly strong reward, (like when you hit a jackpot or an unexpectedly interesting HN link) to help you learn to repeat the path to that reward[2], but mostly it signals "Yep, you're on the right path. Now go make that test green".
Cool! I have a course online for time management and work-life balance. I'm an old guy and I know a few things (don't let the wordpress fool ya!). bizworklife.com
Most people can set goals, follow through and completion is often where they get stuck. I don't blog, but if I did, "Completing goals for 2021" would be a nice one.
> The act of simply showing up, no matter how you feel or what else you need to do, is hugely powerful. Anthony Trollope was a prolific English novelist who published 47 novels while maintaining a “regular” full-time job. He did this by committing to write 250 words every 15 minutes every single day. He did that every day, without fail, and achieved amazing results.
How the hell does one write 250 words every 15 mins every day while having a job.
There's nothing wrong with setting goals. But you usually have to create a system to go along with the goals in order to achieve them. Having goals, though, can direct the systems you want to create for yourself.
Goals (for me) over the past few years:
1. Be able to play 140 minutes of soccer in one go without wanting to die (or feeling like I would).
2. Be able to stop taking a statin.
3. Get my blood pressure down from 130 over 90 to a healthy level (not critically high, but worrisome high)
4. Become a better GM for my bi-weekly RPG games
5. Become a better whole-system software developer/designer
Those are all goals I achieved, but in order to achieve them I established systems that enabled them. 1, 2, and 3 were created by a focus on always exercising MTWR, occasionally F (but that was left open for social events) and of specifically going to the grocery and shopping in specific sections (stay on the perimeter, ignore most aisles) and cooking at home. 4 was achieved by creating a habit of increasing fiction/RPG book reading and setting aside time to draw up/write down material for sessions so it was less improvised, but the fiction reading also gave inspiration for better improvisation. I also explicitly asked for feedback about sessions rather than letting players stew and be pissed at me because I made something too hard or seemed to be targeting a specific player. 5 was achieved by a similar approach, though around creating personal projects and reading technical content and carving out the time to do it. Creating various short term objectives (like being back in school) that would exercise specific areas I felt I was weak in, along with soliciting feedback from others (peers and managers).
Most of what you're describing is habits and systems, not goals--and that's what I'm saying, too. James Clear's article here espouses what I'm talking about: https://jamesclear.com/goals-systems
Well, I am setting goals, but I'm specifically creating systems to enable achieving and sustaining those goals. That's my point. Systems aren't better than goals, and goals aren't contradictory to systems. They feed on each other. Goals are motivation to create systems, systems are mechanisms to achieve goals.
Goals can also be "repeated" goals. Like my fitness example, I didn't want to make it through 140 minutes of soccer on just one Saturday (this is a problem with "I want to run a marathon" goals, it's a singular achievement). I wanted to do that every Saturday throughout the season so the system enabled perpetuating that ability throughout the years.
Specific: This assumes that the picture you currently have of what you want is the thing you actually want. Do you want faster horse, a Model T, or swift reliable transportation of a form you've not yet imagined.
Measurable: If you only value that which has a number, you'll lose sight of what truly matters in life because of the Streetlight Effect[1]. Consider the ridiculousness of the question "What NPS score would your children give you?"
Attainable: There is a limit to the degree to which you can "be sure" of anything, especially without 2020 vision.
Relevant: This requires really knowing what your values are so that you can practice the subtle art of not giving a fuck[2] about other things. Determining those can be hard emotionally-painful work, but in any context it is a good problem you want to have solved.
Time Bound: Sometimes deadlines spur action, sometimes they paralyse or cause you to lose sleep. Sometimes, they are so far off in the future that you don't think about them until it is too late because you thought you could do them. If you're looking at a timescale longer than 6 weeks, consider instead that you might want a CGP-Grey style Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
[2] https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Subtle-Art-of-Not-Giving-a-... Highly recommend this to anyone who spends lots of time thinking about personal goal-setting.