Get SMART With Your Goals

You might already be familiar with the concept of SMART goals. Either way, it’s worth repeating again here.

SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

There are some variations but this is the version I use and the one we’ll be exploring today.

What Are SMART Goals?

The concept is simple.

When setting goals for yourself, you want them to conform to each of the items in the acronym.

The clarity that comes from this creates much more impactful goals.

Let’s try an example.

Say you’re an artist and an amazing opportunity has emerged to show your art at an upcoming event. There will assuredly be potential buyers at the event, and a good showing will open doors to other new opportunities as well.

How can we break down your goals for the event based on the SMART Goals parameters?

Specific

What are your goals for the event?

To show new artwork? To make new contacts? To sell a bunch of art?

Having clear goals for yourself can be incredibly powerful in deciding how to focus your energy. Think of it this way, what would be the specific desired outcome you’d like to happen from your goals.

You can even get more specific with your goals than what I have above.

What specific new artwork did you want to show? What kind of new contacts did you want to make? How much artwork do you want to sell?

What if your goal is to simply show up and do the best you can?

That’s fine too! If that’s your goal, that’s your goal. This could be an especially relevant goal if you’re new to the industry or still developing trust in your artwork.

Yet, if you’re a bit more established in your field, you probably want to set a more ambitious goal for yourself. Be specific about what that vision is.

Measurable

What measurements can you apply to your goal?

Running with the example above, measurable outcomes could be creating a certain amount of new pieces before the show, making a minimum number of new qualified contacts, or selling a certain number or dollar amount of pieces.

If your goal is more of a feeling, try to come up with a potential qualitative measurement for your feelings.

Say you’re super nervous about showing your work and you want to get more comfortable. Measurements could be staying in at least one conversation one minute longer than you’d usually be comfortable, or rating your level of comfort talking about your work on a 1-to-10 scale before and after the event, and comparing the two.

Attainable

With every goal you set, you also want to be conscious of how reasonably attainable the goal is for you.

If your goals is to create new work for the show, set a reasonably attainable goal for how many new pieces you’ll create.

If your goal is to sell artwork, be conscientious of how much you can reasonable expect to sell. To some people, $1,500 in sales might be a typical Saturday. For others, it could be a huge stretch. It’s okay to challenge yourself a bit but don’t set a goal for yourself that’s so far out of reach as to be completely unreasonable.

This is a parameter where you want to think about what’s actually in your control too. You can’t MAKE somebody buy your artwork against their will. To pretend you can would be unattainable. So perhaps a more realistically attainable goal would be to focus on making a certain amount of contacts or practicing a new element of your sales pitch. These are both goals where you have much more agency in making them happen.

Relevant

Is this goal relevant to the situation or the bigger picture of your life?

To borrow another example from above, perhaps your goal is to simply show up.

If you’re new to the industry or struggle with something like social anxiety, then this would be a worthy and relevant goal.

Yet, if you’re already an established artist who’s done these kinds of events before, just showing up wouldn’t necessarily be a relevant goal for you. There’s probably another goal you can think of that’s more aligned with your position and experience.

Another care where the relevancy factor comes up is when we catch ourselves making goals to distract ourselves from what we really want.

If you have a goal to produce a certain amount of artwork by a certain date, and in the middle of that you decide to create another goal to repaint your bedroom just because, that might not be the most relevant goal within the context of your immediate situation.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to repaint your bedroom, but think about how relevant it is to the bigger picture of your life goals first.

Time-Bound

By when will you have completed your goal? If there’s an event, that creates an obvious deadline, but say it’s something a bit more open ended than that.

If that’s the case, you want to consider giving yourself your own self imposed deadline. You want to complete three new pieces of artwork by the middle of next month, or you want to follow up with the contacts you made at the event within three days after.

Setting the time frame is important. Otherwise you might just let it linger and never get done.

SMART Goals Are Important Steps Towards Bigger Achievements

SMART goals are at their most powerful when they are used to propel you closer to your bigger goals. This goes hand-in-hand with my last post about breaking big goals into smaller steps so you don’t get overwhelmed.

If your current big goal is to change careers, start by thinking of the smaller goals that will take you towards the change you want to make. Then make those smaller goals SMART.

Examples could be signing up for a marketing course to help you grow your side hustle by the end of the year. Or researching three new career directions well enough to know if you’d want to explore them further by the end of the month.

How Can You Apply SMART Goals?

By sharing this I’m not suggesting that you have to strictly adhere to SMART goals for every single thing you do, but hopefully you can already see how the concept is helpful toward actually getting things done.

You may even be seeing how some of your past accomplishments were aided by SMART goals, whether you realized you were doing it or not.

With time, the concept of SMART goals may even become second nature. You’ll break down all your most important goals this way almost automatically.

But for now let’s focus on today.

How can you apply SMART goals to something you’re currently working on in your life? Is there a step you can pull out of the endeavor and break it down into a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound Goal?

If you were able to do this in a way that was helpful for you, let us know how it helped in the comments!