For many people, January is the perfect time to take stock of the previous year, reflect on what we did, and what we can look to improve on in the following year. You are undoubtedly familiar with the repetitive message of “New Year, New You” and the concept of New Years’ resolutions; all designed to inspire and facilitate behavior change towards new action and accomplishment. 

However, in order to be effective, your goals have to be SMART. While yes, I do mean you should make intelligent and thoughtful goals, I also mean that you should abide by the acronym S.M.A.R.T. when contemplating how to phrase and write out your goals. There are a few debates over the exact wording behind each letter of the SMART acronym, but here are the most popular options;

S – Specific, significant, stretching

M – Measureable, meaningful, motivational 

A – attainable, achievable and action-oriented

R – Realistic, relevant, rewarding, results-oriented

T – time-based, time-bound, timely, tangible and trackable. 

Before you make your list of 2019 goals, take the time to ask yourself the following questions; 

Is this goal specific and significant to me? 

Having a goal such as “run faster” is not specific enough. You need to add in a feature that makes it more detailed, such as “run a sub-30min 5k”. This added detail makes it instantly more specific, and thus directs your efforts towards a particular, measurable end. In addition to this, if your goal is not significant to you (or meaningful – see ‘M’), then you are more likely to abandon the goal before achieving it. Not sure if your goal is significant enough? Keep asking yourself WHY you want to achieve it. Once you get to the heart of your ‘why’, you will find your key motivation behind that goal.

Is this goal measureable?

Tying in neatly with the ‘specific’ requirement, having a goal that is measurable helps you recognize how far away from achieving it you are. If you have no means of measuring it, how will you know if you’ve ever achieved it? 

Is the goal achievable and realistic (and are there quantifiable results)? 

Combining steps 3 and 4, or the ‘A’ and ‘R’ features with this one; when you establish a goal, it is important that you ensure your dreams are not too lofty. While it’s important to keep your eyes skyward, and continuously work to improve and achieve good things in life, it’s also vital that you make your goals realistic and reasonably within reach in order to prevent yourself from feeling disheartened with the workload that goes alongside, or if you hit speedbumps along the way. If your goal is to complete a full marathon in under 4 hours, try breaking it down into smaller goals; running a 10k in less than an hour, and then a half marathon in less than 2 hours. If your goal is to become fluent in another language, set yourself small goals of learning a certain number of new vocab words per week, or to maintain a 5-minute conversation in the new language with a native speaker. Having smaller goals like these helps to keep you motivated, and helps to ensure you are reaching key milestones along the way to accomplishing your larger goal.  

Is there a time frame for you to achieve this goal? 

If you don’t have a specific timeframe in mind in order to accomplish your goal, you may find yourself dragging it out into perpetuity. It’s all too easy to become complacent, and if you allow yourself too much time to reach finalization, you may lose momentum and motivation to carry on. For this reason, I highly recommend that you set a reasonable time frame for your goal and that you have self-check-ins along the way to see if your time frame is reasonable, or if you may need to extend (or even reduce) the window for completion. 

If you can use these questions as framework when setting your goals for 2019 (or anytime throughout the year), you’ll hopefully find a lot more success with achieving them. 

What are my goals, you ask? Sorry, but those aren’t for sharing just yet! 

As much as I think it’s valuable to have goals and to hold yourself accountable (in many cases, a lot of people find telling their loved ones an essential part of staying accountable to themselves), I don’t think the internet is the best place for me to post my private ambitions. My family and close friends know what my goals are for 2019, and for me, that’s enough. x