Why don’t you reach your SMART goals? Think SMARTIES

Formulating goals in a SMART way – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely – increases the chances of achieving them. But why do we still so often fail to reach our own goals? It’s very simple: SMART goals overlook the fact that they have to be executed not by machines but by human beings.

Human beings are not perfect. We may really want ánd know exactly how to, say, lose weight, start a meditation practice or learn a new language, and yet, we do finish that whole bar of chocolate and postpone our good intentions to tomorrow. Why? The short answer: we also need motivation.

Motivation is essential to reach goals

Motivation is a fundamentally important ingredient to success. The problem with goals often is is that they presuppose that there is already some kind of energy present to get and keep things moving. But that energy does not magically appear when formulating your goals.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a rider on an elephant. The rider symbolizes our rational side and the elephant our emotional side. The rider can decide on a direction, but the strength of the elephant is needed to get things moving (hence emotion). We need to mobilize the elephant by giving emotional energy to our goals.

From SMART to SMARTIES

The science of behavior change explains what drives people to adopt or discard certain behaviors. We can use the insights of science to be more successful in achieving our personal goals. There are three essential aspects: we need to make the goal our own by internalizing it, make sure outside factors in our environment don’t block our success, and have the sincere belief that we are actually able to do it (called self-efficacy).

We can extend the SMART acronym by include these three additional conditions. These aren’t aspects that need to be included in the formulation of the goal, but rather, things that will determine our success.

I: Internalize

Internalizing your goal means owning your goal: to make it important for yourself to achieve it. As you are personally invested in the success, you are autonomously motivated. The opposite is controlled motivation, where you do something because of an external reward or punishment. While both can be effective, autonomous motivation equals more involvement and well-being.

E: Environment

Even the strongest motivation wanes sometimes. You might be determined to lose weight, but still get tempted by the cookies in the kitchen drawer. When we are aware of that, we can map out which environmental factors could negatively influence our behavior and then adjust the environment in such a way that it supports our goal: not stock up on cookies. We need to clear the elephant’s path of obstacles.

S: Self-efficacy

This is a central concept in many theories of behavioral change, which simply means thinking that you are indeed able to reach the goal. Albert Bandura described self-efficacy as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” If we don’t believe in ourselves, it will be very hard to reach any goal.

SMARTIES in short:

S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Achievable
R: Realistic
T: Timely
I: Internalize
E: Environment
S: Self-efficacy