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I set a different kind of goal for myself this month, and it was pretty unconventional. It made me think of how we set goals, and more importantly, what kind of goals we’re encouraged to set. I’ll tell you about that goal a bit later on, but let’s start with the stuff you probably already know:

If you’re at all familiar with planning and motivation, you probably know that it’s a good idea to set goals for yourself. If you’re up on the latest trends, you probably know that you should set SMART goals. That stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Basically, it means you should make goals that are challenging yet possible, as specific as can be, and with a deadline. “Get 10 accepted answers on Stack Overflow before my performance review in November” is a SMART goal (I’m at two so far).

That’s all well and good, but today I want to talk about a different kind of goal. It doesn’t have a fancy acronym, but for short I like to call them Varied goals (the name will start to make sense soon). As you are about to learn, Varied goals are not at all SMART goals:

• Varied goals are intentionally vague.
• Varied goals are not easy to measure.
• Varied goals are never meant to be fully accomplished.
• Varied goals are extremely idealistic.
• Varied goals don’t have a specific deadline.

…but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful.

Varied goals are all about fine-grained motivation.

We’ll get to what Varied goals are all about in a moment, but first let’s look at an example of where SMART goals fall short:

Suppose I want to get better at soccer. It might help me to set a few SMART goals like “make a really solid pass every shift” or “score a goal in the next five games”. These goals give me specific tasks to fulfill that will help me improve important soccer skills. However, they’re pretty course-grained goals, don’t you think? Every game I’ll probably perform dozens of other actions that don’t impact those goals at all. What is pushing me in those cases? None of my goals apply, and my general desire to get better at soccer is far too general and not particularly inspiring. The idea of Varied goals is to fill that gap.

A Varied goal would be something like “Run harder than last shift”. This is something I can try really hard to do every shift, even though it doesn’t really satisfy any conditions for SMART. If I run into an unexpected soccer-circumstance and don’t really know what I should be doing, I can revert to my Varied goal; running harder is probably a good idea in a lot of situations, so this is something I can depend on. Best of all, it’s quite inspirational. When I’m running to get back to help defend my team’s net, I can think “Remember how fast I did this last shift? I’m going to be even faster right now”.

More formally:

• Varied goals are meant to complement SMART goals, not replace them.
• Varied goals are meant to be striven for, not attained.
• Varied goals favour what’s possible over what’s practical.
• Varied goals should be applicable to many general situations.
• Varied goals should be inspirational. Something that really fires you up.

Now, about the name.

I call them Varied goals because it’s very important to keep variety in mind. For starters, as mentioned above, Varied goals should apply to a variety of situations. But even more importantly, it’s a reminder that you should maintain a variety of goals — some Varied, even more SMART.

Back to our soccer example: running harder than my previous shift will apply to a lot of situations, and it will complement a lot of SMART goals very well. How am I going to get that first goal in the next few games? Maybe by outrunning a defenseman when I have the ball, or sprinting up the field so that I’m open when my teammate is looking for someone to pass to.

So, what’s my Varied goal for this month?

Be unstoppable.

That’s it. I have it starred and highlighted at the top of my todo-list, which I check several times a day. It’s a frequent reminder that for this month, every instant of every day, I want to be unstoppable. Am I going to let that IE6 bug slow me down? Not a chance. Am I going to get overwhelmed when my already-overbooked schedule fills up even more? Definitely not. After a long day, when I have to decide whether I should sit on the couch and watch TV or go to my desk and pump out an epic blog post, what’s it going to be? I’ll give you a hint: it’s barely even a choice.

I suspect this sounds a bit crazy, but it’s just what I need right now. I’ve been early on all my deliverables at work so far this month. I’m a wedding-planning machine. I’m out of a so-so slump in softball, and I’m finally getting better at soccer. I wrote this post six (!) days early. Obviously I can’t attribute all of this to a bland, over-arching statement, but I feel it does really drive a lot of small victories that are helping me accomplish my SMART goals more effectively.

Does any of this resonate with you?

I’d love to hear some reactions to this. Are Varied goals something that could help you, or is all this wishy-washy idealism stuff total nonsense to you? I’m still very much figuring this out as I go, and your opinion means a lot.

One of my favourite things about New Year’s Eve is that it’s a good time to reflect on the past year, and maybe gather some ideas of things to do better going forward. The net result of this introspective process is one or more New Year’s Resolutions.

I like making resolutions because I like setting goals for myself. One of my resolutions for 2010, which longtime readers of this blog may recall, is that I would have a new post up every Monday (and I’ve only missed one so far). I made other resolutions this New Year’s as well, and (as ridiculous as this sounds) by March I was already planning resolutions for next year. That’s when it hit me:

Set goals more than once per year.

Why wait until some arbitrary holiday to set goals? You can set realistic, helpful, attainable goals for yourself right now. And they don’t have to be scoped to a full year, either. Mix it up and have some that are month- or week-based. I find that short-term goals are usually easier to keep, provide benefits right away, and can help build confidence to hit more lofty goals that take a bit longer to reach. For example, here are some goals that I’ve set for myself recently:

• (for 2010) Write a blog post every Monday.
• (for March) Cook breakfast every morning.
• (for this week) Get up every morning at 6:30am.

I learned something interesting from each of these goals. In particular, I’ve realized that writing blog posts gets easier the more you do it, cooking breakfast helps me sort out my day/is delicious, and (perhaps most of all) I am not meant to be up at the crack of dawn. Which brings me to my next point:

It’s ok to fail.

Many of my goals don’t play out exactly as planned, and sometimes they get flat-out canceled if they turn out to be terrible ideas (6:30 mornings, I’m looking at you). The point is to experiment and see what works for you. Instead of getting discouraged when you’re constantly not hitting a goal, pause and reconsider if this is a goal you should really be pursuing. Did you over-estimate how much you could do? Is there a better way to get the result you were after when setting this goal? Often it’s the goal that is the problem, not you.

How I Hit my Goals

I use a few simple tricks to help me keep up with whatever goals my optimistic past-self may have signed present-me up for. In particular, this is what I find works best for me:

First and foremost, I try to be realistic. It won’t do me any good to set a goal that I won’t be able to reach, so especially for goals that are more than a week long, I’ll run my idea by someone I can trust to give me honest feedback as a sort of sanity-check. This way if the goal is too ambitious, at least I’ll have a red flag going in that I can use to adjust my targets. Of course, ultimately I know best; if I really think I can do something, I’ll still try it even if the feedback I’m getting isn’t all that positive.

Second, I find it helps to tell people if it’s an interesting goal (like breakfast). Maybe they’ll want to do it too, which makes motivation easier, or maybe they’ll pressure me into remembering to do it, which is nice when needed. Especially with this goal, I’d like to remind you that you’re not me and this may not work for you; it seems my opinion on this subject is not very popular.

Lastly, I find it’s important to give myself visual reminders of my goals. The tool I use most for this is a web-based task-management application called HiTask. For my month-long breakfast experiment, for example, I added a task to HiTask with a flashy-coloured label and a star, so that it really stuck out and was always at the top of my to-do list. You can also go low-tech; in January I printed out a grid of every Monday in 2010 broken down by month so that I could check them off throughout the year after publishing each weekly post.

Have you set any goals lately?

I’d love to hear about anything you’re striving for right now. What tools do you use? What else works for you? If you haven’t set any goals for yourself lately, why not start now? What do you have to lose?

Starting today, this blog will officially be updated on a weekly basis.

This is a small step up in terms of how often I’m posting now, but it’s something I want to try. After all, it’s a new year and that’s a great time to experiment with new ways of doing things — as I’m not an experienced blogger (at all) I haven’t really nailed down any good content-producing habits, and I think the best way for me to do so will be to get into a bit of a groove by sticking to a fixed schedule.

To help me hit my weekly deadline, I’ve developed the following chart, which is posted on the wall next to my desk:

The first column lists the first letter of each month, and the numbers on each row are the dates of all Mondays in the corresponding month for 2010. So the first row, for example, shows that the Mondays in January fall on the 4^th, 11^th, 18^th and 25^th. These are all the days on which there will be a new post. When I have a new post done and set to publish automatically, I’ll mark the matching Monday square in green. When I miss a day (though the plan is that I won’t) I’ll mark the matching square in red. This way I’ll have a very clear history of when I did and didn’t meet my deadline.

The purpose of this table is purely motivational. Having it next to my desk gives me a noticeable reminder if I still haven’t finished the next Monday’s post, and marking past Mondays in green (for done) and red (for missed) will give me a very frequent reminder that I’m either doing well or falling behind.

Are you trying anything new this year? Would a visual aid help you stay on track?