Creating and defining your SMART goal is important. But you
don’t just stop there. If you do, then who’s to say your goal is
actually smart?
A SMART goal is accompanied by a smart action plan. An action
plan that doesn’t stop at 2 sentences or a single paragraph.
Instead, you need an action plan that will outline all the major
steps you need to take so you can get to your goals, your
destination, your point B.
If you don’t want to get lost on your journey, you need a solid
plan. It’s going to be your roadmap to success.
A sense of direction
Imagine for a moment you’re going away on a road trip to a
destination far, far away. Say, a thousand miles away. You’re
holding a map in your hands. You circle your current location, and
you draw a second circle for your destination.
Then you connect the two circles. But you don’t just draw a
straight line. What you do instead is you look for the closest
distance between the two circles because there’s probably more
than one way to get to your destination.
You choose a good route – one that goes through highways
instead of back roads. You put a star next to each major city or
town you’re going to be passing through. You’ll probably spend
the night there.
Planning a 1,000-mile road trip is the same as planning your path
to success. You can’t just say you know the general direction of
your destination. You need to plan ahead if you want to reach
your destination faster. If you don’t plan the details, you’ll be
wasting days on the road.
It’s all about the details
Success is a lot of work, isn’t it? First, you have to define a goal
that meets the SMART criteria. Then you have to create a
detailed action plan that will show you exactly how you can get
from point A to point B, a thousand miles away.
Most people won’t have the patience to do all these steps. They’d
think doing all this planning is silly and a waste of their time.
They’ll think, “I already know where I’m going. That’s all I need to
know.” So, they’ll skip the planning part, jump into their cars and
go on their thousand-mile road trip.
Funny thing is several miles later you’ll see them by the side of
the road. Their cars have broken down (nope, they didn’t check if
their cars could actually survive the long journey) or they’ve run of
fuel. You, on the other hand, will be happily driving along until you
get to your destination. Your thorough planning has paid off!
Now, your dreams and your goals need to be planned out the
same way. You can start by breaking down your main goal into
smaller chunks. If you’ve given yourself 10 years to achieve your
goals, then you need to break it down into 1-year goals, 2-year
goals, and so on.