You have set some specific goals and have started on your goal journey. Now, the question is – how will you know when you have arrived at your goal? Have you ever taken a walk with a friend and gotten frustrated because they keep saying, “let’s just go a little further.” Even if you really enjoy walking, you want to know when you have arrived at your destination! Goals are no different, we will experience frustration if they keep dragging on and we never know when we have achieved the goal.
The second letter of the SMART-EST goal-setting framework is MEASURABLE. This means that we should be able to show our goal and our result to anyone and they will be able to know for sure if we met our goal. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need a target number in our goal. Let’s look at a couple of examples for both a quantitative (“number”) goal and a qualitative (Pass/Fail) goal.
Let’s say you have a quantitative goal to “Decrease weekly eating out expenses by 10%.” This looks like a specific, measurable goal, but let’s examine what you need in order for this goal to be measurable. First, you need a baseline. You need to know how much you are spending per week on eating out. You also need to consider how much time to include in your baseline calculation – are you going to calculate your weekly average based on one month, the past 6 months or a longer period? Secondly, you need to calculate what a 10% decrease in spending equals in dollars. For example, if you are spending $100 per week on average, then a 10% decrease means that you will need to spend only $90 per week. Also, consider if you are going to measure just once. If you only spend $90 on eating out this week, are you going to say you met your goal? Or do you want to achieve a new average of $90 per week for the entire year? So let’s redo this goal a little and clearly define how we are going to measure our baseline and endpoint. The new goal is to “Decrease my weekly average eating out expenses by 10% for the entire year based on the last 12-month average.” This is a better measurable goal!
Now, let’s look at a qualitative goal. The goal is to take a one-week vacation in Hawaii within the next 12 months. This one is pretty easy, either you meet it or you don’t! There really isn’t much interpretation or calculation needed. If you arrived in Hawaii and were there for 7 days you met your goal. Otherwise, you didn’t!
There isn’t a right or wrong approach here. Both types of goals are useful depending on the context. It’s really a matter of thinking through the data points you will need in order to evaluate goal performance. As indicated by the first example, a percentage increase/decrease goal is more complex than you may think at first glance! If you are going to set a quantitative goal, make sure you have baseline data and a way to track your progress toward the goal. If you are setting a qualitative goal make sure the pass/fail criteria are clear! That way you won’t get caught in the “just a little farther” scenario!
Need some help working on your goals? Check out our Master Class Courses page for our goal-setting course starting on January 17th!
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