Once you have identified your “True North,” and you have written out your life mission statement, you will need to set some SMART goals to enable you to live in a way that incrementally moves you to accomplishing this life mission statement. Let’s review the process of setting “SMART” Goals by focussing on each aspect of the acronym - “SMART” or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive.
Specific Goals
To live life on purpose you need to think clearly about your life mission statement If your life mission statement reads: "I live to make a difference in this world. I believe that I will do this through being a great wife, a caring and committed mother, and through writing articles that cause people to think about life and this planet in ways that benefit everybody, not just the bottom line," your goals will reflect this commitment in very specific ways. Although the writing of an article is the example here, this process and these principles apply to any goal you may set as you live life on purpose. Good goals are specific: an example of a specific goal that reflects my life mission statement might be:
“I will write a three page article on effective parenting within the next five days.”
This goal is very specific, and rather than simply saying, “I should write an article sometime”, you have given very clear definition to the scope of the article, the length of the article and the completion date.
Measurable Goals
The idea of a measurable goal is very important because it enables you to ascertain if you have hit your target, and if you have accomplished your intended outcome. In the example above there are four measurement indicators:
- “a” - the number of articles
- “three page” - the length of the article
- “effective parenting” - the subject of the article
- “within the next five days” - the time frame for the completion of the article
Attainable Goals
This refers to the fact that your goal needs to be something that you can accomplish within the specific time-frame that you have indicated. If you set goals that cannot be accomplished because your time frames are unrealistic, or because the goal is outside of your area of expertise, you may become discouraged and give up, rather than being motivated and empowered through the ongoing accomplishment of attainable goals.
Realistic
Is this goal something that I can accomplish or is it beyond my capability? Is the time frame I have stipulated a realistic time frame given all of the other responsibilities of my life? Assess each goal that you set with this sense of realism informing the nature and time frames of the goals that you are setting.
Time Sensitive
Good goals are always tied to clear time frames, and are best developed with a clear start and completion date. Goals can be tied to very short or very long time frames. Some examples of different time frames are:
- Change living room light bulb by 5pm today
- Have dinner ready for the family by 6pm tonight
- Build a garage within the next three months
- Complete a Ph.D. within the next five years
Storing and Reviewing your Goals
There is no point in doing the hard work of setting SMART goals if you do not have a place to store those goals. You also need to be able to easily retrieve those goals to enable you to review them to ascertain if you need to modify or even jettison a goal because it is neither realistic nor attainable. Some great places to store your goals for weekly review are:
- Journal or Notebook
- OmniFocus (iPhone, iPad, Mac)
- Springpad (Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC)
- Evernote (Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC)
- Microsoft Outlook (PC)
- Microsoft OneNote (PC)
- NoteBook (for iPad and Mac)
Setting goals enables you to live life on purpose and to have a measurement concerning how well you are moving towards accomplishing your life mission statement.
Robert Elkington - Hi, my name is Rob, I enjoy involvement in many different activities such as: 1. Working with a range of faith based and non-faith ...
Join the Conversation