2025 April 29 SMART Goals wrap up

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Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk more about smart goals. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message today.

Today, we're doing a recap of everything we've discussed over the past five episodes about smart goals. This framework's been around for a long time, for decades, actually—for good reason. It works. These five elements create a powerful system for turning your dreams and intentions into a reality.

Previously, we've broken down each letter of the SMART acronym, exploring how each component contributes to creating goals that actually work. Today, we'll put all these pieces together and show how well they can actually function as this integrated system. 

Let's go back to the quick refresher on what each letter stands for. The S stands for specific. We talk about how specific goals focus on one clear outcome, not vague intentions. Instead of saying I want to be healthier, a specific goal would be I want to walk 30 minutes each day, or I'll cook three balanced meals each week. Something very specific.

M is for measurable. A measurable goal gives you a way to track your progress so you know where you are and where you stand at any point. This might mean counting something, like how much money you've saved, or might be timing, such as walking for 15 minutes. Or it can be any other objective measure that shows your progress.

A stands for achievable or actionable. An achievable goal is a realistic one given your current resources and constraints. It stretches you a little bit, but without really overloading you. So an actionable goal is one that has concrete next steps. You always know what to do next to move forward.

R represents relevance or reach. A relevant goal aligns with your broader life vision and values. It personally matters to you. A reach goal pushes you outside of your comfort zone, just enough to foster growth and development. Reach goals and achievable kind of work together to balance each other out.

Finally, the T is for time-based. A time-based goal has a clear deadline or timeframe that creates a sense of urgency. It helps with planning and establishes accountability, and it also helps you with prioritization. Taken separately, each aspect of smart goals gives you a little bit of a boost. The real power comes when you use them together. 

The entire SMART system gives you a simple series of steps to help you write a goal that's not only motivating and actionable, but won't overwhelm you or cause you to fail. For example, being specific helps make your goal measurable. It's hard to measure progress with a vague goal, like improve my finances. But once you've made it specific such as save $500 towards a vacation, you can easily measure your progress. Similarly, making your goal achievable and relevant increases the likelihood that you'll stick with it long enough to actually reach your deadline. So by adding a deadline, it helps you ensure your goal is actionable because you know how to take the steps and how to prioritize things. 

 I think it'll help to do a full example of how all these elements work together, so we'll pick something pretty straightforward. It depends on what part of life you're in. Maybe you recently retired, want to write a memoir to save your experiences with your family, or use it as a precursor for a book. We'll use that as our baseline example. 

So we're thinking about writing a book. We want to have something our family might find interesting, or you're thinking of publishing a book someday. We'll use this as the outline. Maybe just refine it and touch it up.

The important part is to start off right. Instead of saying I should write a book, we use a SMART framework, and then at the end we'll go through the kind of goal that we actually ended up with. We can apply the five letters right in the same order that we first think of our goal.

Instead of saying I want to write about my life, or I want to write a book, you could be specific and rephrase it as, I will write a 50,000 word memoir, focusing on my career experience and the lessons I learned. That's a pretty powerful start. But that's just the start. We haven't actually done anything yet.

So the next part is we should make it measurable, but you have to have some flexibility and you should use something that'll be motivating to you. So perhaps you want to track your progress by word count, say aiming for 50,000 words. But if you're not already a writer, the word count might not mean a lot to you intrinsically. It's kind of like, what's 50,000 words? Is that a lot or little? So maybe you want to write a certain number of chapters. And maybe you'll find that more motivating or even the amount of time you spend writing like five hours per week. The important part is to pick something that resonates with you and will provide you motivation.

Next comes A, which stands for achievable and actionable. Given your writing experience and other commitments, maybe you determine that writing about a thousand words in a week is realistic for you. Maybe you have no idea what that means, but you know that gives you 50,000 words in a year. It seems like a realistic target. Maybe you'd pick chapters because counting words means nothing to you. Then you want to write about 15 chapters. That'd be about a chapter every three weeks. So use whatever motivates you and helps you recognize your progress. It's super important on any of these pieces of the SMART system and whenever you're doing envisionment and goal setting.

Now you keep things so that they resonate and motivate you. Because remember that's the whole point of this. And notice we use very action-oriented descriptions. It wasn't, I'll think about my next chapter. It's I will write the next chapter in the next three weeks. It's really important that things be really tangible. Something that you can do. Dreaming is really good. Don't misunderstand me, but it's not so helpful when you're trying to define something tangible that you really want to accomplish. Then you had to put it in terms of something actually happening.

Next is R, which is relevant and reach. Our example goal of writing a book should align with your values of family connection or leaving a legacy or some other aspect that matters to you. Remember, it's something you generally want to do, not something you feel you should do or someone else told you you should do. For a goal to be effective, it has to be something that either you need to do to accomplish something else or you want to do to just bring fulfillment to your life.

So assuming you've never written anything lengthy before, it probably seems like it might be a reach for you that you could ever write 15 chapters or an entire book. Well, that's exactly the reach part of the goal. But when you look at it and break it down, you know you can really do it. But when you first thought about it, honestly, it just seemed impossible. It made your brain stretch or reach a little bit to become more comfortable that you could actually do something that beforehand you thought you couldn't possibly attain, and now you realize that you can.

Finally, we're at T for time-based. You set a deadline for completing your first draft within one year with milestones along the way, like finishing your outline in the first month, or completing your first three chapters within three months, whatever sort of milestones you have to set along the way.

And so the T in time provides the accountability part of the SMART system. Most of us tend to procrastinate to some degree or other, especially on things that we either don't want to do or we perceive as difficult, or maybe even impossible for us to do. And we don't ignore them because we know we have to do them at some point. But they're really super hard and we just don't really want to start on it, quite frankly. By setting a timeframe, it forces us to think about the problem and once we think about it, we can usually figure out a way to solve it, but when we keep putting it off, nothing really changes because our brain never really settles down to work on a solution.

So we always have this thing we know we need to do at some point, but we never really focus on it. So it always just hangs out there and we never really get a start on it. That's one of the big advantages of once you make it time-based, once you realize you have to do it, you use a SMART system and it just forces you to address the problem. Once you start to address it, you usually realize it's not impossible whatsoever.

One of the big advantages of the SMART system—or any system actually—is that it helps give you confidence. You have a path to follow, and if you follow that path, you'll likely either succeed, or set yourself up for success on one of the following attempts. You often hear, especially in any sort of coaching, the phrase trust the system, and it really is true. Everything we teach here is based upon proven systems with thousands, sometimes millions of success stories. It doesn't mean that you don't have to work at something really hard and really apply yourself to it, but it does mean that if you follow the steps, your chances of success by following that system are much better.

The SMART goal system is just one piece of what we teach, but those pieces all fit together in a way to guide you and allow you to make progress on bigger goals and changes that might otherwise have been completely out of reach.

For our example, when you put all these elements together, your vague wish of I should write a book, transforms into something like I'll write a 50,000 word memoir, focusing on my career experience and lessons learned, writing at least a thousand words a week and completing the first draft within one year.

Wow. Do you see how much more powerful that is? This new version gives you clarity, gives you direction, gives you a concrete plan of action. It's not just a hope, it's a plan and a roadmap to success. An important point though is the SMART framework isn't rigid. It's a tool to serve you, not a set of rules to constrain you. You might find that for certain goals, some elements are more important to you, and that's okay. The key here is to consider each element and apply it in a way that works for your specific situation.

As a wrap up in this series, a reminder about a few techniques that can be helpful in working with goals. First, write your goals down. We've talked about this so many times, but it really is important. There's something powerful about committing your goals down on paper and actually writing them and not typing them. When you do that, it makes it a lot more concrete as a reference point that you can return to.

Second, review and adjust as needed. Life changes, and so your goals may need to change with it. Schedule regular time to review your goals and make adjustments as necessary. Are they still relevant? Are they still the ones that are the most important to you? How you're going to go about your goal, the time part of it may have changed. All these things are okay. Make the adjustments isn't giving up, it's just adapting to life.

Third, celebrate your progress, including all the little milestones along the way. This builds momentum and helps you maintain motivation because anytime you do anything significant, there will be setbacks. And if you don't celebrate your little steps, and it's just been a long time since you celebrated anything, your mind might get into this thing of, I never reached my goal. I never do this, I never do that. And you forget all those little celebrations you should have had along the way.

So actually celebrate them. When you say, I'm gonna write a thousand words this week, and you write a thousand words, do something fun. Do whatever fun thing keeps you motivated. Maybe you go out and you buy a candy bar when you don't normally do that, maybe you just call up your friend and say, I did it. I did it. It's only Thursday. I wrote a thousand words. Whatever motivates you, celebrate your progress along the way.

Fourth, be kind to yourself. Show yourself some grace. Learn from the experience, adjust your approach if needed and keep moving forward. Negative motivation is really very bad. It's not very effective. It's not long lasting. Positive motivation, being kind to yourself saying, Wow, I wanted to write a thousand words and only hit 900. Of course—I was in the hospital two days. Show yourself some grace. It's not a rigid goal. Life happens, adjust things as they happen.

And finally, remember, the goals are means to the end, not the end in itself. They're there to help you create a life that feels meaningful and fulfilling to you. Your goal should serve your wellbeing and values, not be another source of stress or pressure.So thank you for following along. I hope you found this useful and fun. It's always enjoyable to make progress towards something you desire in life. 

Related to that, next month I'll be hosting a free webinar called Smart Goals for Life. In this interactive session, we'll expand on everything we've discussed here in this podcast series and provide practical worksheets and exercises to help you apply these concepts to your own goals. So whether you're considering retirement, you're a new empty nester, changing careers, whatever life transition you're in the middle of, the webinar will give you some concrete tools to create and achieve goals that truly mattered to you. 

We'll walk through examples together, and then you'll leave with your own personalized action plan that you've created to help you meet your own needs. Stay tuned for the specific date in May and links for the signup that'll be coming in next week or so. And even if you can't attend, I would encourage you to register anyway. Anyone who registers will receive a recording of the session or a link to the recording of the session, and the accompanying worksheets. Plus we'll be showing off and linking a new product that's currently in design and announcing our new community platform. So all exciting stuff coming up and I hope you join us. Next week we'll have the firm date.

That's it for the evening. Your homework tonight, which wraps up the past few weeks, is to take one of your big goals. Something that you think, well, you know, I'd really like to do something, but you don't really know where to start. Take one of those big goals and revisit it. Rewrite it using the SMART method. We've gone through all the steps. You know how to do it now. Just spend some time, take a day, a couple days, a week, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Rewrite that big goal as a SMART goal. You may want to break it into smaller steps if it's a really big goal, but use the SMART system on those smaller steps too, to help get you a definitive way to move towards that big goal.

Extra points if you share that goal with someone important to you, and then walk through it, explain it to them, how you plan to make that thing a reality. When you tell somebody else, it creates accountability. But it also gives somebody else the chance to help motivate you because they can call in a couple weeks and say, Hey, you know, I was thinking about you today. You had a lot of stuff to do and how's the past couple weeks been going? Not that they're holding you to a schedule per se, it's just they're showing you that they're interested in your success as well. That provides a lot of motivation.

So that's the big wrap up. We'll cover it again in some different ways in the next webinar. But for now, I think it gives you a lot to start on and some real targets to aim for and we'll help you take some of the goals that you probably thought were just too big to really think or even believe. Maybe we give you a way to find that they may be really big, but it is believable and that you can do it.

So that's for the evening. As always, please remember the many wars and areas of different parts of the world. Wars, political unrest, social unrest. There's a lot of things going on and I think it helps to remember that things aren't perfect where we are, things are not perfect anywhere, but all of us have a lot of things to be thankful for and things that we really should appreciate. It helps give a wider perspective on the world.

Ukraine is in an active war zone. The Middle East and now into Asia. Things going on over feuds that have gone on for decades—centuries—are starting to come up again. Africa. South America. A ton of changes.

You could look at all this and be overwhelmed, or you could look at it and ask, What can I do? If you review things and you stress about them, you have one or two things you can practically do. You either have to make it one of your goals to address it and act upon it in some way, or you have to set it aside, because worrying about things and not acting upon them—that's what really causes a lot of stress in people's lives.

If it's something going on domestically that you're not happy about, act upon it. Write some letters, and you say, Oh, I've written a letter. —Writing doesn't make a difference. No, it really does actually. There've been some huge, huge things that started out as letter writing campaigns. Start a blog saying, This is why I'm not happy right now. Whatever you can do, whatever makes sense to you to do, make a little focus group and talk to other people. Act on something or take it out of your life. But I would encourage you to act on it and think outside yourself.

Think about the other areas in the world. We always talk about two different places. Two different links. We always have UKR7.com. That's where I have links to organizations that provide help to the people of Ukraine and then World Central Kitchen at  WCK.org. They work in disaster areas around the world, both these places are really great. They do a lot of good for a lot of people. 

There's a lot going on everywhere in the world, including in your own neighborhood. Maybe there's a group right near you that could use some help. Volunteer with them, donate to them, whatever it is. If you can't donate or just don't feel like donating right now, it could be something really simple. Just see somebody in the street not looking so happy. Even if they are looking happy, just say, Hey, how're you doing? Morning! How's your night? Pretty day, isn't it? Whatever it is. You'd be surprised how much difference that can make to somebody.

A lot of people often feel that nobody hears them, nobody listens to them, nobody knows they're even alive or exists, and you walk by and say, good morning. I really like your shoes. They look really pretty with your coat today. —Thanks a lot. —Have a wonderful day. And that's it. And, wow, somebody actually paid attention to me and it makes them realize that they're part of the human race. Something simple like that can really make a huge difference. 

When you think outside of yourself, look outside yourself—look at others. You have the power to make a huge positive change in the world and I encourage you to use that.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting and useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.