How to craft goals you want to hit.

How much do you enjoy setting goals with your managers? More or less than say a trip to the dentist to get your wisdom teeth pulled? Who likes sitting across the board room from their superiors discussing your character flaws? No? Me neither.

This isn't their fault. Our prehistoric lizard brain, or amygdala, is designed to help us survive in the prehistoric jungle where senior managers at appraisal times are perceived as threats. One manager by itself would be a low level threat like a lion cub. You could probably out-run it if you kept your wits about you. Three of them together is like a pack of hyenas, and your lizard brain will make you fight, flight or freeze, which is hardly the best environment in which brainstorm a compelling life plan.

Managers I know love SMART goals because it's easy to remember, easy to track and easy to coordinate across the whole company. The trouble is, Specific, Actionable, Measurable, Realistic and Time-bound goals fail when they don't resonate with a compelling life vision you have for yourself.

To craft goals you actually want to hit, make sure they are:

Exciting (eck-siting?)

Goals need to really excite you at a primal level. You have to really want it. This takes self awareness and deep thinking.

What does brilliant mean to you? Who is the best professional you've ever encountered, and what made them incredible? What were their results like? What is their life like? What would your life be like if you got the results they did?

It's very hard to get excited about small goals. You need a clear and compelling personal vision for what you want your professional life to become. This takes work. Not the easy work of hitting KPIs, but the hard work of day-dreaming, introspection and having vulnerable conversations with people like parents, partners and people you admire. Deciding what you want out of life is difficult but it's important, and really can't be put off for a moment longer.

Meaningful

Your personal vision needs to belong to you entirely, and be an expression of an identity you want to live up to implicitly. Your lizard brain will be deeply suspicious of any plan that you don't fully own and will do everything it can to sabotage your efforts. A manager's role is to help you define your own vision, and to support your progression towards this.

Aligned

What do you want your contribution to be to your team, company, industry, country, planet? How do they align with your company's key strategic priorities and your team's goals? What is your role in shaping the culture and performance drivers for the whole office? How would your success at work impact your family, community and sense of pride?

Rewarding

You have to engineer small wins, as often as possible. Reward the smallest steps towards your vision and plan an outrageous reward when you get there. Think about how you can reward a good day, week, month or quarter. Take your old SMART goals and orchestrate an ongoing programme of self congratulation, encouragement and pride.

In harmony with the Tao*

What comes naturally to you? The best goals are in harmony with your true nature and the nature of the universe, or what some people would call the Tao. The key is to align your greatest strengths toward meaningful challenges and tune into the feedback you're getting along the way.

What do you find easy that people always praise you for? How do you take this skill to the next level? Deep, satisfying work is done in a state of flow. How do you access this state of flow as much as possible? What are your distractions and how can you maintain your focus?

When you have thought through the big picture, your (other) SMART objectives should become easy.

"Dream the big, crazy dreams, because you never know which ones will come true" - Keala Kennelly

*Chosen because it starts with T. No cultural appropriation intended (but everyone should learn a bit of Lao Tzu.)