SMART goals are rubbish!

..and as you smash your palms to your forehead in total disbelief, let’s try to qualify that statement.

Actually, let’s backtrack, SMART goals aren’t totally rubbish. They’re useful in terms of helping you clarify tasks and straightforward objectives. But meh - how does the A for Achievable help our dreams come true? We’re talking about reclaiming your future here so anything has to be possible. Because as we know, if you think it’s possible, or you think it isn’t, you’re right. So put those slightly stale acronyms down and pull yourself together.

There simply isn’t time to be walking around like wet blankets vetoing dreams that excite us just because they seem ridiculous. Get a grip, step out of those self-imposed puddles of doubt and keep reading.

In our last blog we explored the idea that if our thinking files are corrupted, we need to switch off, wait at least three seconds and reboot before attempting step two of the quest, which is - know what you want.

It’’s your choice to indulge this idea and to believe it’s worth finding the time and space and time to do so. Albert Bandura said we all have the power to control our lives through purposeful thought. And he should know, he’s currently 95. He’s also cited as one of the world’s greatest living psychologists.

There is a catch however. To allow ourselves to find our purpose means thinking big - it also necessitates temporarily unplugging our rational brain, silencing our logic to dream while we’re awake. Some say if you can picture something it’s already real, so it’s useful to try to colour in the specifics of whatever your swirling future fantasy looks like - trying to see yourself there, as real, noticing how it feels.

If it sounds a silly idea, it really isn’t. Every ideal future started with an ideal imagined. One that felt so good to the mind that conceived it, they made it happen. Just an imagined seed - that germinated into a commitment - that led to an action - that made it materialise – that began with committing to giving this dreaming lark a try.

If you do give it a go, makes note about your vision.. Draw it, talk about it, stay with it, revisit it, water and nourish it – and who knows? Your ideal future might have taken root in the previous paragraph!

And if you don’t find time? Is it because you’re doing more important things instead? Like being active - maybe in a circular kind of round and round motion? Admit it, you too could be that hamster.

On the subject of which, there’s a brilliant book called ‘Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind’ by Guy Claxton. Look it up. He talks about his ideas on this website even. It’s about the same idea – that we race around so much that we don’t have time for the slow thinking that fuels our best ideas – which includes thinking about where we want to go.

Yet knowing, seeking or finding our purpose helps us to be fulfilled – knowing what energises us or what makes us feel heavy and demotivated is a start to identifying what your future could look like. And if you find it too hard to think about what you want, you could either ponder the general direction you’d like to head towards, or else where you definitely don’t want to stay or end up. 

Cheery stuff, but to trot out some trite saying on a dodgy poster on someone’s wall at university – ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else’. At the very least, we owe it to ourselves that ‘somewhere else’ is a deliberate choice.

Of course, some of us might still prefer to start planning for the future by writing our goals after large capital letters, starting with S for specific – which is totally fine too as long as you don’t get stuck on the third letter.

In any case, let’s go back to the experts. Almost 20 years ago, Professors Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, or Ed and Gazza to us, summarised their 35 years of academic research into goal setting. One of their key findings was that making a public announcement about our goals strongly enhances our commitment to them.

So, in homage to them and to your future – once you’ve given some thought to what you actually want for yourself - why not be really smart and get on Amazon and buy yourself the biggest megaphone you can lay your hands on?