I’ve defined productivity as making progress toward a goal. You can be busy all day long, but if you haven’t moved any closer to your goals, you haven’t been productive. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to set goals correctly. (Here’s a hint: SMART goal setting is a stupid idea.) And if you have bad goals, being productive won’t actually get you what you want out of life.
SMART Goals are Stupid
SMART goals stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely. On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Saying “I will read a new book every week” is a better goal than “I will read more”. The problem comes when people think that because a goal meets all of the SMART criteria, it is a good goal.
Suppose the reason you were setting this goal is that you wanted to be perceived as smarter by business acquaintances. You think that if you’re able to talk about the latest hot business book, they will think you’re smart. So you set the goal of reading one new book a week. (This would be a realistic goal for me, given the speed I read at — you could choose a different time frame.)
Here’s the flaw in this system for how to set goals. How does reading popular business books make you sound more intelligent? You can name drop, and parrot some of the key concepts from the author. But the mere fact that you’ve read the book does not mean you are any more well equipped to apply the information in that book to the topic of your conversation. Worse, your business acquaintances may now perceive you as a “me too” person, who simply repeats what other people say, and who has no original ideas of their own.
Ziglar Goals
Motivational speaker and sales expert Zig Ziglar laid out a multi-step process for creating goals that were designed to accomplish something. First, you identify your goal. Then, you make a list of all the benefits of the goal. If what you ultimately want is not one of the benefits, it’s a bad goal. (Our example above would have failed this test.) Before committing to the goal, you attempt to list out all of the obstacles that could get in your way. What specific thing or category of thing might prevent your success? Then create lists of skills and knowledge you will need to be successful. Create lists of people (specific or by category) and groups you will need to be successful. Using all of these lists, develop a plan for success. Set a deadline by which the plan will be completed.
If you decided how to set goals the Ziglar way, in the example above you would have identified the goal of seeming smarter by reading a book a week. The benefit would be that you won more business from your associates. Some obstacles might be not knowing which books to read, or not being able to apply the knowledge you’d read. Thinking of people and groups to work with, you might join a mastermind group or a business book discussion club. By expanding your goal setting process, you not only ensure you create a better goal. You increase the likelihood of achieving the goal as well.
How to Set Goals in Many Areas
Another thing to consider when setting goals is the impact that goal will have on all areas of your life. When I had a health crisis, I set a goal of eating a completely vegan diet for 6 months. If my test results showed improvement, I would continue vegan eating until the crisis was resolved. For 9 months, my entire life revolved around vegan eating. It impacted my:
- relationships, as my husband was forced to eat vegan.
- finances, since the food I was buying cost more.
- social life, as we could no longer go out to dinner with people.
- career, since I no longer had the time or energy to market my fledgling business.
The 7 Life Areas
To understand how to set goals in many areas of your life, you first need to determine how well you’re doing in each area. I’ve seen life planning tools with as few as 5 areas, and as many as 10. For purposes of illustration, I’ll stay with the Zig Ziglar theme, and use his seven life areas.Those areas are:
- Personal and Social
- Work and Career
- Family and Relationships
- Spiritual
- Financial
- Mind and Intellect
- Physical and Health
The idea is that, while you’re improving certain areas, you’ll be putting other areas on hold. Or at least cutting back on the efforts you put into them. That decision needs to be a conscious one. If you’re going to be working extra long hours as part of your career goal, your health needs to be good and your marriage needs to be strong. That’s also why good goals have a deadline. You can only put the other areas of your life on hold for limited periods of time before they start to crumble.
The authors of Living Forward refer to this as the dynamic tension that produces true balance. Having a balanced life doesn’t mean giving equal attention to every area. It means giving appropriate attention to each area to keep them all moving toward intentional outcomes (i.e. goals). As you move through your life, you will give more or less focus to specific areas.
