S.M.A.R.T Approach to Goal Setting
One way of growing professionally & personally in a consistent and specific way is to develop S.M.A.R.T goals.
S.M.A.R.T, as the capitalized words and the dots in between suggests, is basically an acronym where each word has its own specific meaning (pun intended). The breakdown of this acronym is as follows:
S — Specific
The goals must be clear and well defined. There should be no ambiguity.
M — Measurable
The goal needs to be something that we can keep track of to continuously measure our progress and determine when our goal is reached
A — Achievable
Setting a goal that’s too ambitious will see you struggle to achieve it. This will sap at your motivation, both now and in the future.
R — Relevant
The goal chosen should be pertinent to one’s field, or should benefit you directly.
T — Time Based
There must be a point in time when we can review and assess whether this goal has been completed.
Keeping all these things in mind, I have decided to setup a couple of my own SMART goals in order to stop making up a set of goals only to loose interest and forget about them after a couple of weeks (don’t judge me, we’ve all been there). The goal that I will be discussing here will primarily help me in working freelance as well as building a diverse set of skills. So here it goes:
I plan on learning graphic designing & polishing my existing programming skills by the end of my semester so that I can start freelancing to support my family
Phew, now that that’s out of my way, I can focus on how I can achieve the said goals. For this purpose, I have divided the goals into some steps that I will try to complete weekly by dedicating 2 hours daily. They include:
- Complete minimum 3 code katas each month and practice programming at least once every week for at least 15 minutes.
- Answer Questions on a Technical Forum
- Read Blogs
- Solve programming problems on websites like HackerRank and Project Euler etc.
- Interact and network with people in the industry on networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter (common for both).
For Graphic Designing
- Learn Photoshop and Illustrator by watching various YouTube videos
- Follow channels dedicated to graphic designing
- Practice what I learn everyday for 30 minutes
- Try to gain hands-on certification or internship that helps me hone my skills.
Every successful heist requires a plan of action which one follows in order to be successful. Regardless of whether our aims are personal, professional or economical, using a structured approach such as SMART can not only help us focus on efforts in a specific area, but also helps us in revising our steps if the plan of action yields no results.
