I hate New Years Resolutions, I think for the vast majority of society they’re an opportunity for nothing more than verbal/mental masturbation. Now don’t get me wrong, resolution-ing is largely a subset of goal setting, and I’m all for goal setting – in fact, it’s absolutely necessary to have goals in your life so you have markers for progress as well as key performance indicators (KPIs) that help you gauge whether you’re on the right track or not.
The problem tends to be that most people have very vague resolutions. For example:
- I’m going to lose weight this year.
- I’m going to do better in school.
- I’m going to get my dream job.
- I’m going to go to the gym.
What do all of these statements have in common? Well, as I said before, they’re all very vague, each statement can be interpreted in many different ways for each person that hears it. If we take the first statement “I’m going to lose weight this year” that could mean anything from a quarter of a pound to 50 lbs depending on the person. There’s no target, and there’s a lot of wiggle room to allow a person to sustain a bear minimum of change (if any is really necessary) to feel good about achieving their goal.
Now, if you were to take that statement and apply SMART goal setting principles, you’ll be in better shape. What are SMART goals, you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked that! Here’s a brief breakdown:
SMART goal criteria first appeared in an issue of Management Review in 1981 in a paper written by George T. Doran (a former Director of Corporate Planning for Washington Water Company) titled There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. In this paper, Mr. Doran indicated that for management to be most efficient and effective in its goal setting, the goals should follow a very simple system, which he named with the acronym SMART. The acronym stands for:
- S – Specific
- M – Measurable
- A – Assignable
- R – Realistic
- T – Time-related
There are other variations that have been written of the SMART system over the years, but by and large, the purpose and the meaning has generally stayed the same. When applied to a business environment it’s very obvious to see how this process is helpful, but how does it help a person in their daily life?
Well, let’s go back to the “lose weight” goal, shall we?
If we want to follow the SMART principles, let’s determine what a SMART version of the lose weight goal would be.
- General resolution: I’m going to lose weight this year.
- Specific: I’m going to lose X pounds this year.
- Measurable: I’m going to lose X pounds this year.
- Assignable: I’m going to lose X pounds this year
- Realistic: I’m going to lose X pounds this year from starting point Y.
- Time-related: I’m going to lose X pounds this year from starting point Y.
Obviously, the statement of the goal doesn’t have to change much to apply to the SMART principles, but as you can see it’s easy enough to do. The point of this exercise is to create a measurable and trackable goal that you are specifically held accountable to. It’s easy to take a little change as a big win, when you could make a big change with a little extra effort.
Let’s take this and apply it all to my goals:
I currently weigh 190lbs and I will cut down to 175lbs by mid-year (June 30th) and then gain weight back to 185lbs by year-end (December 31st) with minimal change in body fat composition.
Now, I’ve created a specific goal with specific parameters, I’m now accountable to these markers throughout the year. The goal is measurable, I know exactly what weights I want to be at and at specific time periods. The goal is assignable, obviously, this is a goal for me. The goal is realistic, I established my starting point (190lbs) and I’ve set an ultimate goal of losing 15lbs in 6 months (that’s 2.5lbs per month), followed by 10lbs of weight gain in the subsequent 6 months (1.7lbs per month). Plus, I’ve set a further specific parameter for the second-half goal of maintaining my body fat composition (here’s the one area that’s hard to specific with, I’m going to be using qualitative measurements as opposed to quantitative due to the lack of availability of suitable measuring apparatuses). Lastly, the goal is time-related, I’ve set very specific hard deadlines for each step which will allow me to develop KPIs along the way.
I hope that helps any of my readers to better plan out their year, months and days of 2018!
Bonus Resolution: I’ve set the goal for myself to publish 1 article every week, it doesn’t matter if I write a bunch of them earlier and set them to publish later on, or if I literally sit down every week to write a new one, I’m going to write 1 article every week. Anything over that is just gravy.
Ramble on Fitness 