6 Reasons SMART Goals Don’t Work

And how to be setting better goals.

In a personal development course I took in high school, I was introduced to the SMART goal system. From that point on, the acronyms of SMART were instilled into my mind and for a good reason.

The first is that this is the only legitimate goal-setting formula to exist as far as I’m aware.

The second is that I found this system to be entirely bogus and not a very effective system to be setting goals.

Over the years, I’ve seen other systems out there.

• There is the SMARTER goal system (which encompasses evaluating the goal and reflecting on the results), though it still has the same issues as the SMART goal system.
• I’ve also been building systems that are effectively a set of actions or sequences that I do to completing specific tasks.
• I’ve also had goals revolving around deep personal reasons and have written personal to-do lists that are kept purposely short so I stay on task.

Some of the methods I’ve learned are more effective than the SMART goal system. But before delving into those, here are some key reasons why I know that the SMART goal system doesn’t work at all.

The Focus On The Goal Is Too Narrow