What Are Goals and Why Should We Set Them?
The term ‘goals’ is used so loosely and so often today that it’s worth defining and pinning down what we actually mean when we talk about them. The definition is simple – goals are the aim or desired result of our efforts. Another way to put it would be, something we want to happen as a consequence of our actions.
Setting goals is particularly important for people in recovery, especially for those in early recovery who are likely unfamiliar with setting goals for themselves or sticking to processes designed to achieve them. Let’s be real – when we were still in active addiction, it was unlikely we had any clear sense of direction in our lives and even if we had set goals for ourselves it was impossible to give them the focus and effort required to achieve them. We were busy doing other things, but luckily for us, we aren’t anymore.
Clearly defining goals in important aspects of your life creates structure and fosters self-discipline, which are critical components that support healthy recovery from substance abuse. They will also help you figure out what is important to you, where you want to head in life, and help you plan how you’re going to get there. You need to aim up and you need to focus on making progress; this is absolutely essential to living a life that has purpose and value.
Setting goals typically involves two steps:
- A clear vision of what we want
- An understanding of the steps necessary to get there
Achieving our goals is a product of the third and most important step – taking action. Without executing and putting in the work, all you have is a plan. In this article though, we are mainly focused on the first two steps, the planning phase.
So why should we bother explicitly setting goals, writing them down, or analyzing the processes that will help us get there? After all, it seems like a lot of extra work and many of us already have a general sense of where we are headed in life.
The answer is that by clearly defining our goals, or rather, by gaining a thorough understanding of what we want and what we need to do in order to achieve them, we increase the likelihood of actually accomplishing those goals. In fact, some studies have shown that the simple act of writing down one’s goals significantly increases the probability of success. This is true for several different reasons: explicitly defining our goals gives us focus and direction, helps hold ourselves accountable, encourages us to take action, and gives us the ability to see our progress.
So then, how should we go about setting goals for ourselves? Over the years, many different strategies and frameworks for setting goals have been developed and analyzed, some of which you are probably already familiar with.
Here I analyze two of the most popular frameworks for setting goals, discuss the benefits and limitations of each, and provide some practical advice for using them to set goals for yourself. Afterwards, I provide an alternative and more practical set of guiding principles for setting goals and discuss one important aspect that the previous two frameworks fail to encompass.
SMART Goals
SMART goals are a popular framework for managing goals that is both taught in academia and heavily utilized in the world of business, including corporate America. In fact, SMART goals first cropped up in a 1981 article of Business Review, written by George Doran, titled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T way to write management’s goals and objectives.”
SMART is an acronym that stands for:
- Specific. The end result is well defined and unambiguous.
- Measurable. We have an easy way to measure and track our progress, as well as determine whether or not the goal has been met.
- Achievable. The goal is realistic and not too far fetched.
- Relevant. It is in line with what’s important to us and is something that we care about.
- Time Bound. The goal has a fixed time-horizon with a date we want to complete it by.
An example for a SMART goal for waking up earlier might be:
“I want to start waking up at 5am so that I have more time in the morning to read before work. I will begin tracking the time I get up each day and jotting it down in a notebook, and by the end of the month I want to have woken up at 5am at least 90% of the days.”
The major benefit of setting SMART goals is their ability to clearly define what success looks like. We have an unambiguous desired end result, a way to track our progress, and a concrete metric that determines whether or not the goal was met. Another benefit worth mentioning is that since it is time-based, a sense of urgency is created around its completion, which decreases the likelihood that we fall into the trap of ‘getting around to it later,’ i.e. never taking action.
But SMART goals aren’t without their limitations. For instance, some goals are more continuous, and do not have a clearly defined end point. An example of this would be, what if our goal was to learn how to code? The question becomes,, when have we completed our objective and consider ourselves proficient enough in coding?
In reality, learning how to code is a continuous process, and because of the nature of coding and the way that technology is always changing, you could spend your entire life working on your coding abilities — there is always more to learn.
For this reason, the goal of learning how to code does not fit nicely into a SMART goals framework unless it is broken into smaller pieces with clearly defined end points. For ambitious goals like this, then, we might be better off with an alternative framework.
PACT Goals
PACT is an alternative method to setting goals that focuses on output rather than outcome, which is the core of most traditional goal-setting strategies. In other words, the PACT framework places more importance on the process of working towards the goal than what the end result actually entails. This can be a beneficial lens with which to view highly ambitious goals that take place over a very long-term or never-ending time horizon.
PACT can be broken down into the following components:
- Purpose. The goal should have a strong reason behind it and not just be relevant to our current situation or circumstances.
- Actionable. We can define controllable and repeatable actions that will create real-world progress.
- Continuous. It has a focus on continuous improvement and provides flexibility for the outcome.
- Trackable. We can easily track our progress by seeing whether or not we took the necessary actions and are sticking to the process.
An example of a PACT goal based around weight loss might be:
“I want to lose weight and get in shape so that I am a good influence on my children and increase the amount of time I get to spend with them. I will run three times per week and begin tracking my calories so that I can make adjustments to my diet.”
While we have not determined the amount of weight we want to lose or really defined what getting ‘in shape’ actually looks like, we have determined a process that focuses on continuous progress as well as a strong reason for taking action. The amount of weight we lose over any time period is determined by many factors, some of which are out of our control, such as our genetic makeup, water retention, age, etc. Using the PACT goal framework though, we take action and focus on those factors that we can control – our diet and exercise routine.
Which Framework Should We Use Then?
We’ve now covered two different frameworks that attempt to help us structure and plan out our goals, the whole point of which is to increase the likelihood that we actually achieve them. So, naturally the next question is — which framework should we use? The answer is – it depends.
When considering which framework would work best, we should ask ourselves the following questions:
- Does the goal have a specific endpoint, or is it something more continuous, with no clear finish line?
- Is this a short to medium-term goal, or is this a long-term goal?
- Is the process more important than the final outcome?
For short to medium-term goals that have a clear end result we would like to achieve, the SMART goal framework could work very well. But if we have very ambitious and longer-term goals that we will continually be working on, using the PACT framework might make more sense.
In fact, in many cases it would be beneficial to combine the two frameworks, using a PACT goal for the overall vision and processes, then using SMART goals to break it down into more manageable chunks.
In our previous example of learning to code, we discussed how the PACT framework might be a better fit due to the goal’s perpetual nature and its focus on the process rather than the outcome. In order to help ourselves stay focused and give us meaningful waypoints throughout this continuous process, we can combine this with smaller subgoals that contain specific and unambiguous desired results that better fit the SMART framework.
For example, we might be utilizing online courses in order to teach ourselves to code and set a goal to finish an introductory programming course by the end of the year with an overall grade of an ‘A’. This has a specific and measurable desired outcome, a predetermined time-horizon, and is relevant to our overall goal of learning how to program. Combining the two frameworks provides us the flexibility to deal with an ambitious goal over an extended or endless time-horizon, yet the structure and organization required to hold us accountable and define milestone achievements.
An Alternative and Pragmatic Goal-Setting Strategy
Getting bogged down by which method to use and stuffing our goals into some predefined framework isn’t nearly as important as actually determining what our goals are and how we are going to accomplish them. We can set goals in a more pragmatic and practical fashion the following way:
- We define what we are aiming for and why we want to aim for it
- We determine what steps are necessary in order to achieve the goal
- We create and implement a plan where we make continuous progress towards that goal
- We evaluate our progress and adapt as we go
That’s it – simple yet effective. Anything we would want to achieve for ourselves requires those few elements whether they be long-term, short-term, continuous, or finite. In addition, this method involves keeping the reason behind the goal in mind, which motivates us to accomplish the goal, and focuses on taking action, which is essential to attain it.
More importantly, and something missing from the previous two frameworks, is that it highlights the fact that as we move in some direction and become more knowledgeable about what we are actually aiming for, we often need to course-correct. The path to success is very rarely a straight line, and as we move towards something, we not only shed light on what strategies are most effective in making progress, but we can home in and gain more clarity on what success actually looks like for us.
Final Thoughts
As previously mentioned, explicitly setting goals and spending the time to analyze what we want and how to get it increases the likelihood that we succeed. This is true for goals in our recovery, as well as goals for all other aspects of our lives.
As we leave a state of active addiction and enter into recovery, we will likely identify many facets of ourselves and our development that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. The thought of trying to put the pieces back together can be extremely intimidating, and in some cases conjure up a feeling of hopelessness, but nothing could be further from the truth.
By freeing ourselves from active addiction, by eliminating distractions like drinking and drugs that even many non-addicts struggle to effectively deprioritize, we are put in an excellent position to better ourselves and our circumstances. The road may be long and it isn’t going to be easy, but by aiming up and focusing on consistent progress, we will see results.
Use the frameworks above to guide you when setting goals for yourself. Experiment with the various approaches and pick which one works best for you. Course-correct as you learn and grow, but most importantly, keep moving forward.
