Are SMART goals dumb? Rethinking our approach to goal setting in the New Year.
TL;DR at the end
Whether it’s for yourself, your friends or your patients, goal setting is universally recognized as an effective tool for creating behaviour change. The most commonly used method of goal setting is with SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). SMART is used in pretty much every industry from sports and healthcare, to education, personal development, business, and project management. I remember having to write down SMART goals as far back as primary school and continued to do so at every stage of life including two universities across two continents and in every job I’ve ever worked. And not once did I enjoy doing it. Given that upwards of 88% of New Year’s Resolutions fail, maybe it’s time to think about some other ways we can set goals. Having studied and worked as a physiotherapist in chronic pain where behaviour change is the primary focus, I would like to share a collection of things that I’ve learned in this role that may help you lock in for 2025.
SMART was coined by business consultant George Doran in 1981 to facilitate productivity in a corporate environment. It originally stood for specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-bound. ‘Assignable’ relates to being able to allocate a specific person to be responsible for a particular task. The intended audience for SMART goals was for senior managers to effectively increase the output of their team or company. At some point over the past 40 years, we embraced the SMART framework in virtually every aspect of our lives including healthcare. Maybe it’s the simplicity and memorability of it which made it so proliferative. Given that SMART goals were never intended to be used in health promotion, behaviour self regulation, lifestyle change, habit building…whatever you want to call it…I think it’s worth taking a step back to question whether it’s a useful tool or not. After all, if SMART is the only tool we have in our goal pursuing toolbox, we might be needlessly hammering away at a goal that would be better solved with a flathead.
Goals do not need to be specific
Despite its widespread popularity, SMART goals were not created based on any theoretical or empirical evidence for its effectiveness. In fact, Pietsch and colleagues summarized nicely in the title of their 2024 article “SMART goals are no more effective for creative performance than do-your-best goals or non-specific, exploratory ‘open goals’”.
Specificity, much like everything else, exists on a spectrum. It depends on how experienced you are in that particular area. The more experienced you are in a given field, the more specific you need to be. For example, a high-level competitive swimmer might be looking to shave fractions of a second off of their length times whereas my goal might just to be able to complete two lengths without drowning.
In the early stages of adopting new lifestyle changes, vague goals are as effective or more effective. According to goal setting theory (Latham and Locke, 1991): ‘trying for specific, challenging goals may actually hurt performance in certain circumstances (such as) in the early stages of learning a new, complex task’. Imagine for a moment a person who has never been to the gym before or done any form of structured exercise. Now we must ask this person to write down a specific goal to exercise more. What frame of reference does this person have to be able to make an informed decision about the frequency, intensity, timing, and type of exercise they do? The argument for setting vague goals in the early stages of habit building is that it allows for open experimentation of strategies that work for the individual which is far more valuable than prescriptive guidelines such as ‘go to the gym for 60 minutes per day, three times per week’. Non-specific, ‘do-your-best’, or open goals allow you to build reference experiences to figure out what you enjoy and what you can fit into your current routine. You are free to explore what is feasible and viable for your specific life circumstance rather than insisting on adhering to a strict, rigid framework which was set at a time where you did not yet have the enough information to know that your goal was any good.
Nevertheless, goal setting theory does encourage the use of specific goals to produce optimal results. To use the high-level swimmer example again, improving the 100m freestyle by 0.5 seconds is a much more useful goal than simply saying ‘swim faster’. However, it’s up to the goal setter to determine if the constraints are too rigid in its specificity, which can be end up becoming barrier to health rather than a tool to promote it. Maybe three times a week is too much, maybe you prefer shorter workouts done more frequently, maybe you hate lifting weights. If you or your patient(s) have failed previous attempts at making lifestyle changes stick, consider picking a vague goal and reflecting on what works and what doesn’t, then using these insights to inform future, more specific goals. The aim is therefore to think about making a goal as specific as possible to one’s circumstances rather than insisting that a more specific goal is inherently better.
Forget the measuring scales, trust the process
How do we measure success? With SMART, sometimes it can be as straightforward as a black or white answer. A common New Year’s Resolution is to lose weight, for example 10kg in three months. Success is simply whether or not 10kg have been lost at the three month mark. But what if you only lost 9kg? Is it fair to consider this a failure despite a job well done? What if you didn’t lose any weight but learned to build muscle, adopt a regular exercise routine, and eat healthier in the process? If the aim of goal setting is to create positive lifestyle changes then the number on the scale is not as important as the real life habits being formed in the pursuit of a making healthier choices.
Goal setting theory makes the distinction between a learning (or mastery) goal versus a performance goal. I prefer to call them process-oriented goals versus results-oriented goals because I find it much easier to understand. In the early stages of learning a new skill or building a new habit, process-oriented goals are more appropriate. Rather than looking at the weight lost at the end of three months, we can instead reward the effort put into going to the gym three times per week or replacing sugary soft drinks with low calorie alternatives more often than not. Success can then be measured on a gradient rather than as a binary. This leaves some room for error, but also room for improvement. There’s also something uniquely discouraging about putting in loads of effort to yield very little results. Focusing on the process reminds us that a lot of the rewards come in the form of the tools, strategies, and wisdom gained from trying to achieve a certain goal. Maybe the calorie deficit you’ve created wasn’t big enough so you reflect on where this can be tweaked. Or maybe your calorie deficit was unsustainable because it was too big so a smaller deficit for more modest changes over a longer period of time is needed.
Perhaps the most flawed aspect of results-oriented goals is the tendency for people to adopt harmful strategies in pursuit of their goal. The most obvious example of this is with crash diets but it can also be seen in people who over-exercise to compensate for perceived excessive calorie intake. Crash diets, when adhered to, do produce relatively quick results, but their problem is that they are difficult to sustain so people either give up (and subsequently blame themselves for not sticking to a plan that was far too difficult for them to begin with) or the weight comes back once the diet is complete and old habits are allowed to re-emerge. Being temporarily highly motivated and stressed out does not translate to behaviour change. We ought to steer away from the results and focus on the process instead. Think “what small changes could I see myself sustaining for a long time” instead of “I just have to get through these three months and hopefully I’ll never have to squat/eat a salad again”. Your goals shouldn’t fill you with dread!
Don’t make your goals too achievable, look for the flow state
What happened to shooting for the stars? If you fail, you’ll still have landed on the moon! In many ways the old adage is true; setting a higher or more challenging goal leads to better outcomes compared to an easier goal even when the more challenging goal isn’t met. After all, if a goal is too easy then no change at all can occur. The caveat here is that if a goal is too challenging, it may hurt performance in the early stages of learning. The way I’ve consolidated this information is with the following meme I’ve appropriated from positive psychology:
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The difficulty of your goal should be in proportion to your level of skill or self-efficacy in that area. If a task is too challenging relative to your own skill level, it might cast doubt, anxiety, and frustration. If a task is too easy, then it can quickly become boring. At the beginning of adopting a new skill or habit, you will have very little self-efficacy anyway. It will feel anxiety inducing no matter what, so the first thing is to step up to the challenge to gain the adequate experience so you understand what you don't understand. When a goal is too easy, you run the risk of boredom and not finding out your true potential, held back by the thoughts like ‘what if it goes wrong?’ If a goal ever get’s too challenging you can at least make educated adjustments to your plan. But you might find that keeping the difficult goal can lead you to exceeding your own expectations and surprising yourself. Erring on the side of daring opens up opportunities for ‘what if it goes right?’
Of course the opposite can also be true. A weightlifter who has not trained for several years might overestimate their skill level and try a weight that is far too challenging and would benefit from an easier weight. The key is to understand when you’re just throwing yourself against a wall and making no progress. It helps to think of goal difficulty as something that is fluid and constantly changing rather than a set benchmark.
Finding the right level of challenge is foundational to motivation and therefore improved habit retention. After all, the whole point of setting a goal should be to motivate rather than as a barrier. One of the core components of self-determination theory is competence, which is defined as the need to master tasks and being effective in one’s activities. If someone is progressively challenged in an area where they are continually increasing their skill, they will want to keep doing that thing. You might have experienced this if you’ve ever learned to play an instrument or learned how to dance; there comes a point where you become almost obsessive about perfecting the song or choreography.
Forget realistic. Think relevant, intrinsically motivated, autonomous goals
Obvious redundancy aside, I’ve seen many use the term relevant instead, which is better but still poorly defined. On a surface level, it’s self-evident that a goal needs to be relevant. The very fact that you’re making a goal means that it’s relevant to you. However, it’s worthwhile to explore the concept of relevance through the lens of motivation.
The most powerful component of motivation based on self determination theory is autonomy. It can be defined as the extent to which one is acting in accordance to their core sense of self. Autonomous (or intrinsically motivated) behaviours are inherently rewarding meaning you’re already enjoying the process and in a state of flow. When a goal is autonomous rather than controlled, people tend to achieve more challenging goals, produce better quality outcomes, and are more able to stick to those behaviours. There’s a big difference between your doctor telling you to lose weight, eat better, exercise, stop smoking and you becoming someone who enjoys their exercise, who enjoys making fresh home cooked meals, and who no longer identifies as a smoker. Reminding yourself of your why is a great way to stay disciplined during a rough patch.
Externally controlled drivers like someone telling you to change because “you have to”, “because it’s good for you”, “because I told you so” or “or else” is a surefire way for people to double down on the opposite behaviour. This is called reactive autonomy - remember how many people refused to wear a mask or get the Covid vaccine for no reason apart from they were told to do so?
Time-bound, if appropriate
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to set a time constraint on lifestyle changes. Part of adopting new behaviours is so that we can maintain it for so long as it still fits within our core values. It might mean that the goal has an indefinite length of time. Some goals are time bound by their very nature. For example losing a certain amount of weight or achieving a performance target for a specific event. But adding an arbitrary time constraint does not necessarily help with goal achievement in health promotion. It depends on individual preferences. Some people find it motivating to have a time-frame to accomplish a task but others (especially in the early stages of habit formation) will be put off as it can cause more anxiety.
Approach vs Avoidance
Consider whether your goal is an approach goal or an avoidance goal. We tend to find approach goals much easier to accomplish than an avoidance goal. An approach goal is like eating more fruits and vegetables or going to the gym whereas an avoidance goal is something like quit smoking or stop eating sugar. If you do have an avoidance goal, you can turn it into an approach goal by substituting one habit with another. For example, replacing sugary drinks with sugar free alternatives. Part of the reason quitting smoking is so hard is because the substitutes are either just as bad or worse (e.g. vaping and pouches, you end up using these in more places than you would have with cigarettes) or they’re not similar enough to be a good replacement (e.g. going for a walk, having a shower, holding a pen/toothpick, carrot sticks).
Summary