S.M.A.R.T. Goal setting — it’s actually pretty dumb. Want to achieve more?

So, if you’ve spent any amount of time in Secondary School, High School, or any kind of public schooling system. Have ever attended some kind of motivational seminar, or have attended some kind of Marketing or Business program. Chances are pretty good you’ve heard of S.M.A.R.T. goal setting!

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the better part of your entire life, this is a widely taught, “one size fits all” programs for goal setting. The acronym is “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive.” This has worked tremendously well for years and is oftentimes loosely backed with a long drawn out study done by some Amazing Ivy League Post Secondary Institution about the effects this style of goal setting has on someones overall lifestyle. Now, if a system like this has personally worked for you in the past, I’m not going to knock it.

Truth is, for most people out there, they either spend grueling hours trying to come up with a new system, a series of trial and errors until they figure it out (my method — a lot of hours screwing around and messing up), they adopt someone elses’s system (most times the fastest method), or they give up entirely — which is one of the worst things you can possibly do fort your future success but it’s honestly the single most practiced method amongst 99% of both my current clients and clients I meet in the future). I’m going to break this down for you and really show you why the S.M.A.R.T. Methodology does not work and show you a couple of different things that might help you crush your goals and have the best year you’ve ever had!

Specific or Limited in Scope?

Let’s break this down line by line, the first objective of S.M.A.R.T. goal setting is that the goals MUST be specific, they must have some kind of Specificity to them, it usually follows some kind of format of Who, What, When, Why, and How? This is perfectly fine if you’re looking at achieving something small! If you’re looking to achieve something much larger, oftentimes putting a “specific” number on things might actually hinder your performance a little bit! For example, under the Classic SMART setting, someone might set a goal that “I want to make $50,000 a year selling my Customer Service Software to Retail chains all over America.” This goal, well tremendously specific, might be a little too specific and hindering the performance of the person setting the goal.

$50,000 is definitely exciting and very attainable this part is absolutely fine! However, when you limit your goals to “Retail chains all over North America.” Someone who is very goal oriented might attack only this specific marketplace and not enjoy the journey along the way realizing that their customers are literally fucking everywhere! It’s absolutely amazing the markets we open ourselves up to when we let loose and try new branches and see if there is the potential for our services to branch off into other fields that might receive it better or have better use for it!

I’m all over specific goal setting, but only in the very short term future, I write my goals down, day in and day out, but they’re often something like “I own a portfolio of Multi-Family units with over 2000+ units in the inside.” Am I WAY out to lunch, of course, as it currently stands… I own one! Most people think that I’m absolutely insane, but I know that at some point I’m going to reach that mark and think to myself “Goddamnit, why didn’t I originally go for 20,000”.

The goal isn’t specific at all, as a matter of fact, my arrogant ass writes it down every single day as if I’ve already done it. But that kind of long term thinking and goal gets your mind going, it allows you freedom to “become” something more than you already and figure out along the way how you’re going to get there.

I know that in order for me to achieve what I want, I have to go BIG on the long term goals! I mean real big! I know this because 5 years ago I was making $24,000/ year now I’m trending consistently for well over the five figure mark! That was because I had already established in my mind that I was making that kind of money, I had the mindset of someone who was making that kind of money and eventually, my work ethic shifted toward my mindset.

Setting a Specific LONG TERM goal under the SMART method is not going to help you achieve it as it will not help your mindset shift you need in order to accomplish them! In the SHORT TERM however, a specific goal or target most definitely will! Set them both, write down long term goals, what you see yourself achieving, no matter how long it takes, and then set specific goals for your short term achievement towards your long term goals!

Measurable — What yardsticks to actually use?

The typical SMART methodology of goal setting focus on measurements, which is one of the few points I actually agree on with SMART goal setting methodology. The SMART model encourages that you measure with things that you can see, feels, and touch for measurable goals. For example, if someone was looking to quite smoking, a bad example of a measurable goal would be “I am going to quit smoking by February because I would be much happier and healthier.” This is a bad measurement and it is almost sure to fail. A good measurement of the goal however; “I’m going to quit smoking as it’s going to save me $150/ month, and I will stop this horrid smokers cough and have more energy to play with my kids on a daily basis, which means I’m going to take them to the park, sledding, etc. 1 to 2 hours every week.”

Energy converted into a positive use, actions, that’s something that is measurable as “feeling better” on its own is not! I’m sure your kids would love spending more time with you as a result of you quitting smoking. $150/ month saved while it is significantly more measurable and something that can be felt and touched (definitely in your wallet) it’s what you do with the money afterwards that moves you in a positive direction! Which brings me to my next point about models of measurement…

MONEY.

Many people say they want to make $100,000 in a given year. Definitely specific, and definitely something you can measure but in reality, money is just a yardstick. It’s like a scoreboard in a game of baseball. It’s a measurement, it doesn’t actually indicate how well the game is being played. That’s up to the players! It’s how well the game is being played!

Money is the same way, it’s not how much money you are making, it’s what you do with it afterwards that ultimately helps you achieve your goals. If you striving to reach $100,000 in income through you Business or your sales, I can almost guarantee you that if you’re not spending some of the money you earn in spare income along the way toward a marketing budget or some kind of formal Sales Training, then chances are pretty good that you’re going to have a very similar year to the one you had before!

Don’t let the amount of money rule what it is you are doing so much as what you are doing to positively impact your income goals and using your money to move you forward in the right direction! After all, there are Businesses that spend $100,000,000 only to make $95,000,000 at year end. What happens after the result though? They have a huge amount of customer they ultimately acquired that they can market to the next year at absolutely no charge, and garner the extra $5,000,000 back in the next couple of quarters and make tremendous profits as a result.

Attainable and Realistic — Realistic to who? Bill Gates?

An area of tremendous frustration I share with the SMART system is the Attainable and Realistic points. Attainable and Realistic the who? Bill Gates? If Bill Gates set a goal to make $100,000 in a year, chances are pretty damn good that his board members would have fired his ass as CEO of Microsoft and LONG TIME ago. Why? Because $100,000 is not only so small, and obtainable that it’s almost a detriment to the company to have someone running it with such a limited scope.

To someone that’s only working part-time, and raising three children with no formal education or background. That might be an entirely different story! It might seem likes it’s a little unobtainable.

I’m here to tell you something you’ve probably heard before “Nothing Impossible.” I’ve been hearing that saying since I was a little boy and my short, Caucasian ass couldn’t reach a monkey bar to save his life. I couldn’t jump. My height was stunted (still is, I’m 8 foot something on a stage though ;P), I declared loudly “Reaching that bar is absolutely impossible, are you kidding?! Look how high that thing is!” At that point in my life, I absolutely thought it was impossible, and then 10 years later, avoiding drinking coffee, eating my wheaties everyday, I still can’t reach the damn thing! I’m kidding! I grew and championed the monkey bar!

The point of the story was that I had to grow into my achievement, and while achieving things in our lives might not simply be a matter of physically growing, internally we grow every single day and things all of the sudden don’t seem impossible are too unrealistic! The same happens when we set ourselves up with “Attainable” or “Realistic” goals. Consciously, we’re allowing our subconscious a break from what we can actually achieve, the potential we can truly reach, the role we can grow into, the heights we could potentially reach for, when we set ourselves realistic and attainable goals because we have programmed ourselves to be lazy!

It takes the exact same amount of focus and energy to achieve a small goal as it does a magnified, and larger version of the same goal. The only variable is time! Length of time and amount of patience dictates the magnitude of the goals. The work that we put in to achieve them dictates whether or not we’re going to reach our goals but our level of patience and determination to strive for them over a long period of time, wait it out, and continue to grind every single day determines to what level we achieve our goals!

Knowing that it’s going to take you the exact same amount of energy to achieve something BIG as it does to achieve something small, you might as well set something astronomically large and chase that instead of achieving something that you may have set as too small and have a blip along your radar of life, and be disappointed at how easy it was to achieve something, thus, taking away from the overall feeling of accomplishment, or be disappointed that you hadn’t set it even larger and gone for something bigger, that you hadn’t thought about the scope of achievement being larger and therefore, not taken the necessary requirements with the time you had in order to achieve the goals of larger substance!

The truth, making “Realistic” and “Attainable” is a cop-out, a scam that’s been marketed to you since you were in school. The only time we have achieved “realism” in our goals is when we have maxed out our potential for time, energy, and days left in our lives. Don’t be afraid to set HUGE goals and go for them! There’s nothing in the way but work and time from achieving them!

Time-Sensitive — BREATH! BE FLEXIBLE!

Many of us are very gun-hoe about our goals right out of the gate! This is that magical time with everything seems so bright and shiny, and we’re excited to start our goals off on the right. That time is typically around New Years, as a day later the gyms are absolutely packed to the rim with people who are getting ready to burn off that New Years resolution. Get in shape, and get fit!

We’re not here to talk about the time you should be setting goals, which should be really… any given Monday (another time another article). But the reality is… we all get very excited to go head first and head strong into our goals.

The SMART method of goal setting suggests that we should set stringent time frames as it gets us going, gets us moving and wanting to achieve it because we have a deadline to reach. It’s going to help you get in gear and achieve them that much faster, that we’re going to be motivated by the deadline.

The practiced reality on the other hand says that if there’s no consequences behind the deadline not being met, then we probably wont meet the deadline. Further, if we don’t meet our deadlines the most common thing that occurs is that we give up on what we are trying to ultimately achieve. We’re bumbed we didn’t hit it in the time line that we expected to hit it in, and then we simply move on and do nothing, or change the goal entirely. (More on that in a second.) This is a bit problematic as the only sure fire thing that is going to have us never achieving what we want out of life, is giving up on our goals! The point is to try and stay away from a mental environment that creates this!

So, I’ve come up with two methodologies to help people get through this slump. The first: I call the “HUD principle”. HUD stands for “Hustle Until Done”. I personally love living by this because I am the kind of person that wakes up in the morning with a book or my laptop right beside me, and I get to work. I could have been out partying all night the night before, and I’m still going to wake up and get to work! I find that before my brain has time to process all of the bullshit excuses that I can make throughout the day, then I might as well “Hustle Until done” get everything I need to off my “To-Do list” for the day, and get it accomplished as early and as often as possible.

I find that this method tends to set up my day just right, puts my brain right into a hustle mindset, and I get my ass going, super charged and absolutely primed for the day.

The second method I’ve used in the past is the “Methodical Trod” method of accomplishment. This runs along the same method of the Tortoise and the Hare, slow and steady wins the race! Realizing that you’ve got something quite large ahead of you in terms of the project, and coming to grips with the fact that you can do a little bit EVERY SINGLE DAY in order to achieve your goals is going to be a lot better in terms of accomplishment than setting a deadline that you might be disappointed with for not achieving. Or worse yet, achieving too early and not having another project to follow-up with.

Taking the time to do a little bit every single is going to have you looking back on your achievement and being happy that you got it done! Some days, you’re going to get more done than others, but getting into the habit of doing something every single day is going to work the muscles in your mind that grind. Waking up every day, knowing that you’re going to have to make time in your day, even if it’s in the wee hours of the night to get what you have to done is going to do much more for you than ever setting a target or a deadline ever will!

If you’re anything like me, this method works especially well! I have a habit of getting something 90% complete and then having to slog through the last 10%! It’s brutal! However, if I get into the habit of doing a little of something every day, the last 10% don’t be so hard all of the sudden! It just gets done, and I look back and say to myself “Oh, that wasn’t so hard…” and I feel satisfied that I often got the project done ahead of time.

You have to be flexible with your approach, and be flexible with your time frame, or completely ditch the time frames and take on a new approach altogether. But no matter what, BREATH! It’s going to be ok! You have lots of time, but be methodical, and grind that shit out every single day!

Remember:

• Be specific in achievement of your short term goals, but not so specific on the super long term goals — In the words of Donald Trump “Make it YUGE!”
• Your goals should be measurable to something you can touch, feel, and hold. It makes the achievement that much better. Money is a yardstick — it’s what you do with the money that’s going to grow your income.
• Attainable and Realistic thinking is LAZY thinking. It’s bullshit to set yourself up for failure by going for a “Realistic and attainable” goal.
• Time Sensitivity, there’s more than one way to get something done! Choose the method that works best for you and make it happened every single day! Crush it anyway you want! Bit by bit, or hustle non-stop right ot of the gate!