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Four months into the New Year – the gyms are less crowded, the house doesn’t sparkle the way it used to, and everything is starting to look the same way it did on the last days of the year before. How is it possible that all the hard work put into resolving to make a tremendous change over the coming year seems to be getting more difficult every day?
As people around the world watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop, everyone takes a few seconds to wish for good things to come in the year ahead, and resolve to remove something they feel they can live without (like smoking or eating McDonalds) or take on something new such as an added responsibility (like going to the gym three times a week).
Each year, the United States government compiles a list of the most popular New Year’s Resolutions on their government website. This list includes quitting smoking, exercising more, managing debt, and managing stress. Keeping these resolutions can be difficult, especially when many people seek to take on something permanent, such as quitting smoking, others choose to take on these resolutions for the year and call it quits by December 31st of that year. The USA government website also includes links to resources that can help everyone achieve the goals they set for themselves on January 1st.
While there’s no harm in creating a New Year’s Resolution, they can be quite unrealistic at times. For someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes every day to suddenly wake up on January 1st and quit cold turkey is highly unlikely – although it would be amazing for that individual to do so. Many people keep their resolutions vague, to ensure there is a chance of completion – so resolving to manage debt could be accomplished today or four months from next Tuesday.
In 1981, Dr. George Doran created S.M.A.R.T. goals as a business tool, which was solely to improve product management in business. The concept of these S.M.A.R.T. goals was to outline specific criteria that need to be met in order to ensure the goal could be met:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
There is a step-by-step process to ensuring your goals are “smart”. First off, make your goal as specific as possible, by answering the questions ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’, in reference to your goal. Once those questions have been answered, you should write it down. Make it visible so that your goal is always in your mind.
The next step is to define measures to help identify once this goal has been achieved. These measures are tangible and are meant to help you recognize that you have been successful and that your goal has been met. Oftentimes, goals are made to be unrealistic and are more difficult to achieve. Make sure the goal you set is attainable, in a way that achieving the goal is possible and that keeps you in control of achieving it. It is unrealistic to set a goal to build a house from the foundation without ever learning to use any of the necessary tools.
Ensure that you have a realistic starting point, which guarantees you will be able to build that house from the ground up because you have dealt with tools before and have relevant skills that will help you complete this goal. Lastly, you want your goal to be bound by time – so you must set a deadline to guarantee you will remain focused because of the sense of urgency set by a deadline.
Goals are not confined to this order in the five-step process; these are just guidelines to help make goal-setting easier. So instead of resolving to lose 25 pounds in one year, resolve to lose 2 pounds by the end of each month. Or resolve to cook one more meal each week rather than ordering take-out. Whatever it is you resolve to do, be smart.
For more information:
http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Top…
http://readingeagle.com/articl…
http://topachievement.com/smar…
Photo credits:
http://media.mlive.com/grpress…
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