A smart Way to Achieve Your Goals
Once you have planned
your project, turn your attention to developing several goals that will enable
you to be successful. Goals should be SMART – specific, measurable, agreed
upon, realistic and time-based.
A goal might be to hold
a weekly project meeting with the key members of your team or to organise and
run a continuous test programme throughout the project.
The acronym SMART has a
number of slightly different variations, which can be used to provide a more
comprehensive definition for goal setting.
S – specific, significant,
stretching
M – Measurable, meaningful,
motivational
A
– attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented
R
– Realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented
T
– Timely-based, tangible,
track able
Specific
A specific goal has a
much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a
specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:
*Who: Who
is involved?
*What: What
do I want to accomplish?
*Where: Identify
a location.
*When: Establish
a time frame.
*Which: Identify
requirements and constraints.
*Why: Specific
reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.
EXAMPLE: A
general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a specific goal would say, “Join a
health club and workout 3 days a week.”
Measurable
Establish concrete
criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.
When you measure your
progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the
exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to
reach your goal.
To determine if your
goal is measurable, ask questions such as……
How much? How many?
How will I know when it
is accomplished?
Attainable
When you identify goals
that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them
come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity
to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring
yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.
You can attain most any
goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that
allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and
out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your
goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your
goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and
develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.
Realistic
To be realistic, a goal
must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able
to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can
decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal
represents substantial progress.
A high goal is
frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low
motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually
seem easy simply because they were a labour of love.
Timely
A goal should be
grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of
urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday”
won’t work. But if you anchor it within a time frame, “by May 1st”,
then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.
Your goal is probably
realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to
know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished
anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to
exist to accomplish this goal.
When your goal is
tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus
attainable.
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