You don't have to set S.M.A.R.T. goals
Try this instead (it's less overwhelming)
You’ve heard of the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting system, right?
It’s a way to set goals that ensures success. I’ve used it successfully and unsuccessfully before. But the one common denominator under all the goals I’ve hit: having strong signal.
And having strong signal also helps you overcome feeling ‘the cringe’.
Let me explain 🤭
P.S. we’re having a live planning and reflection session in the 100 day sprint community this evening. Yes, the challenge you signed up for… are you still doing it? If you’ve fallen off track, a new month is the perfect time to jump back in and plan for success.
Not to mention, 2 months is plenty of time to climb the leaderboard and put your hat in the running for the year-end prize 🏆
JOIN THE FREE 1OO DAY SPRINT COMMUNITY
Having strong signal
Imagine this: you’re on holiday. You had maps open on your phone, showing you how to get to this restaurant you saw on TikTok. You’re 10 minutes away when the signal drops.
The map freezes.
It’s okay, you can still see the roads. You double-tap to try and zoom in to see where the next turn is.
The map freezes again. This time, it’s blurry.
Crap.
You can’t see a thing. You have to try and guess how to get to the restaurant based on your vague glimpse of the journey the map gave you 2 hours ago. You’re done for.
This exact situation is what it’s like to set a vague, nice-to-have goal.
You have blurry vision. An unclear route to the destination. Is the destination even… visible?
Here’s what some of my historic unclear goals were:
Lose weight
Become a YouTuber
Run (I mean c’mon Dev is that it 🤣)
Clarity with your goals makes the steps to achieving them MUCH easier to figure out. You don’t have to play guesswork on whether or not you can or can’t do the little things that give you your big goal.
E.g. my ‘lose weight’ goal, this year, was lose 10kg by September 1st.
So much clearer. It allowed me to figure out how much I need to be losing every month, how much to eat to lose X amount every week, and plan for when things went wrong.
By virtue of having strong signal, you end up setting S.M.A.R.T. goals anyway.
Strong signal helps you overcome cringe
My 2nd goal, becoming a YouTuber, also finally came to fruition in 2020.
And having strong signal (having more clarity over what I wanted to do) allowed me to push through feeling ‘cringe’ about doing it.
‘Becoming a YouTuber’ became ‘Start a YouTube channel and post a video’.
Even though it seems like a small goal, having strong signal allows me to see what I needed to do to achieve this:
Sign up for YouTube
Create my channel
Script, edit and upload a video
Design a thumbnail
Publish the video
The steps had to happen, irrespective of how they made me feel—because those were the steps related to achieving the goal.
Allowing ‘cringe’ to get in the way of any of these steps weakens the signal.
If I succumbed to feeling cringe, this is what might have happened:
Sign up for YouTube
Friend discovers my empty channel, makes fun of me
I’m embarrassed—I delete the channel
What a quick way to not only weaken the signal but actually just destroy the goal.
If you have more clarity, there’s less room for other people’s judgements, criticisms and opinions get in the way.
Unless they have experienced and achieved the exact same thing you’re trying to do, no one else has the right to influence how strong your signal is.
Make sure your goals are CLEAR to you and only you. Strengthen that signal and get specific on why you want to achieve what it is you want to achieve, and the system will follow!
If you’re coming along to this evening’s planning session, let me know what your goals are for next month. Goal setting and planning is my favourite convo topic 💬
Speak soon,
Devamsha
P.S.S. if you were looking for an anti-cringe training this evening, it’s still coming. I’ll pop it to you in the next few days. I’ve decided to add a few more exercises to it to really get you over cringe mountain, so keep an eye out!