SMART goals
The best known goal framework there is, and a genuinely useful one, as long as you know which part of the problem it solves and which part it leaves to you.
A SMART goal is one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. The acronym comes from George Doran, writing in Management Review in 1981, as advice for writing management objectives rather than personal ones. Applied properly it turns a vague intention into a sentence that can be checked, which is a real improvement. What it does not do is produce a plan, and a SMART goal with no weekly action behind it fails in exactly the same way a vague one does.
Where the acronym came from
George Doran introduced SMART in Management Review in 1981, in a short piece about writing management objectives. The original audience was managers setting objectives for an organisation, which is worth knowing, because the framework carries that origin with it.
The letters have drifted since. Achievable is sometimes Attainable or Assignable, Relevant is sometimes Realistic, and Time-bound is sometimes Timely. The drift is harmless. The five questions underneath are stable.
Where SMART falls short
It handles the wording and leaves the hard part alone. A goal can satisfy all five criteria and still have no first action, no review date and no answer for a bad week. Most abandoned goals in the wild are perfectly SMART.
It also handles two kinds of goal badly. The first is the exploratory goal, where the point is to find out whether something is worth doing, and demanding a measurable target up front forces a fake number. The second is the long-horizon goal, where the honest answer to Achievable is that nobody knows yet.
Used as a drafting check, the five criteria are excellent. Used as the whole method, they produce well-written goals that nobody looks at again.
How to do it
- 1
Specific
Replace every abstract verb with a concrete one. "Improve my writing" becomes "publish eight essays". The question to ask is what someone would see happening if this goal were being achieved.
- 2
Measurable
Attach a number and say where the number comes from. A measure you cannot look up is not a measure. If the real outcome resists counting, count the nearest honest proxy and say that is what you are doing.
- 3
Achievable
Divide the target by the time available and look at the weekly rate. This is where Achievable stops being a feeling and becomes arithmetic, and it is the criterion people skip because it is the one that says no.
- 4
Relevant
Write one line on what this goal is in service of. If the line is hard to write, the goal may be inherited from someone else, which is the most common reason a technically perfect goal gets no effort.
- 5
Time-bound
Give it a deadline and at least one intermediate date. A single distant deadline produces no signal until it is too late to act on it, so the midpoint check is not optional decoration.
Common questions
What people ask about smart goals.
What does SMART stand for?
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Some versions use Attainable or Assignable for the A, Realistic for the R, and Timely for the T. The underlying five questions are the same whichever wording you meet.
Who invented SMART goals?
George Doran, in Management Review in 1981. It was written as guidance for managers writing objectives, not as a personal development method, which explains why it is strongest on wording and silent on motivation.
Are SMART goals actually effective?
They are effective at the thing they do, which is turning a vague intention into a checkable sentence. They do nothing about planning, review or recovery after a miss, so a SMART goal with no cadence behind it is no more durable than any other kind.
What is an example of a SMART goal?
"Publish eight essays of at least a thousand words on the company blog by June 30, one every two weeks, to support the hiring push." It names the thing, counts it, implies a weekly rate, says what it is for, and has both a deadline and a cadence.
Keep reading
How to set goals
This is the method, in order, with the parts most guides leave out: how many to set, what the first week looks like, and what you do on the week it goes wrong.
Goal setting worksheet
Nine prompts, in order, designed to be answered on one side of paper. It takes about thirty minutes and the last two prompts are the ones that matter most.
Letter to your future self
The hard part is not the idea, it is the blank page. Here is what is worth writing down, and what you will wish you had included when you read it back.
About the author
Drew D’Agostino, founder of Crystal.
Drew founded Crystal, the AI coach that understands you, used by millions of people to understand themselves and the people around them. He is the author of Predicting Personality, a book on reading other people through personality science to improve communication and business relationships.
Crystal is the AI coach that understands you.
It starts from who you are, then helps you decide where you are going and build the daily habits to get there.