SMART Goals Re-Worked for 2021
By: Sarah Kat
Tags: Personal Development, Life Coaching, Goal Setting, Life Lessons, Personal Growth

SMART Goals Re-Worked for 2021

Photo by Tim Samuel from Pexels

Some years ago I trained as a life coach — but I never worked as one. I soon learned that I wasn’t cut out for it.

Coaches are meant to facilitate and hold space. I like to be directive and tell people what to do! But apart from that big life lesson about who I really am, I also learned some valuable tools.

Something we talked about in class was goal setting with a model, and the SMART goal model is a classic.

Here’s what the SMART model breaks down to:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time bound

So let’s take a look at how you can work with this old classic in a way befitting 2021 and our post-pandemic lives.

Your goals are still reachable — we just need to play with the hand we’ve been dealt.

Specific

Beginning with the basics here, a goal needs to be fleshed out with a little detail.

You need to be able to remind yourself what exactly you want, when you want it by, and if anyone else is involved in your process.

Make this 2021-proof by having a contingency plan for any future needs for social distancing, travel bans or event-cancellations, if those could effect you in any way.

Measurable

We all know what this means and why it’s here. If you don’t measure your goal, then you can’t ever really know when you’ve achieved it.

So if your goal is to become a top author, then your M will be about picking which stats or metrics you focus on. When you get to ‘X’ number of Kindle downloads, for example, or when you earn the ‘bestseller’ title.

In 2021 most measurable outcomes are still quite easy to put your finger on. That’s something that the pandemic hasn’t taken away from us.

Although, one example that comes to mind for me is races. Some running friends and I had marathons planned for 2020. We were already well into our training plans when the pandemic hit, and everybody’s goals went sideways.

Some people went with a contingency plan in the form of virtual races, so they still hit their goals. Others went with pausing training and postponing for a year.

Which would you choose?

Achievable & Realistic

For me, Achievable and Realistic kind of blend together. Sometimes I look at an acronym and think the creator has added filler just to make the word fit the purpose, rather than the other way around.

So I’m saving us both time by addressing these together. Hey, we lost enough time in 2020, am I right?

So ask yourself, do you have the resources to achieve this goal? And is it realistic based on your time, finances, fitness, or whatever aspects are relevant to you?

Some people also add ‘Relevant’ as an extra R, and I love that. I think that more than ever since the world changed, we are more focussed on our purpose in life.

There is nothing like a huge health crisis to make us ask the existential questions, like “what’s my purpose in life?”

Before undertaking the pursuit of any goal, ask yourself if it’s aligned with your life purpose. If it’s not, then do you really want to spend time and energy on it?

Time bound

This last one is about setting a time goal, to keep you accountable and make sure your goal doesn’t slip off your radar and become just another lost dream.

If that sounded a bit dramatic, I meant it to. I think it’s really sad when we abandon our dreams because life gets in the way.

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that life as we know it can be taken from us at any time. So if we want to live a purposeful life, then we need to get cracking on our goals.

But not any old arbitrary goals, they need to be aligned with our life purpose.