11 Ways for Achieving Smart Goals

1- Specific Smart Goal To Achieve

Always specify your goal.

Have a good and realistic plan to achieve your goal. The plan should be based on your capability as well.

We all start making plans at the beginning of each year and we say that I’m going to to this and that for this year, but many of us don’t do anything else to move forward and as a result, we go back to the point one again and go back to the same rooting again.

1- For example, if you are planning to lose 20 kilos within the next twelve months it sounds okay and you have a specific goal to achieve.

Then you have to start changing the way you eat, changing your diet and lifestyle plus add some times in your weekly schedule for exercises.

2- Set a goal to read twelve books, then you should pick your books and then plan your daily reading time until you finish them all.

3- Create your plan of action and eliminate bad habits such as wasting your time on unnecessary activities such as social media and useless games and anything that causes distractions with you and wasting your productive time for nothing.

4- Schedule your time settings for your upcoming plans because time management is one of the most important settings of any project and plan.

Good project manager always makes sure the plans are on-time and everything meets the time frame which was expected and scheduled for.

Make sure your focus on your long term plan and write down your everyday schedule and follow it on your daily basis and mark the steps that have been done to make sure you are on the right track.

Your goal should be measurable and realistic.

You can’t set a goal without any specific number such as the time, cost, quantity.

When you set your goal for a specific time for a certain amount of anything that means your goal is measurable.

For example, I need to finish my novel within 3 months from now. That means you specified the time frame, set the deadline, and planned your goal.

Or, I will save $8,000 to buy my next car in cash and not lease or finance my next car.

Try to divide your tasks with a measurable percentage of the whole project and mark it down before and after your task is completed.

Your goals should be achievable and realistic as well.

Setting an impossible goal looks like a joke and it shows that you are not serious about the achievement of your smart goals.

For example; you can’t set a goal to make $10,000,000 within the next 6 months when you’re salary is $20 per hour and you’re working full time 9 to 5 every day.

Or, you can’t plan to run 20km within 2 hours because your capacity is not allowing you to do more than what you can do.

The point is that you have to make sure that you’re serious about your goal to be able to focus to rich your target and success in the achievement of your goals.

Your smart goals should be realistic and meaningful. This means you can’t set a goal that is not real or it’s impossible.

It should be based on your capacity and achievable, otherwise, you will give up and become confused and unhappy at the end and wasting your time on something useless.

Setting a goal to get your Ph.D. within the next six months while you just finished high school is an example of setting realistic smart goals to achieve.

We all should make sure to set our goals with a certain time frame to be on-track through our specific goal.

It should have the beginning and the end date or deadline.

To do that, we have to prioress our tasks with the approximate time frames for each step in several steps.

1. Full length of the project plan time frame
2. Take notes and mark down all the steps
3. Prioritize your to-do tasks
4. Keep track on your performance
5. Quarterly checkout to see if we are in the right track and meet our time plan
6. Monthly plan checklist with the time frame for each task
7. The weekly schedule for each plan and check how fast the progress is moving forward
8. A daily schedule and the time frame for each daily task

Make sure to start the bigger projects first and add the rest as you move forward.

Do your time measurements with percentage and have an excel sheet with all the progress in the percentage sign, so you can see how much you’re moving on and what left with the deadline and the amount of the tasks left to do.

However, this method of goal planning is for larger projects but you can apply it on any type of goal planning if you like to.

6- Improve Your Productivity When You Set Your Smart Goal

You have the same 24 hours as the other successful people and you should make sure how to improve your productivity within those 24 hours of your daily life.

• It is better to write down your daily tasks in advance so, you know what your daily schedule is. Create a to-do list is the best way of organizing your upcoming day’s schedule.
• Double-check your to-do list and prioritize your tasks to make sure you can do everything within your time frame and not get frustrated at the end of the day.
• Stop multi-tasking, when you do multitasking you’re brain functionality and focus gets divided into multiple tasks and as a result, you will get poor productivity with all your tasks.
• Try to focus on one task at a time to make sure you’ve done your task perfectly correct and the way it’s supposed to be done.
• Minimize distractions, you don’t need to answer all your phone calls or emails right away if they are not urgent, checking your social media every hour to just check who’s online and stay there for an hour, watching TV and so on.
• Make sure your working space is organized and neat so you don’t waste your time looking for stuff you need to complete your task.
• Keep tracks on the times you spend on each task.
• Make sure you use the latest technology to improve your productivity because each day we get newer technology which makes our life easier and faster and as a result improves our productivity.

7-Surround Yourself With People Who Have The Same Mindset

You should choose your friends carefully and make sure you are all having the same mindset.

This way, you can discuss and plan a project or problem solving from each other.

Learn from each other experience and knowledge and share your thought and ideas, so you can learn something new everyday from each other.

8- Try To Learn Something New Everyday to Achieve Your Goals

Do your research, read and learn by yourself every day and educate yourself on the subjects you are interested in.

Continuously learning will improve your brain function and you will get a higher IQ.

No matter how much time you spend in learning and educating yourself if you do it constantly it will add up and it will improve your skills level and expertise.

If you try to learn something via reading, watching video tutorials one hour per day, you will end up learning by yourself about 365 hours per year and those are all added to your general or professional knowledge.

9- Learn How To Say NO!

Learn how to say no to the others who are asking for a favor while you are busy doing your tasks.

They can always wait until you finish with your task and then take a look at their request.

If you are shy to say no, you will end up helping the others and being behind schedule to finish your important tasks and as a result, you have to rush it up and get the poor quality of service.

Do not try to be rude but tell them politely that you can take a look at their request later when you’re done with your task in hand.

10- Avoid Participating In Long Meetings

Meetings are in general wasting a lot of your time and they don’t come out with the right conclusion.

If the meeting is more than 5 minutes you should avoid attending it if you have important tasks to be done soon.

Some bad managers are setting endless meetings every week and they are affecting their employee’s productivity.

A good manager with very sensitive tasks and projects to be done will always send important messages via email and asks them to answer when they are less busy to not interfere with the employees’ tasks.

11- Try To Focus On The End Result and Not The Steps

In general, 80% of the results come out from 20% of the actions.

You should find the right 20% of the action which gets you 80% of the results.

Make sure you take care of yourself by eating well, have enough sleep, and taking care of your physical activities.

We all should focus on the target and achievable task no matter what way we choose to get into the target result, as long as we are satisfied with the result from everything should be okay.

Conclusion

Achieving your smart goals is very important in our lives and people who are not having any plan to achieve their smart goals are lost people who don’t know what they want in their life.

We all should focus on our plans in a smart way to enjoy our life in the best way.

Make sure you follow the SMART five formula (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely matter) when you set up your smart goals.

Without a goal, our life has no meaning and many people don’t know what they want in their life because of that reason.

Even if you don’t have any goals set for your upcoming year yet, you still can set up a goal to read about your favorite subject on a daily basis to become an expert in your field of specialty.

So, good luck with your smart goals and future success!