It’s the beginning of a new year, which means everyone is making resolutions to better themselves. Or drives themselves nuts. Either way.

I’ve never made resolutions. I don’t like them. I prefer to set goals for myself. Resolutions seem to be big, vague sweeping statements that won’t make it past February. I feel like Resolutions are Goal’s younger step brother that lacks initiative and drive. And sleeps on Goal’s couch rent-free while eating all of Goal’s food.

You know what you want and you are going to get it this year. But how? And when? And why?

As a personal trainer, it’s my job to help my clients set goals that will keep them motivated and striving to achieve more. I’ve found over the years that there is a specific formula for whether or not you have set a good goal.

In order to set good goals, you have to set S.M.A.R.T. goals.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive.

Let’s use an example. Most people’s New Year’s Resolution (of Doom) is to lose weight, so we will use that for today’s purposes. Feel free to sub in your own goal.

Let’s Get Specific

In order to turn this resolution into a goal, we must first make it more Specific. How much weight do you want to lose? How fast? By when?

Making a goal specific will help you know when you have achieved it, help you develop your plan of attack and give you something exact to shoot for.

Making It Measurable

M is for Measurable, so slap number on it. Instead of saying “I want to lose weight,” saying “I will lose 50 pounds this year” is easily measurable — you either do it or you don’t.

Research shows that setting smaller increments (I will lose X pounds a month) as opposed to one, big sweeping statement (I will lose 50 pounds this year) is more effective. The amount of time is not as daunting and it puts a sense of urgency on it. The end of the year is a long time away, but the end of the month is creeping up on you faster than you think.

Make Your Goals Attainable

All goals must be Attainable, otherwise, what’s the point? Saying you are going to work out every day, or lose 10 pounds in a month isn’t realistic and will only set you up for failure. You may have to crunch some numbers depending on your goals, but knowing what is possible and what isn’t will keep you on track.

Is It Relevant?

Relevant is kind of a given. The specific goal you set must be relevant to what you want to achieve. If you want to lose weight, you aren’t going to set a goal to increase the weight you can bench press. While this is a fine goal, it isn’t going to help you to get the pounds off. Instead, you might set something like an amount of times you want to make it to the gym per week, or hitting a certain amount of calories per day. That is what will help you drop the weight.

What’s The Time Frame?

The last key to goal setting, is making them Time-sensitive. If you don’t put a deadline on it, you’ll never get there. You are going to work harder at something if there is a deadline on the horizon, so make sure you set a deadline that is realistically far enough in the future to achieve what you want to do, but close enough that you will feel that sense of urgency.

So, instead of a resolution of “I want to lose weight this year” we have set a goal of “I will lose 5 pounds per month, for the next 12 months, by going to the gym at least 3 times a week.” That’s a goal you know immediately if you have achieved or not, and have a plan of how you are going to do it.

Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals is the key to getting anything you want in life.Take your goals or resolutions and put them through the S.M.A.R.T. test. Did yours pass?

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