Don't be so OVER SMART

This is how I set my personal goals and make them as WACKY as possible. The more WACKY the better!

Goals are the fundamental tool for personal and organisational development. After all, how can you know you have achieved something or even improved your situation at all if you have no target or benchmark to work from?

The most common business goal setting tool is known as SMART goals. The use of acronyms is great and very common in the business world and SMART goals are generally taken to be goals that are Specific, Measurable & Motivating, Aligned, Reachable and Time driven. This is all well and good in the business world where by and large people want a stretch but not too much of a stretch. The risks of failure are sometimes high so the taking of chances is not encouraged by many managers. I personally view this as a huge deficiency in many organisations. Permission to try something and be allowed to fail (and therefore learn) is not usually given but should be.

Many people, through their experience at work, are therefore familiar and comfortable with the SMART goals approach. If they form any personal goals at all, they are likely to design SMART goals. If the same timidity and safety approach is applied to personal goals they are likely to be weak and not that motivating for the individual. Are these goals likely to be achieved? If they are achieved, are they going to rock your or anyone else's world? My answer to both questions is NO!!

If you are going to pursue goals in your life then you had better make them huge, awesome, life-changing, jaw-dropping, pulse quickening goals that are worth your effort and time. Aim for the stars and even if you come up short you will still have had a heck of a ride and be higher than most everyone else. You will have learnt valuable lessons and be more than motivated to try again. In my opinion it is far better to regret the things you've done than live a life regretting the ones you didn't try.

This is how I do it by using the acronym WACKY. I think that if a catchy acronym is used it will stick in your mind and you'll find you can access it easily. Hopefully you'll then use it all the time and spread the message to others.

I want people to think my personal goals are totally WACKY. That's great; then they will likely be the goals that others may not have thought of or are too scared to try for themselves.

I want to stretch myself; that's the only way to grow and develop as a person and be able to help others more effectively. That's always been my driving force. Partial failure of one of my WACKY goals will often be better than most people's mediocre SMART goals; I'll learn loads of good stuff and be that much closer to where I want to be. I also take my time to form them and that way I get the real honest from the heart stuff; it really works for me.

These WACKY goals are generally my over-arching long-range life goals so they will certainly contain lots of mini-goal stages. That's fine as many small steps will add up to a huge journey.

Try and make the small steps as WACKY as possible as it all makes life more interesting.

Wonderful -- it is meant to be a great goal so if my goal doesn't fill me with wonder, what's the point? It has to be something that makes my imagination work hard. I want it to play on my mind and draw me on down that road less travelled.

Animating -- again, if it doesn't get me fired up and raring to go and get started, I'll find another goal that will. I want my pulse to quicken when I think about it. I want to be animated when I t



Don't be so OVER SMART by worldtalk