Fwd: S.M.A.R.T. Goals - Review of _Start S.M.A.R.T. - Use S.M.A.R.T. Goals to Achieve More, Get What You Want, and Turn Your Dreams into a Reality_ by Justin Byers

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Maynard S. Clark

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Oct 31, 2013, 5:34:31 PM10/31/13

Maynard

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Maynard S. Clark, MS (Management: Research Administration)

Maynar...@GMail.com and/or MCl...@HSPH.Harvard.edu

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Maynard S. Clark <maynar...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 5:31 PM
Subject: S.M.A.R.T. Goals - Review of _Start S.M.A.R.T. - Use S.M.A.R.T. Goals to Achieve More, Get What You Want, and Turn Your Dreams into a Reality_ by Justin Byers
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Review of _Start S.M.A.R.T. - Use S.M.A.R.T. Goals to Achieve More, Get What You Want, and Turn Your Dreams into a Reality_ by Justin Byers

I think it would be a waste to let reading this book on SMART goals become yet another distraction, another needless task that interrupted tasks which really DO need to be completed in a timely manner. We each have many of those.

I have some 3-year goals written out on paper, and the exercise of reading this book helped me rework those 3-year goals. I've worked those goals out with another person, a supervisor, and we need to keep on track.

At times I think I can do better, but I often know that I'm not ahead of the curve because of other things I need and want to do.

Key points are to make a daily to-do list, focus on the goals and let them define your daytime process so that distractions don't distract profoundly, and credit yourself for the work you actually DO accomplish in a day of diligent work. Most of us don't recognize what we've accomplished; I know that I often don't list what I did fulfill - whether or not those tasks are on target with my goals. Surely listening to anyone else carp about one's unfulfilled goals is not advancing the goals that we actually DO have; work on those, if they truly DO make sense, and don't work on them if they do NOT make sense (relevant). But surely don't spend one's day on pointless distractions. A question I've often been asked by a colleague is 'How will this move our agendas forward?' And, in working with others who want to 'partner' with us (something sales-related persons often offer in an introductory conversation), 'How, specifically, will this person help us, and what, specifically, will this person do for us?' (specific)

Though S.M.A.R.T. means to me specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (and SMARTER adds evaluate, and re-evaluate, which I like even more), this author uses specific, motivated, achievable, realistic, and time-targeted (2 off, since achievable and attainable are synonyms).

In order to work on measurable, one needs to define 'success' so that one's accomplishments can be measured in terms of them. Let's take a section from the book:

Defining Success

Success is an impossibly broad word. What one person deems a success, another person may call a total failure. Success in one part of your life might not translate to success in another.

So how can you achieve success or call yourself successful without knowing exactly what success is? When it comes to setting goals and envisioning your future, one of the first steps you must take is figuring out what success means to you.

Of course, smart goals are relevant - and no more costly in terms of time, energy, money, or other resources than they need to be to achieve your underlying goals of finding long-term (or even intermittent) satisfaction as health or happiness or security or love. There's a radio psychologist who descriptively assesses human activity as a search for love, significance, or security, and she subordinates health and happiness to security (health is physical security, and happiness is emotional security; why she doesn't subordinate love and significance to security also may say more about her theological reasons for this particular 'counseling architecture'). But I digress. I list four core meta-goals: health, happiness, security (or "the securities"), and love. You and others might work with other worldviews and priorities.

Visualizing one's goals - in terms of what truly motivates, inspires, and rewards us - is held out as a tool (one used repeatedly) for discovering and bringing greater clarity about our inner motivations for doing real work. Even time-wasters select what they find satisfying in their digressions from their goals. "Imagining what the ideal version of your life looks like can help you figure out what goals are most important to you and what you really hope to achieve." If we CAN make impressions on our personalities that inform us how we WOULD like to be,

Roadmap to the Future is followed by a Goal Action Plan, with long-term goals and intermittent goals. My business plan is a three-year plan, with some concrete steps which need to be achieved by target dates, but with lots of 'forgiveness' built in and enough expected rewards for compliance. What's clear as I work on these is how much BETTER I can do if I work even harder and reach each milepost before the target date. That's my experiential reality. Comparable goals shown in the eBook are weight loss and healthy living accompanied with daily and weekly running achievements, and an ability to run a marathon after several goals have been reached. Though I became vegetarian then vegan ages ago, I enjoyed the illustration of starting a restaurant, since I had been a restaurant manager in a previous life (with all the financial, customer relations, operational, and marketing headaches), and now I find myself tapped by vegetarian friends for ideas and insights about their vegetarian restaurant business.

Let's say I have a goal of 'going vegan' as quickly as possible because I recognize that nonhumans are also morally significant persons. The 5-step S.M.A.R.T. goals would be:

 Specific - go vegan, either 'all at once' or progressively, in stages. Here, one's 'worldview' informs how one sets out the goal and what one considers realistic in this process.

 Motivated - motivations can be health, ethics regarding animals or the species-specific consequences of avoidable meat production

 Achievable - the growing presence of other vegetarians and ultimately vegans is ample evidence that this S.M.A.R.T. goal can be achieved! If one doubts that s/he specifically can achieve the goal without compromising her or his health (because of socially promulgated doubts about the lifestyle's feasibility), one has expert resources in medicine, social science, and more to provide growing bodies of relevant and applied knowledge. Doing background research (secondary research, if one were to pose this as a thesis question, which it is not) uncovers the establishment of lifestyle stabilization resources. The practice - the successful practice of veganism by vegans makes the goals into a freestanding lifestyle, not that one things merely of being vegan as a (mere) lifestyle (among other lifestyles). It's the practice that converts one's OWN veganism into 'a lifestyle' (as seen by others), as one does it (living as a vegan among other vegans and nonvegetarians and nonvegans) well.

 Realistic - Again, I think that realistic and achievable are part of one package, but this author distinguishes them. He begins the section on "Realistic" with "Going hand-in-hand with your goal being specific, your goal has to be achievable." His points are: (a) Going hand-in-hand with your goal being specific, your goal has to be achievable. (b) Someone looking in from outside, from an objective standpoint, should be able to look at you and your goal and see whether you have achieved it or not. The endpoint of your goal should be clear from the outset. Measuring progress towards this goal should be done conceptually. We hear "90% of my food is 'vegan' when only persons can be vegan; meals and food are 'vegan-friendly. 10% eggs or 10% milk with 90% edible botany (which could be edible food that is not health-supporting, according to an evidence base) is only looking at some external measurement. The importance of understanding 'from within oneself' what one needs to achieve to make 'being vegan' sustainable includes the happiness, health, security, and even (maybe?) "love" issues (whatever that's going to mean, or could emerge as meaning to the subject). The process could remain a 'work in progress' for a long time to come, even after one has achieved the 'formal status' of working consistently within a purely vegan diet (since diets are constantly tweaked and, hopefully, improved.
What if, instead, one 'veganized' all 21 meals and snacks - perhaps the first week, one veganizes all snacks and two breakfasts. That's quite an accomplishment, since one replaces milk and/or eggs on two breakfasts - say soymilk or almond milk - or has fruit (fresh and whole, or as a smoothie) and only uses vegan-friendly snacks IF one has snacks during the day. The second week one could veganize thre (3) more breakfasts, and the 3rd week, one veganizes all breakfasts and two lunches. That strategy is so gradual that the long-term vegetarians as well as long-term vegans would hardly think that the subject is serious, but it's a possible plan that fits this author's outline. Another approach would be to 'except' all holidays and visits to family members, then progressively 'veganize' one day at a time - whichever day of the week is easier: Sunday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, etc. Then the next week, one veganizes another day of the week. After 7 weeks, one has veganized one's non-excepted special occasions. Then one works on those 'special occasions' in ways that are relevant (and forgives oneself if s/he finds challenges or 'falls off the wagon' - to coin a phrase). But that's implementation science, not a book review.

 Time-Targeted - Others have done this 'all at once' - most folks dip their big fearful nonvegetarian toes into the 'scary water' and shy away from such 'daring efforts' - but my observation (and my own experience) is that there's no need for fear here (when the relevant experts have been made readily accessible through the emergence of the Internet over the past several decades). May I suggest 3-6 months for the transition, as long as one joins some kind of local AND some online support groups and pursues individual and 'collective' accountability in this process - accountability for identifying one's issues and working through any emerging issues?

There's nothing in this SIMPLE goal of going vegan which SAYS that one NEEDS to eat ANY prepared and processed foods; often a subject defaults to expensive prepared food habits by not wanting to explore food individually with one's own food preparation area. Dining out can be a way to see other persons' ideas about food but need not become a substitute for learning how to feed oneself (as a vegan), which is part of BECOMING vegan. A good book is _Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet_ by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis. They (and other knowledge-centered evidence-based vegan dietitians) have done (in writing their evidence-based books) most or all the scientific and practice work for the erstwhile vegan.

Well-crafted worksheets accompany the book, and the SMART goals are further explicated or unpacked in the S.M.A.R.T. Goals Checklist:

http://empowermentnation.com/downloads/38/GoalsettingWorksheet.pdf.

Specific

 Does my goal have any abstract, concept words (e.g. “success,” “happiness,” etc.) that can be replaced with more specific words?

 Are all the terms of my goal clearly defined?

 Does my goal focus on a specific aspect of a larger goal?

 Can my goal be broken down into any smaller parts?

Motivated

 How will I feel when I have completed my goal?

 What will achieving this goal allow me to do?

 Is my goal connected to one of my sources of fulfilment identified earlier?

 Should my goal be adapted to match the emotional motivation behind it?

Achievable

 Does my goal have a built-in endpoint?

 Could someone objectively evaluate when my goal has been completed?

 What is my system for measuring my progress towards achieving my goal?

Realistic

 What past goals or achievements have I based my goal off of?

 Is the success of my goal completely or mostly within my own control?

 Is my goal pushing or challenging me? Even if it is, can I achieve my goal in a realistic, healthful manner?

 Are my goals sustainable over a long period of time?

Time-Targeted

 Have I established a deadline for completing my goal?

 Have I assigned deadlines for each of the way station goals?

 How much time will it take out of each week to work towards completing this goal?

 Is my timeline achievable and realistic based on how much time I have to dedicate to this goal?

 What is my window of opportunity for completing this goal?

The sequence:

Decide on (Select) Goals

Create Action Plan (depends on what one knows; there ARE smarter ways to proceed IF one has that information, so some 'research' could be helpful for one's action

Determine that the smart goals ARE indeed S.M.A.R.T. goals (verify or validate the goals themselves)

Strategies for Starting and Achieving Goals

- Goal Journal

- To Do List

- Vision Boards

- Accountability Partners

- Goal Reminders (I would set them up in Outlook or an online calendar, such as Google Calendar; others use paper calendars posted at work and at home)

- Rewards System (should not violate the goals, as some 'weight loss' (supposed) 'rewards' in fact do (when the goal is to achieve weight management through a lifestyle change), such as eating late at night, which sets a contrary habit, or having something very sweet, which stimulates the brain's appetite centers.

The author suggests a journal and to-do lists, as the way forward becomes illuminated (by Reason or The Giftie, according to Robert Burns). One online to-do-list software one does NOT use is 'RememberTheMilk'. He suggests mixing 'low hanging fruit' (easy to do tasks) - perhaps using up or giving away nonvegan food items - with more complex 'transition' tasks (which take more thinking) - such as 'research nonleather belts and accessories' and 'research and buy first pair of nonleather walking shoes' and 'go shopping for first nonwool suit' (whether or not one buys it). After all, veganism is both a value system AND a lifestyle, not merely about food 'choices' that are anarchic. One could join a vegan organization (American Vegan Society, or PETA, or Vegetarian Resource Group or North American Vegetarian Society, each of which has 'Vegetarian'in its name but supports a vegan food standard and vegan foundational values. Finding cultural expressions (music, art, short stories, Bizarro and Joy of Soy cartoon books and other humor) may be more challenging. Attending an annual NAVS Vegetarian Summerfest could move one quickly along this path; it's said that most nonvegetarians who attend an annual Vegetarian Summerfest leave at the end of the five day event as committed vegans because the educational quality is so thorough and profound. Perhaps its motivation emerging from an emerging sense of the viability and sustainability and desirability of the profound lifestyle change.

Overcoming Roadblocks

In any lifestyle change OR work development, one can expect the unexpected. Staying focused (on the goals) and forgiving oneself (for errors and misdeeds) is important. So will be adapting goals to changes.

The author then pitches his other self-help books, and that's to be expected. Anything as pithy as this eBook could be worth the time spent reading and thinking through it. After all, somehow this author did manage to organize himself to begin writing his first self-help eBook, then the second, then the third, then the fourth, then the fifth, etc. I need to clean up my office; I've already reorganized my home fore the first, second, and third passthrough during this month (October is Vegetarian Awareness Month). Happy Halloween. November 1st is World Vegan Day.

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