Goal Setting Methods⌗

As I went to set my personal goals for 2023, I did what I always do and procrastinated by over-researching goal setting methods. I instinctively reached for the S.M.A.R.T. framework, as it’s certainly the most well-known. But a quick read of the SMART goals framework on Wikipedia caused me to stumble upon the realization that “although SMART goals are widely used and often recommended, their effectiveness is widely debated.” This discovery was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better procrastination excuse. If the efficacy of SMART goals is questioned I couldn’t possible put my own goal setting at risk by using such an inferior method. Abandoning my effort to establish my goals for the year, I turned to my friends at DuckDuckGo to find latest a greatest in goal frameworks… …and kept finding SMART over and over. I’m guessing everyone has just found that you can game SEO for anything goal related by talking about SMART goals because none of the top results venture too far away from its warm embrace. The result is that it’s become the gold standard despite having limited justification or studies mentioned about it’s efficacy. It also now invites eye-rolling. Even HBR called SMART goals “banal” back in 2017.

Objectives and Key Results⌗

Working in a startup means that I’m intimately familiar with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). I like the idea behind this framework and think that this could be twisted into a format that works for personal goals as well. What I like is that it allows one to target a qualitative objective by breaking it down into measurable, quantitative results. An example of this could be:

  • Objective: Be healthier and more athletic
    • KR1: Reduce weight to 165lbs and 15% body fat
    • KR2: Complete a 100mi bike ride in xx:xx or faster
    • KR3: Cook five of seven dinners per week

The benefit of this is that I can effectively group the various activities into one category or theme and then give myself multiple avenues to accomplish this. It makes both the why and how clear in each goal. To make this less corporate and more personal sounding, we can reframe the terminology. Objective becomes Goal and Key Result becomes How. Perhaps a bit on the nose, but no need to be too clever about it.

Key Results Hows⌗

But now back to how to construct the Hows. Here I honestly have to admit that the SMART goals really aren’t that bad of a place to start. Putting them into OKRs just means that at least I know they’re actually smart and worthy pursuits. The issue is that by forcing OKRs into an annual goal setting exercise, I’m effectively setting the timeframe to one year. While this is appropriate for some goals, for others I think it’s probably not. To fix this, perhaps I have Hows that build on each other and set a how for each quarter. Establishing habits takes an average of 66 days, and though this is a pretty squishy number, it suggests that three months should suffice for turning these Goals and Hows into habits. With that in mind, the above example might look like the following:

  • Goal: Be healthier and more athletic
    • How Q1: Cook five of seven dinners per week
    • How Q2: Perform purposeful physical activity five out of seven days per week
    • How Q3: Reduce weight to 165lbs and 15% body fat
    • How Q4: Complete a century (100mi) cycling race in xx:xx or faster

The astute reader will realize that these Hows combine inputs, outputs, and outcomes. Q1 and Q2 are inputs, Q3 and Q4 are outcomes. While it’s not necessarily considered poor practice, I much prefer focusing on outcomes so would probably tweak these before they’re in final form.

Another way of looking at this framework, is that it can create full goal statements for each How where a goal statement is I want to How so that I can Goal. For example, I want to cook five of seven dinners per week so that I can be healthier and more athletic. This works for every one of these statements and is a good mental check when creating more. You’ll notice that each of these now satisfy the SMART criteria by being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

I’ll be playing with this method over the next few days to build out the rest of my goals for the year. Based on nothing at all I think three is probably the right number.