This is a guest post by Maria Gajewski from Never the Same River Twice
“Where will you be in 5 years?” I’ve always hated this interview question. The truth is none of us has a clue where we’ll be in 5 years. We may be in Phoenix, Antarctica, or Bali. We may be healthy or sick, single or married. Yet, so many classic self improvement books instruct us to create 5 year plans and to set SMART goals to reach them.
In this post I’m going to show you why traditional long range planning doesn’t work for most people, and how you can still set goals and make plans that will actually help you reach them.
SMART Goals Don’t Work
All the traditional advice about self improvement and goal setting teaches that we should set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (SMART) if you want to succeed. This works great for short-term projects like painting your house or writing a report at work. However, over the long term plans like these get extremely complex. If you stick to the SMART framework, you’re almost destined to fail.
When you think about a large goal like going to graduate school and completing an MBA you realize that there are many possible ways to go about it and there are many things that can change along the way. Let’s say that you set a goal that you want to complete your MBA through an online university in 3 years or less. That’s a fairly well formed SMART goal.
What happens if you change your mind and decide to go to a traditional school? What if you get sick and have to drop out for a semester? Under a traditional SMART framework you’ve failed. When you select a rigid goal and make plans based on it you don’t have any room to adjust when life throws you a curve ball.
Pick a Theme and Make a MicroPlan
So what is a good alternative to setting SMART goals? Instead of committing to a specific action plan over the long term, choose a theme that describes what you want to create or accomplish. I call this choosing a Compass Direction in contrast to plotting a specific route on a map. Both methods will get you to the same place eventually, but following a general direction gives you more flexibility to explore along the way.
Instead of setting the goal of completing an MBA, I might select the theme Improve My Career. This gives me a lot of flexibility to seek out more training, talk to mentors, volunteer for challenging projects at work, and also pursue an MBA if I choose.
How do you translate a vague theme into an action plan? Here’s a simple 5 step process:
- Make a list of possible actions you can take to advance your progress. Be practical, but also think big. On this list, “Get an MBA” counts the same as “Read the latest business book.”
- Select a manageable number of actions from that list to get through in one week. Go do them. This may mean you focus on one big action, or whiz through many small ones.
- At the end of the week review your progress and reflect on any unexpected things that got in your way. In the example, I would ask myself if my career has improved over last week.
- Create another week’s plan incorporating your possibilities list and your reflections.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your theme doesn’t interest you anymore.
The key to this system is the constant feedback you are getting and the adjustments that you’re making along the way. By taking this approach, you won’t spend months or years working on actions that don’t make sense anymore or pursuing a goal that you no longer care about. You can also deal with all of the changes that are bound to come your way without feeling like you’ve failed to achieve your goal.
How Do You Feel About SMART Goals?
I know my views on SMART goals are controversial. Have you been successful using them in your personal or professional life? Have you used a more flexible system like the one I suggest? Share your stories and tips for success in the comments.
Maria Gajewski writes more about why SMART goals suck and how to Travel By Your Inner Compass at Never the Same River Twice. Visit the site to get her free Ebook Changes That Stick: How to Make Lasting Changes.
Photo by philentropist
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I think you are right that rigid long term goals are usually bound to ‘fail’. The planning is the useful part, not as much the actual plan which will change and will need to be flexible.
I think the 5 steps are good expect for step one. Get an MBA is a task that will sit on that list forever because it is too big to wrap your mind around. This is were SMART comes into play. Large tasks need to be broken down into actionable segments or else most people will never execute. Get an MBA is its own large task maybe starts with research schools and select you top three choices in two weeks. That can be done and then you can review.
Read The Happy Rock´s latest article – Crafty Creditors Are Making Changes
@Happy Rock – thanks for your perspective. I do agree that planning out a project can help you think through the steps that will be required to complete it. That’s one of the reasons that I say that “Get an MBA” and “Read the latest business book” carry the same weight on an initial list.
In my experience *most* projects need to be broken down into smaller steps. Even when you’re just reading the book you still have to 1) get a copy somehow 2) find time to read it 3) maybe take some notes. That all takes place later in the process.
Read Maria | Never the Same River Twice´s latest article – Carnival of Personal Development
I agree with all that is said. Most of my 2009 goals are SMART. About 75% of the my goals are very doable. I threw a few goals on there that would be extremely difficult to accomplish because I want to push myself. As far as long term goals, I agree that it’s more difficult to estimate whether something is even doable or not. A goal that I am considering pursuing is completing an Iron Man Triathlon. I have a goal to complete a marathon this year so that is going to get my part of the way towards an Iron Man Triathlon, but I may decide that I’d rather spend time with our kids instead of spending the necessary time training for the event.
Nice article and I like the picture!
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@Happiness – That’s a good, balanced approach to completing your goals. Completing an Iron Man is an awesome goal but you are right that many things (family obligations, injuries, changing interests) could get in the way. It’s good to stay flexible on that and be open to different experiences.
Read Maria | Never the Same River Twice´s latest article – Carnival of Personal Development
This is so great – Can I pass this on to everyone I work with?!?
Read Christopher´s latest article – Happiness Habit – Routines to Make your Life Richer & More Productive
Maria,
Thank you so much for validating those who don’t follow a narrow mission statement, those who wander, experiment, start on new paths, change direction, allow life to happen, pursue multiple interests, or simply don’t have the ego to declare that their future is specific and measurable.
I have been trying to write a series of posts about “purpose” but I realized that starting off with the premise that we should have a purpose might be already be leading people astray. I am happier than I have ever been, in part because I haven’t confined myself to the specific and measurable.
Your idea of a theme is perfect. Thank you, thank you, thank you for articulating it.
In answer to your questions, I use a system that is basically what you describe in the second part of your post. My experience with SMART goals mostly has to do with activist organizing, where I think it may have more validity. When a group or organization has a goal, specificity, measurability, time-boundedness, and the rest are much more important.
Thanks again,
-Matt @Dreaming Right
Read Matt Kreiling´s latest article – Distilled Existence
@Christopher – Absolutely! Share this far and wide and we might eventually rid ourselves of horrible strategic planning meetings!!
@Matt – I have most of my fun when I’m wandering
You’re right that in organizing a group you need some action items and objectives. I’m sure as an activist, though, you completely understand the need for flexibility and responsiveness to external changes.
Read Maria | Never the Same River Twice´s latest article – Carnival of Personal Development
I think the theme thing is a good way of looking at it. When you are looking at where you want to be in life, setting rigid SMART goals takes the fun out of it I suppose.
I prefer to keep things simple, so I pick targets of where I want to be, but work on the journey as we could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Ultimately, when you’ve reached a ‘goal’ you only have another one to set yourself, with a target – if you follow the SMART approach.
Nice one,
Chris
Its very true that if you set too rigid of goals you will be led to failure, But I believe that some level of rigidity really does help you reach your goals. I set the goal of completing p90x and eat more healthy, I know I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that goal without setting a very rigid schedule. So maybe you need to find the happy medium between SMART goals the the very loose and fluid goals.
Great article! I’m not a fan of SMART goals for huge things and totally agree with your theory. I recently read a book-(Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals – Hardcover (Dec. 23, 2010) by Heidi Grant Halvorson), an interesting read on this subject.