5 Ways to be SMART and Set Annual Goals!

It’s that wonderful time of the year right?  A new year means new beginnings, and new adventures, right?  2014 is our chance to press reset, reinvent ourselves, get healthy, lose weight and take on new challenges.  Well not so fast!  Can we take a moment to be honest; most of us have already broken a few New Year resolutions, LOL.  We stifle ourselves or fail to set goals because we can’t decide on what we want to achieve. Most of us fall victim to setting goals we lose sight of as the velocity of life starts to pull one-way or the other, we abandon our path and our goals become after thoughts.

Well, allow me to share a few methods to press reset and SMART Goals:

Specific – Simple right? Specific goals have a much greater chance of being accomplished, when I set my annual reading goal to read 50 books in a year, I didn’t set a goal to “read more books” or say “I want to read more”  I set a specific number of books I wanted to read.

Measureable – Keep score, choose goals you can measure and track progress on.  Set tasks and target attainable dates, this makes an incredible difference in goal setting. If by June I’ve only read 5 books then I know I’m behind but if it’s June and I’ve read 25 books then I’m on pace to hit my goal. You know it’s measurable if you can answer a “How” question.

Attainable – Goals should be planned and are only attained by you taking action, you should take steps to realize “What Should Happen Next”.  Make sure you plan a course of action and move things forward, always understand the conditions needed to accomplish your goals.

Relevant – Know that your goals must be relevant to you and the stage of life you’re in.  If you set a goal to travel to the world in 90 days, but you need your job and it only allows you 2 weeks of vacation time, then you know that goal is not relevant to you.

Timely – Goals must be timely, if not; you may lag in working to accomplish it.  Setting timely goals will not only help you focus on achievement but timely goals also keep you out of the flux of seasonality and will aide in your planning.

Does this help?

If so, try one of my planning techniques, this is how I love to plan…log on to BlackPlanet Radio, choose the “Working No Lyrics Mood,” pull up your calendar, grab a glass of wine and start working on your short term and long term SMART Goals.