Honing Your Goals to Make Them More Effective

Why SMART works, what might be missing, and what running can teach us about setting goals.

“Hone” means both to smooth or sharpen something, such as a blade, as well as to refine or perfect. The two meanings are related – the reason to smooth and sharpen a blade is so that it works more effectively. That’s also the reason to refine and perfect goals. SMART is one popular goal-honing heuristic, but it is certainly not the only way to think through goals. This week’s blog explores SMART, along with some other criteria for crafting goals that work.

The Alphabet Soup of Honing Goals

SMART, as it turns out, is not the only way your goals can be. Your goals can also be DUMB (dream-driven, uplifting, method-friendly, and behavior-driven). The originators of this schema, by the way, would have you know that a DUMB goal is a good thing. Goals help you GROW (goal-setting, reality check, options, will or wrap-up) (Müller and Kotte, 2020). They can be POWERful (positive, your own, what specifically?, evidence, relationship) (Day & Tosey, 2011). They can be BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals) or OKRs (outcome, key results). They can be PURE (positively stated, understood, relevant, ethical), CLEAR (collaborative, limited, emotional, appreciable, refinable), or as simple as ABC (achievable, believable, committed).

Looking at some of the other options, one can see why SMART won out, regardless of any actual superiority in the system itself. In academics, especially, who doesn’t want to be SMART? Don’t get too comfortable, though — the letters in SMART don’t always stand for the same thing. When George T. Doran published his widely cited article on the topic in 1981, he defined SMART as specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-related. But that A also shows up as achievable, action-oriented, agreed, aggressive, and aligned. And R can mean relevant, results-based, or reasonable. And then there are all the efforts to improve upon SMART – SMARTER, SMARTIE, SMARTTA, I-SMART. If one relies on the literature, the central tenet of a really effective goal-honing strategy seems to be a memorable acronym.

Examining Effective Goals

En route to making sense of all this and offering what I hope is some helpful advice, we’re going to take a detour into one of my favorite topics – running.

Off and on for several years now, I’ve been running with a group that comes alongside people in addiction recovery as they train for road races. The participants can run or walk, and they can train for distances from 5K to half marathon. I think someone did a marathon once, but the people I run with are usually training for a half. There’s a lot of research on how physical activity rewires the brain, helping to repair damage done by drugs, alcohol, or other trauma. That’s one reason this program is effective. Another, though, is that it gives the participants something concrete to achieve through disciplined effort. In short, it gives them a goal.

The reasons why training for a race works as a goal for this group provide some insight into how to make other kinds of goals effective.

Why Race Training Works

1. The goal is clear. In the program I run with, people train for a specific race, one that will take place at a specific time. This time is near enough that it seems real, but far enough away that they have time to progress from their current state of fitness to a level that enables them to complete the challenge.
2. The goal is appropriately challenging. This concept appears over and over in the goal-setting literature and is a central feature of Locke and Latham’s Goal-Setting Theory (Müller & Kotte, 2020). Goals should be achievable, but not easy. The “appropriately challenging” criterion also fits with the concept of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2015) that I mentioned last week. Flow requires that tasks be toward the upper limit of a person’s capacity (but not beyond it) (Weintraub et al., 2021). In the recovery program, participants tend to choose distances that require them to improve their endurance, or try to move from walking to running. The idea is to stretch oneself. Which brings us to . . .
3. The goal is one’s own. Participants can choose a distance. They can choose to run or walk, or some combination of the two. The goal is very much in the control of the individual, and each individual must put in the work to achieve it. On that topic . . .
4. The work required to achieve the goal is incremental. One reason distance running is such a popular goal is that it is pretty easy to find or create a plan to move someone from their current state to the finish line. These plans start with short distances and build slowly. The steps to achieve the goal are clear, and each step builds on the previous one.
5. The goal is communal. I know I just said the goal is individual, and that’s true. But part of what makes distance running work for a lot of people, including the folks I run with, is that you work toward your individual goals together. Running with friends adds encouragement and accountability. And there’s also the fun race gear and team shirts. Don’t underestimate the power of a good reward.

Goal-Honing in Graduate School

It’s time to bring this detour back to goal-honing in graduate school with an example. Let’s say your goal is to complete three chapters of your dissertation this semester. What honing needs to happen to make this a goal you are more likely to meet?

1. Is it clear? This goal is pretty clear. Give yourself an end date and specify which chapters you need to complete for a solid, concrete goal. In a few weeks, I’ll post about creating a more detailed plan for projects like this. For now, something like, “Complete rough draft of introduction, literature review, and methodology by December 12” is good.
2. Is this goal appropriately challenging? You are really the only person who can answer this question. How much reading have you done for the lit review? How clear is your research question? Do you have a general sense of both methodology and methods for your study? If you truly are not sure whether you are taking on too much or too little, talking to your advisor or a mentor can help (see also Shameless Plug at the end of this post).
3. Is the goal your own? After considering the issues above, does the goal fit with your overall timeline for completing your program and the day-to-day time available? Can you control the outcome of your efforts? For example, a goal such as, “Publish a peer-reviewed paper” is probably not entirely in your control. “Write a quality academic paper to submit for publication” is. In the case of the three-dissertation-chapter goal, consider what parts of the project are in your control, and which are not. Make sure your goal involves work you can control (read on, though, because of course we’re never completely in control . . .).
4. Can you develop an incremental plan to achieve the goal? Again, more on this in future posts, but if you are completely unsure of how to achieve the goal you have set, you may need a smaller or more proximate one. For example, if you aren’t even sure of the general ballpark of your research question or the methodology you want to use, getting from here to three completed chapters may be leaping over too broad a chasm. You might instead focus on the literature review, which is going to help you make decisions about the research question and methodology.
5. What support do you have? You probably aren’t going to get a lot of friends to come plow through databases with you on a Saturday morning, but you are going to need both encouragement and accountability to achieve your goal. Now is a good time to talk to your support people and enlist their help. Think about what you need from family, advisor, boss, and others in your life to achieve your goal. You might also plan some interim rewards (remember the race shirts). You might not find a t-shirt motivating, but how about giving yourself dinner out or a book you’ve been wanting if you are still on track with your goal each month?

Back to SMART

Does all this kind of remind you of SMART goals? Despite the fun I was having with the concept in the first few paragraphs, I do think SMART is a useful tool that can help you create goals that work. At the very least, it provides an orderly way to think through some of the important elements of setting goals.

The Importance of Flexibility

As I pointed out at the end of criterion 3, the truth is that we are never truly in control of our goals or our efforts to get there. The people I run with do usually reach their goals. This is likely because the goal meets the criteria of SMART and many other goal-setting systems. There is, however, another aspect of goal-setting that few systems acknowledge. Sometimes, things do not go as planned. Here’s an example. Last year, I decided to run a marathon – my first in nearly two decades. I did all the incremental work to prepare for race day and planned how fast to run each mile to complete the race in what seemed like an appropriately challenging time. It became clear to me within the first few miles, however, that I was not going to meet my goal time. The weather was humid and windy, and I felt bad enough that I considered turning around and just completing the half.

This experience points to another vital point to remember when working with goals. A goal must be flexible. Obviously, the point of a goal is to achieve it. Sometimes, though, achieving our initial goal is impracticable or impossible. You may determine, after much reflection and honing, that completing three chapters of your dissertation by December 12 is an appropriate goal in every way. But as the semester progresses, you might inherit an extra project at work. You might have to care for a sick relative. You might have an unexpected family move. You might discover, as a friend who set out to write his dissertation on a little-known biblical character did, that the reason there is a gap in the literature on your topic is that there is absolutely no information available. That is not the time to give up on your goal, but it is the time to revise.

Be Willing to Revise

In my marathon, I revised my goal, reducing my pace and, in fact, walking much of the second half. I finished in a time slower than I ever thought possible. But if I had not been willing to revise my goal, I would not have finished at all (and probably would have ended up in the medical tent). Like the Duke of Wellington, make your plans, but make them out of string, not iron. Flexibility is not giving up, and success achieved late and limping is success all the same.

Shameless Plug

Do you need help in your graduate journey? I started The Well-Ordered Mind to support graduate students toward structure, progress, and peace. Click the button below to set up a free consultation and discuss how graduate student success coaching might benefit you!

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2015). Reflections on Enjoyment. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 28(4), 489–497. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.1985.0019

Day, T., & Tosey, P. (2011). Beyond SMART? A new framework for goal setting. Curriculum Journal, 22(4), 515–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2011.627213

Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Managements’ Goals and Objectives. Management Review, 70, 35-36.

Müller, A. A., & Kotte, S. (2020). Of SMART, GROW and goals gone wild – A systematic literature review on the relevance of goal activities in workplace coaching. International Coaching Psychology Review, 15(2), 69–97.

Weintraub, J., Cassell, D., & DePatie, T. P. (2021). Nudging flow through “SMART” goal setting to decrease stress, increase engagement, and increase performance at work. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 94(2), 230–258. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12347