GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!

Dreams with Deadlines

Life Coaches like to say, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” But, as inspiring as that statement is on its surface, it leaves a lot to the imagination, so I think it helps to analyze it a bit. “Unpack it,” in the current vernacular. In my short, but intense, experience as a Life Coach so far, I have found that people tend to think of goals as abstract ideas about what they’d like to have in their lives. So I hear things like, “I’d like to be thin,” or, “I want to be independently wealthy,” or, “Someday, I’ll be famous!” But goals in life should actually be just like goals in sports; specific targets that you have to work very hard toward, against all of the opposing forces, in order to achieve success. In other words, you’ve got to know exactly what you want, figure out how to get it, and you’ve really got to want it ‘cause it ain’t gonna be easy. So if instead of saying, “I want to be independently wealthy,” people were to say, “I’m going to study incredibly hard in high school so I can get straight A’s, go to college at an Ivy League School, get a job as a Financial Analyst in investment banking at Goldman Sachs when I’m 22 years old, work 15 hours a day for 10 years, make all the right political connections so that I make Managing Director by the time I’m 40, invest in the company 401K and have a solid stock portfolio so that I can afford my second wife and a boat for my retirement at age 50 (after my first or second heart attack, of course),” that would actually be closer to a realistic goal. Not a good one, in this coach’s opinion, but it does have more of the elements of a SMART goal. So what are the elements of a truly good goal, and just how does one go about setting a good goal?

Pipe Dreams

First let’s define what the statements that people normally think of as goals really are. “Someday, I’ll be famous!” is not a goal; it is a very vague vision. When people make these types of statements, there are two things going on. First, they are idealizing a situation that is far from ideal. Being famous is very difficult. Paparazzi are not fun when you haven’t shaved or had a cup of coffee in the morning. Fans are not fun when you are trying to eat a meal or get your kids in a cab. If you’re going to be famous, you’d better be ready for everything that that brings along with it in today’s environment; Twitter accounts, stalkers, bad reviews, Us Magazine stories about your relationships, interviews, working out a ton, agents who focus on the next hot thing to walk into their office… You’ve got to have supreme self-confidence and an iron will to not end up like Lindsay Lohan, or worse, Amy Winehouse!!

The other thing that is usually going on is that this vision is left completely amorphous so that it isn’t real, because if it were real, there would be no reason not to work toward it. Just like saying, “I’d like to be thin,” has no real meaning because it doesn’t get at the behavior that underlies being heavier, “Someday, I’ll be famous,” has no connection to the work that one would have to do to achieve that vision. This is the stuff of pipe dreams. What’s in the pipe? It ain’t tobacco, that’s for sure.

I’m Having a Vision…

But let’s say being famous is something that you would really like to strive toward (insert your own desires here), and you’re willing to put yourself “out there” and take whatever comes. In order to get the statement to be something real, you’ve got to change it into a working Vision Statement. A Vision Statement defines what a desirable future for you really is. A Vision Statement is something that makes sense to you; you understand it completely, intuitively, but it has some expressed details in it. It incorporates your core values and utilizes your strengths. So, let’s say that you’ve redefined your vision in a somewhat more concrete statement like, “I am going to be famous by the time I’m 25 by bringing beauty and understanding to the world doing dramatic acting in movies in Hollywood.” As a coach, I would recommend against having “being famous” in the vision because, if you love what you do, the fringe benefits are not what make you do it, the work is inherently satisfying. But just for the sake of argument, let’s run with this vision.

Finally the Goal Setting Part!!

Okay, okay… I felt that we needed to get something to work with, but I also wanted to get you to understand part of why people often fail to realize their dreams. Mistaking an undefined, idealized vision for a goal is a total game stopper. Even the Vision Statement above is not what I would coach toward, but let’s take it one step at a time. If you want to bring beauty to the world through acting and get famous by twenty five it helps to have a plan. Planning means setting intermittent goals that take you toward achieving your vision. Planning is goal setting. If I were coaching someone with the Vision Statement above, I would work with them to find out what steps they were willing to take toward the vision. A good goal in this case would be to start taking acting classes. But if you’re serious about the endeavor, you might want to investigate which acting classes would best suit your skills, personality and what you want to achieve. In that case, a good goal for the week might be, “I will investigate 10 sets of acting classes using my lunch time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by searching the internet and making phone calls for twenty minutes each of those days.” Breaking down this goal, you will see that it is a SMART Goal, but watch what happens.

Always be S.M.A.R.T.

I love acronyms that are actual words! So efficient! The acronym SMART, as it applies to goals, breaks down as follows:
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable or Agreed Upon
R – Realistic and/or Relevant
T - Time Bound

Any goal that you really want to achieve must be stated in these terms, otherwise it isn’t real enough to your brain to make you take action. So how specific do you need to be? Very specific, because as you try to figure out where, when, how, why and with whom you will attempt to achieve your goal, the blockages and obstacles, fears and frustrations appear like the rearing, horrible heads of the hydra of habit that they are. As you go through the exercise of creating a SMART goal, you may also find yourself exercising the demons of a history of inaction or even failure. But as Buddhists like to point out, the past is in the past and you can do nothing about it but accept it, learn from it and move on. So let’s review the smart goal “I will investigate 10 sets of acting classes using my lunch time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by searching the internet and making phone calls for twenty minutes each of those days,” and see how we rank it on the SMART scale.

Specific

Is it Specific? It has a target of 10 acting classes to be researched, it says when you’re going to do research by days and at specific times (over lunch), and for how long. The problem with NOT saying for how long you will do research, by the way, is that once you get started on something, it is hard to disengage, especially if the activity is for something important to you. Human nature is a pit bull that way. But if you spend too much time researching (or working, or cleaning, or on the internet…), you become unbalanced very quickly and don’t do other things that you should be doing (eating lunch, playing with kids, talking to friends or family, making a healthy meal, working out…). If the goal ultimately says twenty minutes, stick to it, there was a reason you put that in the goal. Anyway, for specificity, this is a good goal.

Measurable

A goal of researching 10 lessons? Measurable by counting. 20 minutes for three days? Measurable by time. I think we’re good here, but let’s stay flexible.

Attainable or Agreed Upon

Hopefully, you have looked ahead and thought through your week so that you know that Monday, Wednesday and Friday lunches are going to be your free time. 10 classes to be researched? That’s a little bit more than three per twenty minute session. You have to find the classes, analyze the information on the internet, and call and ask questions. If you stop to think and work smarter, not harder, on this, it might make sense to look up all the classes at one time – more efficient internet research time – and write all of the names and numbers down on paper with space to write the answers to your questions when you call. Hmmm… can you do that in 20 minutes? Might be pushing it. Maybe change Monday to 30 or 40 minutes of research time. Okay, no problem. The other two days you make phone calls, ask questions and get answers. Five each day in twenty minutes? Could work… but maybe again scheduling 40 minutes per session makes sense in case a conversation goes particularly well here and there. No problem. It might make sense to have a set of good questions that you want to ask in order to assess the classes for what you want. Maybe making a list ahead of time on Sunday night would be a good idea. No problem – Sunday for 30 minutes, think up a list of 5 or so questions you want to get answered for each class. Got it.

As you can see, planning takes time. Good planning and planning that makes you work smarter, not harder, takes even more time!! But it saves tons of time and frustration when you are actually attacking your goal. Okay. I think we’ve got Attainable down now. Let’s assume you’ve checked with bosses about 1 hour lunches and significant others about the possibility of class time, shall we?

Realistic/Relevant

This goal seems pretty realistic now – but it has changed. And now it is more than one goal.

1) I will spend 30 minutes on Sunday evening writing out a list of 5 questions for the acting classes.
2) I will research 10 classes on the internet for 40 minutes on Monday at lunch time.
3) I will spend 40 minutes over lunch time on Wednesday and Friday making phone calls to identified classes and ask my question?

Funny how that works. Before we thought it through, it seemed totally doable… a non-issue. But now it seems like a lot more work, doesn’t it?? Very often as I get people to start thinking through all of the elements of a good goal, they get dejected and want to stop talking about achieving the goal. When they realize just how much work it will actually be to realize their vision, they give up before they’ve started. Many people will say,”But why can’t I just… (insert short-cut here)?” When I ask if they have tried what they’ve suggested before, they usually say, “yes.” Then I ask if it worked.

Slowing down and taking time to plan is called working smarter, not harder, and almost nobody actually does it. When you take the time to think things through, you actually come up with a plan that is the least likely to be frustrating and fraught with problems that will increase the effort that you have to put in to succeed at the goal, and the overall amount of work to reach your vision. Imagine not having the questions thought out ahead of time and having to call several places back AFTER you thought of the perfect question. And believe me, taking the wrong class (perhaps because it’s the cheapest option, for example) will definitely increase the time it will take you to achieve your vision, wasting time, money, and energy. When your goal is realistic, it has the highest chance of succeeding and the lowest possible risk. Looking back now, this all seems painfully Realistic and shockingly Relevant, no?

Time Bound

We had some good time elements in the first goal, but this new set of goals is even better. Lots of timing. You’ll finish this in a week and have great information for your next week’s goal. Deciding which class to take and signing up. I know this whole set of things to do just to choose an acting class seems like a lot of work. It is. Maybe when you’re under twenty five this seems excessive, and lacking in spontaneity and awfully time-consuming. But tell me. How many really good-looking waiters do you know?

GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL!

We can now pull this whole dissertation together. For those of you who haven’t fallen asleep, thanks for bearing with me. In keeping with the sports theme at the start of this discussion, your Vision Statement is your ultimate target; the end zone past the goal posts. The weekly and daily SMART Goals are the playbook; the strategies that you will use to get the next ten yards. To get to the end zone, you use what you know about the game, the rules, your teammates, the opponents, the playing field, the boundary lines… to move the ball a little at a time, you adjust when something doesn’t work (learn from failure), and when you see a big opening, you run or throw a pass. In life as in football, really long passes known as “Hail Mary’s” are very low percentage plays. Well calculated risk is what pays off. And when you take the field, you don’t play not to lose; you play to win; all-out, SMART, using your whole team, and in the zone. So after all that what exactly is a goal? A dream with deadlines, baby… a dream with deadlines.