Why do so many goals fall off track? It isn’t because you’re not working hard enough, the average person works 7.6 hours of overtime every week just to try to reach their goals. The problem usually boils down to planning.

Goal-setting is hard, there are so many moving parts to coordinate across your team – each one as important as the next. 

• What specifically do we want to accomplish?
• How do we measure progress and success?
• Is this a realistic and achievable goal?
• Is this goal relevant to improving our bottom line?
• What’s our time frame and deadline for this goal?

Without a well-planned roadmap to success, you’re likely going to fall short of your ambitious goals. This is where setting SMART goals that are attainable will help you work faster, collaborate more efficiently, and get more done to meet your deadlines.

Here’s everything you need to know about the SMART goals framework.

What are SMART goals?

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The SMART goal acronym covers the five most important parameters of planning you need to follow to reach your goals – missing just one can completely block your progress or waste weeks' worth of time.

So while it's one thing to set goals — you need to plan how you’re going to make them happen. Keep your goals (and your team) on track by investing the time before you start the project to map out your SMART goals. This framework will clarify direction, purpose, timeline, and success around the goals so everyone’s on the same page throughout the project.

Henry David Thoreau once said "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” However, for many people, it's not always clear how we can put these foundations under our ambitious goals. 

SMART goals framework example

Say you’re a project manager collaborating with a team of 15 people on a new website launch for your company. You’re coordinating across marketing, design, and development teams to execute the launch, and need to get everyone on the same page to get this done before the end of the quarter. 

Here’s an example SMART goal statement you can use for your project team:

How to write SMART goals

Each parameter of the SMART goals criteria should be planned before embarking on your goal. Let’s walk through each.

1. Specific

Don’t fall short on detail – your goals need to be specific. And goal setting always starts with the objective. Take the time to answer these questions right away in your SMART goal planning:

• What exactly do we want to accomplish? 
• Why is it important? 
• What impact will it have on our business’s bottom line?
• Who needs to be involved in this project? 
• What steps do we need to take to reach this goal?

How to create a specific goal

We're not going to lie: this first step requires the most time and thought – don't let the apparent simplicity of this first step fool you. But once you have your specific objective squared away, the rest of SMART goals can come easily. Specific is the "S" in SMART goals

Before you actually start working on your goal, you need to clearly define what you want to achieve. And the "what" of your specific goal also needs to highly consider your "why" (the "R" in SMART, for relevance.) As Simon Sinek has said, you should always start here; always start with "why." So, before going any further, start answering some of the questions we listed above — feel free to organize your thoughts in our SMART goals template found here.

2. Measurable

Now that we know the specifics of our SMART goal – how are we going to measure success? While we need to measure the final impact of a project, there are many steps to track from start to finish. A measurable goal has criteria for tracking your progress across milestones, knowing when your goal has been reached, and metrics to measure if the project's final outcome fell short, met, or exceeded your performance goals. 

As Andy Grove, the inventor of OKRs, said: “if your goal is sufficiently measurable, you'll be able to answer the question of "did I achieve this goal?" with a simple yes or no.” 

How to make your goals measurable

Identify and define the specific metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly relate to your goal. So if the goal is to increase website traffic, metrics could include total keywords, monthly visits, unique visitors, page views, bounce rate, or average session duration.

Once you've identified the metrics, set numerical targets or benchmarks that will signify the goal has been achieved. For example, if the objective is to increase monthly sales leads, specify the exact number of leads needed to eventually say "mission accomplished". 

3. Achievable

Now, there's nothing wrong with being incredibly ambitious and setting remarkable goals. However, the more formidable your goals, the more potentially discouraging they may end up being. If you set the bar too high, your targets are out of reach, or you just don’t have the capacity to execute – you may fall short and end up wasting weeks worth of work on a non-starter. 

SMART goals are attainable goals — they are realistic and within reach. Of course, achievable doesn't necessarily mean easy or effortless. Achievable goals are meant to challenge you to grow, while still being in reach and accomplishable with everything else you need to keep progressing outside of this project. 

How to keep your goals achievable

It’s helpful to break your objective down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Big goals are great and all, but they can easily become overwhelming if you don’t properly anticipate all the work that will go into them. 

Once you've established milestones, you can create a detailed task list outlining the steps required to achieve each milestone. However, not all tasks are equally critical for achieving your goal. You'll need to prioritize tasks based on their impact and the resources required. Don't be afraid to get ruthless when it comes to your priorities. Of all the things on your to-do list, which are the ones that are absolutely essential to achieving the goal? 

4. Relevant

Time is our most precious resource, and while it's healthy to have a diverse set of goals, you want to prioritize your time around the goals that are most relevant to your long-term objectives. You don’t want to waste time on goals that don't move the needle for your business. 

SMART goals are always explicitly relevant to the big picture. If you can't clearly tie a SMART goal to one of your larger aspirations, chances are, it's not a relevant goal. 

How to make your goals relevant

Start by tracing a clear path from your goals to your larger objectives. Imagine your goals as stepping stones on a bridge toward your dreams. If the connection feels tenuous, your goal might not be all that relevant. Refine your goal to bridge the gap.

Challenge each goal with "So what? Why is this important?" If the answer doesn't lead back to your core values or long-term vision, reconsider the goal's relevance.

5. Time-bound

Ever worked without a deadline? Needless to say there’s not a great sense of urgency to get it done. SMART goals need both deadlines and time-bound milestones to track where you’re starting, when tasks will be met, and the date your project should be completed.

Studies show that clear timeframes and deadlines help create the healthy urgency you need to get the job done, and actually improve your task performance. Without time-bound constraints, you’re bound to procrastinate, get distracted, and end up prioritizing another project. Time-bound goals are also much easier to prioritize as these due dates will help you plan your workweek.

How to plan your time-bound goal milestones & deadline

Carefully consider the scope and complexity of what you're setting out to achieve when determining your timelines. This is why it's helpful to break your goal into smaller pieces. With the whole scope of the project broken up into mini-milestones, each with its own set of deadlines and time estimates, you'll have a realistic look at how long the goal will likely take to achieve. 

The important thing here is to keep everyone on the team on the same page. These time parameters will help team members identify what to work on first to unblock progress for others, and keep the project on track for your deadline.

Free SMART goals template

As you go through your own process of writing your SMART objectives, feel free to use our free template below to organize your goal planning:

5 personal examples of SMART goals

You can write SMART goals for nearly anything, whether for a personal or professional goal. Here are a few personal examples:

1. Health & fitness: Run a half-marathon in under three hours within the next six months to improve my physical fitness by following a structured training plan and gradually increasing distance by a quarter mile every week.
2. Education: Achieve a score of at least 90% on my final exam to improve my GPA by dedicating 10 hours per week to study sessions and practice exams for the next three months.
3. Personal finance: Save $6,000 for an emergency fund within the next year so I’m prepared for an unexpected life-changing event by reducing discretionary spending and setting aside $500 a month.
4. Hobbies: Learn to proficiently play guitar within six months to adopt a new healthy routine by practicing for at least 30 minutes every day and completing one online course on music theory.
5. Travel: Visit five new countries within the next five years to broaden my cultural understanding of the world by planning and executing at least one international trip every 12 months.

The best SMART goals for work

Here are some examples of professional SMART goals:

1. Sales: Increase sales revenue by 15% within the next quarter to exceed our sales target by 3% by implementing a new client outreach strategy focused on upselling existing customers and acquiring new leads.
2. Marketing: Increase online conversion rates by 20% within the next quarter to attract and retain more relevant users by optimizing landing pages, A/B testing ad copy, and refining the customer journey.
3. Customer service: Increase customer satisfaction scores from an average of 85% to 95% within six months to strengthen brand loyalty by implementing personalized follow-up procedures, developing better communication skills, and improving response times to customer queries.
4. Human resources: Improve employee retention by 20% over the next year to reduce our turnover and recruitment costs by conducting stay and exit interviews, analyzing turnover data, and implementing personalized retention strategies based on the findings.
5. Time management: Decrease meeting duration by 20% by the end of the month to reduce burnout and improve productivity by setting clear agendas, encouraging concise discussions, and using meeting productivity tools.
6. Management: Develop and implement a mentorship program for junior team members within three months to improve our onboarding time and retention rates by 15%.
7. Cost management: Reduce departmental expenses by 10% by the end of the fiscal year to free up resources for investments in new tech through a comprehensive review of operational processes and identification of areas for cost optimization without compromising on quality.
8. Innovation: Introduce two new product features in the next 12 months based on market research to increase monthly active users by 10% and customer engagement by 25%.
9. Risk management: Reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities by 30% within the next quarter to reduce risk of disruptions to core operations by conducting regular security audits, implementing necessary patches, and providing comprehensive employee training on data security protocols.
10. Technical support: Improve first-response resolution rates from 75% to 90% within three months to improve overall customer satisfaction by enhancing training programs, providing additional resources, and implementing a knowledge base system.
11. Financial management: Increase profit margins by 5% within the fiscal year to help weather economic downturns by identifying cost-effective alternatives for key operational expenditures and optimizing pricing strategies.

Pros & cons of SMART goals

The SMART framework undoubtedly provides structure to your goal setting. But is it the end-all-be-all for goals? Let’s take a look at SMART goals pros and cons:

Pros of SMART Goals

1. Better clarity & focus

At the heart of SMART is specificity – their greatest strength is the clear guidelines for what you want to achieve. With better clarity comes better focus. Otherwise, you may experience decision paralysis due to the ambiguity of your goals — the SMART approach has major advantages to staying clear-headed around what’s most important. 

2. Success is easily measurable

However, the "what" of your goals isn't the only thing that's specific in SMART goals. Tracking your progress along the way allows you to measure and improve your chances of achieving success. It’s super important to analyze how you’re actually doing — are you on track for your deadline, have you fallen out of scope, and do you need to prioritize more time for this project? SMART goals will prevent you from finally reaching the goalpost to only realize you’ve missed some crucial steps. 

3. Easy to communicate 

Another big pro of SMART goals is the fact they're super easy to explain and share with others. By communicating plans through the SMART goals framework, everyone gets on the same page quickly, which makes teamwork smoother, reduces confusion, and keeps your team accountable and focused on the same objectives.

4. Realistic & achievable

SMART goals prevent you from wasting time on a project with no real potential! When goals are realistic, they're not impossible. That doesn’t mean they’re not ambitious, but SMART goal planning keeps the project from overwhelming your team and everyone stays motivated because you truly know you can do it. 

5. Healthy pressure from precise timelines

Most people are more productive with a healthy dose of pressure! Not the soul-crushing kind, but enough to stay focused and motivated around reaching a deadline. These end dates discourage procrastination by making it clear that there's a timeframe for achieving the goal. And this sense of urgency pushes individuals or teams to make consistent progress, keeping everyone focused and working steadily toward meeting those time-bound objectives.

Cons of SMART Goals

1. Potentially rigid & inflexible

Of course, SMART goals aren't perfect for everyone. Considering how specific SMART goals need to be, the SMART criteria can sometimes feel rigid and inflexible when circumstances change or priorities shift. Suddenly, a SMART goal that made sense a few weeks ago may be irrelevant now or needs to be rewritten entirely. 

2. Some things are difficult to measure

A SMART goal’s strength can also be a weakness. The SMART framework requires you to use metrics to measure your success. While this can make tracking and quantifying success really easy, not everything fits nicely into data. As Albert Einstein once said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." 

There are plenty of qualitative (think emotional, subjective, or intangible) factors that may feel difficult (or even impossible) to fit into the SMART framework. 

3. Unrealistic expectations

Even though SMART goals stress the importance of setting achievable objectives, there's always the possibility of unrealistic expectations. Sometimes, aiming for SMART goals might lead to overestimating what can be realistically achieved within a given timeframe (if you don’t properly account for other goals) – potentially disappointing or burning out your team if goals are too ambitious or demanding. 

4. Tunnel vision

People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are famous for advocating for "laser focus" – often attributing this to their great success. And while great focus can create great things, you don't want to miss the forest for the trees. The more dialed you are in a singular direction, the more is potentially lost in your peripheral vision. 

So, the highly focused and detailed nature of SMART goals might cause individuals or teams to become fixated solely on their outlined objectives, producing a kind of tunnel vision that may hinder the exploration of alternative methods or innovative approaches.

What does a real-world SMART goal example look like? 

In 2008, Sandar Pichai, before he became CEO of Google, was instrumental in the launch of Google Chrome, now the world's most popular web browser. Google had been trying to push something like Chrome for years. But finally, after Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired former Mozilla employees to create a demonstration for Eric Schmidt (the then-CEO of Google), Schmidt agreed, and Google set the goal to build the world's best browser. 

With this specific goal in mind, Pichai needed to determine how they’d gauge success after their launch. How could you measure whether or not Google Chrome was, in fact, the world's best browser? Ultimately, he decided that the number of users would be the most relevant deciding factor. After all, if a particular browser was indeed the best in the world, a majority of people would naturally be using it.

From there, Pichai sketched out a three-year time frame to grow Chrome's user base. In the first year post-launch, Pichai set his sights on 20 million users. In the second year, 50 million. Finally, in the third year, the goal was set to 100 million users. 

So, what did the Google Chrome SMART goal look like?

• Specific: Build the world's best browser.
• Measurable: Measure new user growth with the target being 100 million users.
• Achievable: Google already commanded a huge market share with search.
• Relevant: Google's core business is centered around Google Search and web browsing more generally.
• Time-bound: Achieve 100 million users in three years.

While he slightly missed the mark in his first two years, by year three, Chrome had over 111 million users. Today, Google Chrome is used by over 3 billion people with a user base that continues to grow every year (statistically speaking, you're probably reading this article in a Chrome window!). This is just one example of the potential of setting and committing to SMART goals.

Unleash your success with SMART goals 🏆

SMART goal setting can span personal growth, professional milestones, and business triumphs. And as we wrap up this guide, give yourself a high-five! You've just armed yourself with the secret sauce to crushing your goals. Whether it's acing that project, learning a new skill, or making big waves in your personal life, keep your SMART goals close, and watch how they guide you to success.

Did we miss anything? What has your experience with SMART goals been like? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!