“A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder”
~ Thomas Carlyle, 19th century Scottish essayist and historian.
As an 18 year old freshman in college, I never really understood the phenomenal and even life-altering power behind setting goals for myself. On a base level, I knew that I wanted to get a good grade in whatever class I was taking at the time and then make it through the day so I could either chill, do some community theatre (I’m a proud musical theatre nerd and challenge you to a Shipoopi sing-off), or just hang out with my friends.
Whenever I heard the word “goal” it was either during a televised soccer match or from an overzealous parent or teacher who would ask me—“Where do you want to be in five years,” to which I’d think to myself, “Slow down chief, I’m just trying to get through the day. Let me worry about five years when it gets here.”
Anything I ever went for in life was more of a reactive move—something I did because I wanted to escape what I didn’t like or be included in the group—rather than a proactive move, or being someone who works to make something happen in their life by causing it to happen.
Without the presence of goals in my life, I lacked a sense of self-worth and I’d become frustrated and stressed that life wasn’t going in the direction I wanted—whatever direction the wind was blowing that day.
...Fast forward nearly ten years and after dropping out of school and then returning, I discovered something called S.M.A.R.T. goals.
I want to look at the "S" the "R" and the "T."
Specific. “Becoming a world famous jazz pianist,” or, “achieving world peace,” are two very vague and grandiose wants that are too general to be accomplished. And as Konstantin Stanislavsky, one of the fathers of modern acting, once said, “Generality is the enemy of all art.” We need to be specific in our actions and our goals.
A specific goal should answer:
What you want to achieve—and this can be as simple as:
- “I want to talk to five new people this week,” or as complex as,
- “I want to create a profitable ice cream truck business in Detroit, Michigan within the next two years, derived from my senior thesis project.”
Why you want to achieve this goal—clearly stating the purpose or benefits of accomplishment
- “I want to talk to five new people this week, so I can make new friends on campus and not be bored and sitting in my dorm room every Friday night.
- “I want to create a profitable ice cream truck business in Detroit, Michigan within the next two years, derived from my senior thesis project; because I know I like working for myself and because in five years I want to have enough capital and experience to start my own national ice cream truck franchise.
Who will be on your team to achieve this goal?
- “I’m going to enlist my best friend from back home, Sarah, and call her in the beginning of the week to give me support in talking to five new people.”
- “I’m going to take on my Economics professor and my best friend Carl as business partners to help me start my profitable ice cream truck business in Detroit, Michigan within the next two years.
Where in the world will you achieve this goal—create a physical location.
- “I want to talk to five new people this week in the residence hall I live in at my college...”
- “I want to start my profitable ice cream truck business in Detroit, Michigan...”
W...W...Alright I couldn’t get another “W” word in but you should identify what you need and what obstacles you might come up against in the pursuit of your goal.
- “I know that this week is a holiday and there will be fewer people roaming the halls of my residence hall.
- “I know I need some start up capital and I need an airtight legal agreement between me, Carl, and my Economics professor.
“One must be frank to be relevant.”
~ Corazon Aquino, former president of the Phillippines
Relevant. Your goals should be applicable to either where you are in your life or what you want out of life, or both. When your goals have relevance, then they matter and putting in the work toward achieving them becomes exciting.
Going back to the analogy of starting an ice cream truck business, you wouldn’t start this business by researching every known fact about the Model T; you would enlist your friends and family for support, talk to your Economics professor, and so on.
Achieving your goals is often a team sport—as you’ve already seen in the previous examples being touched upon, support is needed to complete a goal. Relevant goals will excite you and then others to help you complete your desired objective.
A relevant goal will have the following attributes:
It’s a valuable use of your time.
Eating ten pints of soft serve ice cream in a day is not a relevant use of your time whereas learning how to fix a soft serve ice cream machine is.
It can be coordinated with other efforts or goals already being worked toward.
If while on the road to starting your ice cream truck business, you wanted to sell t-shirts with your brand name on them to help raise awareness and profits for your company, that would be a well coordinated and relevant goal to set.
It’s the right time in your life to work on this.
A very easy example to give would be a twenty-two year old college student trying to run for the office of U.S. president. It ain’t gonna happen. You have to be thirty-five years old to run. However, you could make it a longer term goal and in the present get a masters degree in public policy or intern with a local politician.
You are the right person to take on this task.
What happens if it’s not you who takes on this goal? What will your life be like? How will it affect other people if you don’t follow through? If the future world looks a little bleaker if you don’t complete your goal, that’d be a good sign you’re the right person for the job.
Time-sensitive. In short, your goals need to have a deadline. This helps bring a focus to the way you go about working toward completion and gets you to research and implement only the most efficient methods to get to your end point. Putting a due date on your goals ground them in reality. If your speech professor didn’t assign a date for your ten minute lecture, would it ever get done?
A time-sensitive goal should tell you:
When you will complete the goal.
What will you be doing/have done in the time leading up to completion, i.e. in one year, six months, three months, next week.
If, when you get to the final date you set for yourself and you haven’t completed your goal don’t worry, you’re not a failure. It may be a sign that you:
- Need to be more efficient with your time-management,
- Have a lot to learn about what it is you’re trying to accomplish,
- Need to go back and reevaluate to make sure the goal you set for yourself is S.M.A.R.T., or
- Need to hang it up, try something else, and apply the lessons you’ve learned from trying to reach this goal.
There are no bad outcomes here but triple-check options a, b, and c before assuming you need to go to d.
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