Goals
Humans are designed to work towards goals. We’re going to set goals that are meaning fun to you and use systems that make progress as easeful as possible. This will move your business forward, with all the benefits of a thriving business like recurring income, flexibility, and serving people in a way that matters to you. It’s also extremely good for our mental health, our sense of meaning and our sense of hope in the world.
You may have heard of SMART goals, and now there are SMARTER goals. These are the kinds of goals we’re going to set.
Specific — you know exactly what you’re working toward
Measurable — you can clearly see when it’s working
Achievable — it stretches you without setting you up to fail
Realistic — it’s honest about your capacity, your life, and your current season
Time-bound — it has a clear timeframe so it doesn’t drift
Ethical — it considers the impact on you, your values, and the people around you
Rewarding — it gives something back, both emotionally and in real, tangible ways
So now we’re going to go back to the vision, mission, and clarity work you’ve already done and start breaking your goals down into layers.
We’ll start by choosing some broad, longer-term goals, and then move into shorter-term goals. Goal setting is really a backwards momentum from the end goal — we know what we’re working towards and we reverse engineer from there. Thinking back to the visioning work, where did you want to be in that future state?
When it comes to everyday planning and implementation, it’s much more effective to bring that vision into shorter timeframes for action plans so we have flexibility. In this course, with our longer-term goals in mind, we’re going to set goals for the next three months that are in service of the next twelve months.
Before we move forward and start creating a strategy for the next three months, I want you to break down some broader goals for the next three years. Check them against the SMARTER goals litmus test. Make sure you’re also cross-referencing with your personal and business vision and mission so your goals are deeply meaningful and aligned.
Then, starting with where you want to be in three years, bring that back to two years, one year, and then three months. In the next planning workshop, we’ll break everything down and give you a clear structure for how to actually get this done in real terms.
Activity
- Revisit your personal and business vision and mission statements.
- Write down where you want to be in three years.
- Check each three-year goal against the SMARTER criteria: strategic, meaningful, time-bound, realistic, ethical, and relevant.
- Break each three-year goal back into two-year and one-year milestones.
- Identify what needs to happen in the next three months to serve those longer-term goals.
- Keep these broad, longer-term goals visible as we move into the next planning workshop, where we’ll turn them into clear, short-term actions.
