Why SMART Goals Fall Short

For those of us moving through life with ADHD or wandering minds, “SMART Goals” can act as too rigid a process. One that may impede the value of the end results.

These so-called “SMART Goals” can actually feel dehumanizing, as if something measurable and specific were given more weight than something that might allow your wonder and creativity to flow even more freely.

Premature goals can be weaponized by workplaces, while much of what matters in creativity has little to do with relevance, specificity, and time.

Creative work, meaningful work, is often inherently blurry. There is an act of discovery when we allow our minds the freedom to ask questions, to play, and to pause and reflect.

Transcript:

How big? How small?

Word of warning, today's episode is one of my crankier ones.

You may have heard of the so-called "SMART Goals". Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Some employers even demand them in their relationships with you.

But I find SMART goals to be anything but smart.

When it comes to goals, we often hear something along the lines of:

“What do you see yourself doing in 5 years?"

“Dream big! Now dream bigger! You are only limited by your imagination!"

Ugh.

Does anyone else find this to be similar to "Think of a number. Now think of a bigger number"? I guess we're supposed to keep doing this until we're all wearing Infinity Gauntlets or something.

Then we are supposed to write them down, perhaps using the obnoxiously titled "SMART" mnemonic to make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Perhaps a boon for the ever de-humanizing forces of parasitic corporations, I have some concerns about these so-called "smart" goals:

• Premature specificity can lead to a rigidity that can shatter the goal, the individual, as well as injure nearby innocent bystanders. (See also every story villain.)
• Not everything that can be measured matters. In fact, I'd argue that most that matters cannot be measured.
• How do I know what's achievable until I'm there?
• How do I know what's relevant until I explore?
• And for those of us with wandering minds, Lord help us with the clearly implied use of clock time rather than that of self time. (See also Clock time vs Self time)

What goes horribly missed is the over-privileging of the written word, and the under-privileging of the wordless experience born in the seemingly menial but utterly vital, tiny world of a single visit.

Privilege the Wordless

Experience is largely a wordless place.

Much of the Now cannot be translated into words. As much as I love playing with words, they are hardly more than emissaries, often beaten and beleaguered when sent on meaningless missions.

We discover what we are creating in the act of creating it. What we once thought was clear and concrete, becomes obviously not as we are there, in the Now.

We learn what we can learn in the act of learning it.

Any creative vision will be, by definition, blurry in one sense or another. We don't know the time it would take. We don't know the steps there. We don't even know what it will look in the end.

Envisioning that blurriness, sensing a direction, we wordlessly feel the tensions and decide from there how to shape and shift the moment's sails.

Privilege the Tiny

When we focus on the tiny, we often unlock the large.

Catching a tiny turn of phrase in a client's concerns, I ask,

"Wait, what do you mean by that?"

From here, new worlds may open.

What they once stated as a goal perhaps of therapy even is now revealed as only an attempt to further suppress an important part of themselves. "Make me not angry" - but what if there is reason for the anger, a reason you hadn't considered? "Make me not worried" - what if the worry is doing something for you? What do we do with that? Make me do my work - What if doing your work is a bad idea.

I'd rather not collude in their collapse.

Working on the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata 14, I stumble here and there, a bit at the beginning, a bit at the end, and a bunch in the middle.

Diving into a single measure, slowing it down, feeling for the basic nature of the single notes involved, I gently rework a small knot in the fabric.

Why here? Why now? I don't know.

But something interesting happens in that discovery in the tiny, a turn of phrase, I realize my goal was wrong as the whole piece begin to flow different from this tiny place of practice.

Of course...

Of course there is utility to thinking of large matters.

Of course we can revisit where we thought we were going to make adjustments.

Of course it is useful to think of small steps on the way there.

But premature goals can be weaponized - forced, forming a procrustean bed of words, twisted into submission. Have you done the thing by now? Why haven't you done the thing? Update the ticket. Say where you were, say where you'll be, convince me.

Returns and revisions take time, a time easily burdened upon our future selves.

I wonder if the world beyond goals is one far more vast and rich than they'd have us believe.

• Kourosh

PS What do I see myself doing in 5 years? Probably eating a sandwich or something.

PPS I'm still cranky.

Mentioned in this episode:

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