SMART Goals

I was thinking a lot about goals this week.  Tuesday I did my 30 minute weekday run and the average pace came in at 13:03.  Wow!  Soooo close to that thirteen minute mark.  I must admit that I was somewhat impressed with that.  Because it wasn't too long ago that I was very happy to break a 15:00 average pace.  And yes, I did bask in the joy of getting my pace down to that level.

For a while.

A short while.

But this kind of journey is like climbing a mountain.  If you hang out on the ledges too long you'll get comfortable, lose inertia and fail to reach the peak.  So after an appropriate amount of time rolling that pace around in my  head (and on my tongue to everyone who would listen), it was time to set a new goal.

It was easy to think of a new goal -- I wanted to break through that 13:00 pace mark!  But then I remembered .... One of the things I picked up in several management courses is that goals should be SMART. That means they must be all of the following:

• S - Specific.  It's not enough to say "I want to lose some weight."  You have to be more specific.  Maybe you say you want to lose X pounds or maybe you say you want to lose a certain number of inches.  But goals must be specific.  That specificity helps you visualize it which is the topic of another blog post I'm planning so I won't go into it here but it's extremely important.
• M - Measurable.  It's been said that you can't manage what you can't measure.  If you can't measure your goal, how are you going to know how close or far away you are?  Or if you've even reached it?
• A - Achievable.  If it's not something you can actually achieve then you're just setting yourself up for failure.  You wouldn't ask your first grader to learn calculus.  Unless he's Doogie Howser, of course.  He could achieve that but most cannot.  Which leads to the next one.....
• R - Realistic.  I could say I'm going to look like Penelope Cruz but that's just not gonna happen in this lifetime.  It's kind of like the old George Carlin bit about stupid things they say on the airline.  At one point he mentions the stewardess reminding passengers to check around their seat for any personal items they may have brought on board.  His reply was that he MIGHT have brought his stamp collection.  But he didn't.  So he's not going to look for it!!  
• T - Time Based.  Any goal you set should always have a date attached to it.  As Little Orphan Annie said, tomorrow is always a day away.  If you plan to do something "someday", you'll never do it because someday never, ever comes.

If a proposed goal fails to meet even one of these criteria, it just isn't SMART.

So, with that in mind, let's look at my pace goal of breaking the 13:00 pace and see if it was a SMART goal.  It was definitely specific -- break that 13:00 wall.

It was measurable thanks to the run tracking program I use called Runkeeper.  It was achievable and realistic because it was only 4 seconds faster than what I ran on Tuesday.  And it was time based because I planned to meet this goal the very next time I ran.

Of course, there was a bit more to it.  You know how it is if you fail to plan.  And I don't plan to fail.  So, of course I had to come up with a plan that would let me meet this SMART goal.  We'll talk about that another day.

So hopefully you've learned a bit about goals and making sure that what you're aiming for is something you can actually hit. Until next time......

What?

Oh, you want to know if I met my goal?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Thursday morning my average pace was 12:53 minutes per mile!!!!! :-)