Day 5: Goals
Goals are very important in life and in business. Less than 3 percent of Americans have written goals, and less than 1 percent review and rewrite their goals on a daily basis. Here at Grayscale, we have big individual and business goals and we strive to accomplish them.
We track goals constantly for all employees, discuss them bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly, as well as inspect their progress annually with each team member. We do that so that each member of the team deeply understands how we approach our client's goals as well as how we operate as a business. Short & long-term goals are broken down into Key Performance Indicators, KPIs. Those KPIs tell us if we are on track to reach the goal, or not. That information is vital in helping us accomplish big things
for our clients as well as guides our daily smaller actions.
We want you to be able to set big goals for yourself and accomplish them. The first step in accomplishing that is writing your goals down. People with written goals are 42 percent more likely to accomplish them.
Writing goals takes a little practice to do correctly. This homework will help you to begin learning how to write goals correctly, or help you to clarify them if you already have some written down.
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Fill out your goal sheet with 3 professional goals.
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Make your goals S.M.A.R.T
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What Does S.M.A.R.T Stand For?
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S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
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You can use several methods to help you build them out and stay on track at the micro level we suggest.
Example 1: HERE
Example 2: HERE
Please make a copy and save it in your personal drive for consistent reference.
Work on your goals over the weekend and bring them into the office on Monday to review them. We will help you clarify them and suggest edits needed to help you be successful. Once you have updated your goals make a copy and turn in again for review and to be placed in your employee file.
Here’s what you need to know about each letter in the acronym:
SPECIFIC
Good goals are not ambiguous. Rather, you need to have a clear, concise goal that you can set your sights on. For example, rather than saying, “I want to have a better body” you could say “I want to lose fifteen pounds this over the next 4 months”. Once you have it specific, look again and see if you can further narrow it down i.e. I will loose 1 pound a week over the next 17 weeks. You can see how the latter example is much more specific, and, therefore, is a clearer goal. The more specific your goals are the better chance you have at accomplishing them.
MEASURABLE
Tracking the progress of your goal is an important part of keeping you motivated. It allows you to set milestones that you can celebrate when you meet them and reevaluate when you don’t. It’s a good idea, then, to always have some aspect of your goal that can be measured and evaluated.
ACHIEVABLE
Far too many people fall into the trap of setting impossible goals for themselves. While impossible goals may push you forward for a while, you will almost certainly end up giving up on them at some point in the future. Instead of impossible, your goals should be challenging, yet achievable. Before you set a goal, make sure that you can actually envision yourself achieving it.
RELEVANT
Not all goals are as worthwhile as others. Unless your goal is relevant to your overall plan for your life, achieving it may not accomplish anything. In order to ensure that your goal is beneficial, make sure that it is worth your time, make sure that achieving it will provide positive benefits to your life, and make sure that this goal aligns to at least some degree with the other goals you have.
TIME-BOUND
Good goals need to have a target time attached to them. For example, rather than saying “I want to start reading more books” you might say, “I want to read twelve books in the next six months” or better yet, "I will read 1 book every 15 days for 6 months". You can see how the person who set that second goal will be much more motivated to succeed since they have a target date in mind for their goal.
When considering how to write SMART goals, it’s a good idea to write down each of these criteria then write a sentence or two about how your goal fits each one. If you can write a goal that fits each of these criteria, you’ll have to come up with a SMART goal that is sure to be much more beneficial than a standard goal.
If you are very familiar with S.M.A.R.T. goals feel free to level up and use this S.M.A.R.T.E.R. and M.A.S.T.E.R.P.I.E.C.E. Goal models. These are more difficult to write but your chances of success do dramatically increase.
Example #1: Saving Money
Let’s say that your goal is to start saving more money.
Now, in and of itself, this isn’t a SMART goal, but it can easily be modified so that it is one.
For example:
You could say that you want to save $10,000 a year for the next ten years.
Now, the goal is specific and measurable, since you have an amount that you are shooting for and the ability to measure the amount you end up actually saving. This goal is time-bound as well, since your goal is to save a specific amount each year over a given period. Whether the goal is achievable depends on your own financial situation, but assuming it is, the goal fits that criteria as well.
Lastly, you have to analyze whether saving money is a relevant and important goal for you personally. Assuming it is, then the goal in this example fits all the criteria of being a SMART goal.
Every SMART goal needs a SMART action plan to go along with it. This action plan focuses on how you can go about achieving your goal through things such as setting milestones, highlighting potential pitfalls that could keep you from reaching those milestones, deciding what actions you need to take to reach them, and deciding on a schedule you want to stick to.
To save $10,000 a year, your action plan may start with a breakdown something like this:
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Save 833.33 a month
a. That is $192.31 a week
b. That is $27.47 a day.
2. You would need to figure out ways you can make or save an extra $27.47 a day. You would need to look at your work hours, availability, current spending habits, monthly budget, etc. Perhaps you already spend $11 a day on eating out, coffee, or other things that could help you lower the total needed daily spending to hit your goal.
3. Your action plan might include working 16 hours over a Saturday and Sunday at a second job and removing starbucks and fast food from your daily diet.
4. You can figure out how many nights, and weekends based on that pay rate that you would need to put in to make this goal a reality. Perhaps you also offset it by selling items around your house you no longer need or use. Part of your action plan might include a yard sale.
5. Once you have all the research and information you need to make a plan, then simply work it backward from 1 year away, to monthly, to daily task you would need to do to make this goal happen.
Next: Please review and learn more about the following items.
This weekend look back at your first week of training and complete anything you have yet to finalize. You will want to start fresh on Monday so that we can focus on the next phase of your growth and training. Please come in on Monday fully up to date on all items thus far in your training.
Ensure you are spending time studying each step in the Social Media Bible, a document we have that lays out our specific approach to social media marketing over the weekend. (This document is vital to what we do)
Review and Study the Engagement Playbook over the weekend.
Review and fully understand "Recording Work Time" for guidance on how to track your time in Toggl over the weekend.
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You can find the exact steps to track your time properly HERE