How to Make Good Goals to Start Something New

When you’re the captain of your life’s ship, you’ll need a heading.

There’s some truth in being comfortable with the devil you know. Even if we dream of doing something different — getting a new job, starting a new project, going for a promotion — the anxiety that comes with change can be paralyzing. But anxiety is part of any new adventure. The best way to get over it knowing how to chart the course and take your first steps on it.

Most people fail to start because they don’t know where to begin. While having a vague idea of where you want to go is better than nothing, there are still some minimum requirements to what makes a goal actionable.

If you’ve been craving a new start but don’t know how to plot your course, consider this goal planning 101.

Goals and Defining What Success Looks Like

One of the biggest reasons people, teams, and companies fail is that they lack clearly-defined goals. “Lose weight,” “make more money,” and “sell more products” are all nice ideas but their vagueness makes them useless. Losing half a pound, getting an extra hour of overtime, and getting one more sale month-over-month all satisfies those goals, but the effect is negligible.

Conversely, people will make big goals without a plan to attain them, burning themselves out in the process. “Lose 100 pounds” is an impressive idea, but since most people don’t see the results they want in a week or two, they get overwhelmed and undermotivated to continue. You might want to “make $1 million in a year,” but there are many ways to do that: find a job that’d pay that much, start a very lucrative business and be very lucky, gamble (and be lucky), invest (and be lucky), the list goes on.

In other words, most goal failure stems from two main culprits: wrong scale (too little to make an impact or too much to handle) and wrong motivation (obsessing over the result instead of focusing on a good process that guarantees the result).

Both of these can be addressed by using SMART goals.

Being SMART About Goal-Planning

SMART goals are one of the most basic tools in your strategic toolbox, providing a useful framework to not only identify your goals but your pathways to achieve them. The components of a SMART goal are:

• SPECIFIC: the goal is defined simply and clearly.

• MEASURABLE: the goal’s progress can be measured so you can identify strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly.

• ATTAINABLE: the goal is achievable and you believe it can be done.

• REALISTIC: the goal is reasonable, accounting for your skills, resources, and relevant time constraints.

• TIMELY: the goal has a deadline.

To make the most of SMART goals, be sure to frame them in the context of why the goal is important to you. Without understanding why you’re making this goal in the first place, it’s hard to keep focused or even care if you achieve it. By knowing context, you’re giving yourself internal motivation to carry you when external motivation fails.

To demonstrate how SMART goals work, let’s use the three goals we listed earlier and turn them into something useful.

Example 1: Lose Weight

Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to lose weight: health concerns, aesthetics, or sports are all common motivators to shed unwanted weight. Let’s assume in this case, the weight loss is for a mixed martial artist trying to get into a lower weight class before the next tournament in three months. Right now, they need to cut 10 pounds to make that weight class.

We can create SMART goal using the above information:

• S: losing weight to be in a lower weight class.

• M: progress is measured in pounds lost.

• A: losing 10 pounds is possible with calorie restriction and aerobic exercise.

• R: losing a pound a week is a reasonable rate, especially with roughly 12 weeks to do it.

• T: the tournament is in three months.

Old Goal: Lose weight.

New Goal: Lose 10 pounds within three months to drop a weight class for the upcoming tournament by restricting calories and increase aerobic exercise.

Example 2: Make More Money

Extra money is always nice, but everyone has their own idea of what they’d like to do with it. Whether you love accumulating it for its own sake, just being able to afford your basic costs of living, or anything in between, a little extra cash can make life a lot better.

For this exercise, let’s say a single 20-something wants to live by themselves in a small city that requires about $3,200/month to comfortably. They currently have a job that pays about $2,500/month so they’ll need to make an extra $700/month to cover the difference. They’re passionate about building websites and want to start a side gig as a freelance web designer; they’ve built websites before and plenty of people have complimented them on their skills, but they’ve never taken on their own clients. Their current lease is up in a year so they’d like to move by then.

Let’s use the SMART framework:

• S: making extra money to afford their own place.

• M: progress is measured in money earned.

• A: an extra $700/month in income as a freelance web designer is possible; it might be a little difficult for someone who’s never freelanced before but making a small website or two for $700/month is doable.

• R: if they’re skilled and willing to learn how to pitch ideas, find clients, market themselves, and balance their time between their side gig and their full-time work, this is a realistic goal.

• T: the lease ends in a year.

Old Goal: Make more money.

New Goal: Make an extra $700/month (to $3,200/month) as a freelance web designer to afford living solo within 12 months.

Example 3: Sell More Products

Just like the making more money example, if you dabble in any kind of product retail, the more you sell, the more money comes in. Aside from just having it, extra revenue can be reinvested into other things: scaling operations, adding new products, improving processes, or just building a nice cash reserve for later.

In this scenario, let’s say an Etsy seller wants to make an extra $1,000/month in revenue selling custom-made metal posters with those posters retailing at $60 each. They’re already selling about 35-40 posters each month, but they’ll need to sell an extra 17 to increase their revenue by $1,000/month. They’ve done well marketing themselves on Instagram and TikTok so they want to expand their campaigns there. Since they’re saving up for a vacation next summer, they want to achieve this within nine months.

You’re a pro at this by now so you know what comes next:

• S: increasing their Etsy store revenue to save up for a vacation.

• M: progress is measured in money earned.

• A: selling 17 posters each month is possible, though might be a bit difficult since that’s about a 45% increase in sales.

• R: while they might not meet their 17-posters-a-month mark each month, getting to that point within nine months is realistic, especially if they know how to read their marketing analytics, create good social media campaigns, and improve their conversion rates (the rate that viewers turn into customers).

• T: at the time of writing, next summer is in about nine months.

Old Goal: Sell more products.

New Goal: Sell at least 17 more posters each month to increase revenue by at least $1,000/month to save up for a vacation next summer.

Refining Your Plan and Goals

SMART goals are great cornerstones in the foundation of whatever you’re building. However, you should aim to be flexible since life often has other plans. You might even find that your journey either validates your goal is something you care about or makes you realize it wasn’t as important as you first thought.

For example, let’s say the freelance web designer in Example 2 discovers a love of freelancing, so much so that they want to go full-time. Instead of just increasing their income by $700/month, they’re now replacing their original income of $2,500/month as well. While they might be able to scale down their original work while increasing their web design gigs, self-employment progress is rarely linear, especially when you’re starting out.

If they’re diligent, willing to put in long weeks and sacrificing free time to get their fledgling web design business off the ground, swapping their original income AND increasing it is still realistic. But not many people are willing to make those sacrifices. And even if they put in the time, have the energy and skills, and genuinely care about what they’re doing, the market might have other plans and web design work could dry up.

If they want to take things slow, waiting an extra year to move out and live by themselves is perfectly reasonable. This way Year 1 can be spent on replacing their original income and Year 2 can be used to scale their new full-time gig as a freelance web designer. Of course, there are myriad other ways to adjust this goal and tackle it, but that’s part of the fun, right?

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this crash course in goal-planning, it’s this: treat every new goal as its own adventure, taking the time to choose your destination, plot your course, and enjoy the walk.

Savor everything you feel, the rush of things going right and the adrenaline when confronted with an obstacle when things go wrong.

Finally, be mindful of your progress and comparing your present self with your past. You don’t need to be this whole new person. Just being a little bit better each day will suffice.

Whatever you choose, have fun. And if you’re not having fun, have the courage to track it down somewhere else.