When Creating Good Habits, Start by Setting Good Goals

The first stage of establishing good habits through effective health behavior change involves setting goals. Whether those goals are related to managing stress, sleep, physical activity, making changes to eating patterns, or anything else it’s worth keeping in mind a few considerations for setting yourself up to successfully achieve goals. This post describes the SMART acronym as it applies to setting goals for health behavior change. SMART goals are useful for achieving a variety of goals (not just those related to eating or lifestyle), they help with maintaining focus, and they can be adjusted as needed to support taking action consistently in ways that support long-term goals.

It’s worth noting the distinction between long-term goals and short-term goals and unique considerations for each. It’s helpful to identify your personal long-term health goals first, then break those long-term goals into actionable short-term goals and check the progress along the way. An example of a long-term health goal might sound like, “Six months from now, I will be including five servings of vegetables and fruit in my diet five days per week in order to include more nutrients in my diet and support my health.” For the purposes of this post, I use an example SMART goal that might be used for one week to achieve a short-term goal. This post describes a process for breaking that larger goal down into smaller steps. It also highlights some benefits of taking small, repeatable action in the direction of health goals which I refer to as good habits.

It will take time to learn what your personal best goals and action plans look like. Think of goal-setting as an ongoing process rather than a moment for choosing a destination where you want to arrive.  Making progress toward goals involves:

• continually experimenting with taking action in ways that are likely to help
• evaluating whether progress is being made toward your goals
• checking in often to revise goals and plans according to your observations

If you’re interested in learning more about working with me as you define your health goals, create action plans, and adjust as needed while monitoring progress, check out this post where I write more about that and use the button below to schedule a Discovery Call.

SMART Goals

SMART is an acronym which can help with creating goals that are likely to support effective health behavior change and maintaining good habits.  Each letter stands for a quality or feature of a helpful goal; by ensuring your goals include these criteria you’re better able to determine whether you’re making progress toward your goal.  Making sure your goals are SMART also eliminates guesswork about what you’re working on and how you’ll take action to make progress.

Specific

When a goal is clear and specific, you’ll be able to know what action needs to be taken and it will be easy to focus your efforts on taking that action.  You’ll also have a better idea of how long it will take to be successful in reaching your goal when it is specific.  

If you’re considering making a change to your eating habits it’s not very helpful to say, “My goal is to eat a healthier diet,” because it’s too vague.  Instead, by identifying specific changes, why those changes are important to you, and other details, you’ll make it easier to focus on exactly what you want to do.  That might sound like, “In order to change my diet so it includes more nutrients and supports my health, I will increase the amount of fruit and vegetables I eat with my dinner.”  There is a lot more information included in this second example, and by getting more specific it’s already starting to be more helpful in guiding which actions to take for making progress.  We’ll continue developing this example as we move on to the next part of the SMART framework.

To check whether your goal is specific, consider these questions:

*What do I want to accomplish?

*Why is this goal important?

*Which resources will be utilized?

Measurable

Making sure your goal is measurable ensures that you are able to track progress and that you’ll know when you’ve successfully reached your goal.  

Consider the goal of eating more fruit and vegetables from above.  To ensure this goal is measurable, we’ll need to add components that can be counted or measured. Defining how much fruit and vegetables and on how many days per week will make this goal measurable.  An example of how that might sound is, “In order to change my diet so it includes more nutrients and supports my health, I will add one piece of fruit and one cup of vegetables with my dinner three days per week.”

Your goal will be measurable if you can answer questions about your goal like these:

*How is the goal measured?

*How much X will I do?

*How many times will I do X?

*How will I know when this goal is accomplished?

The SMART framework can help with setting up an actionable goal and to evaluate where adjustments can be made which are more likely to contribute to progress.

Actionable

Taking action is at the core of changing behaviors; a goal without action is just an idea. The actionable component of a SMART goal illustrates exactly how progress will be made. Sometimes a goal requires many actions to be taken in order to be successful.  If you experiment with a SMART goal and find that you don’t accomplish your goal, consider how you might break the action down into smaller or more realistic actions.

In our example SMART goal, the action is “eating one piece of fruit and one cup of vegetables.”  Additional actions which might be necessary in order to complete this task include planning which options to eat, including those in a grocery list, shopping for those groceries, and making sure the options are easy to choose when it’s time to eat.

Questions to consider while creating your SMART goal:

*What action will I take to reach my goal?

*Do I need to break this action down into many smaller actions in order to be successful?

Realistic

Making sure your goals are realistic is essential, but it can be difficult to do.  You’ll likely learn what’s realistic for you and your routines and your preferences after some trial and error. 

One way to make sure your SMART goal is realistic is by choosing actions which require little effort but contribute to making progress toward your goal with repetition.  Start with a small adjustment to current routines and observe whether that change is helpful. Then choose to either continue doing things as part of a new routine or experiment with a different way of pursuing your goal.  When you find a new routine that you’d like to practice maintaining, give yourself time to stay consistent and allow the new routine to shift into a new habit before adding new areas to focus on. 

If you were considering implementing the example SMART goal from above, “In order to change my diet so it includes more nutrients and supports my health, I will add one piece of fruit and one cup of vegetables with my dinner on three days per week,” you might consider how you’ll set yourself up so it’s really convenient to do that.  

When starting to work on a goal like this it can be helpful to rely on extremely easy options to achieve the goal at first. Other options might be explored later as a separate goal.  Adding an apple or a banana to a meal might be more convenient and thus more realistic compared to spending time preparing a fruit salad with various components.  For vegetables, it might be more realistic to choose a frozen option that’s pre-cleaned and cut and just needs to be heated on a stove or microwave. 

After successfully reaching the goal, reflect on how things went. Consider either staying consistent with the new routine so it becomes a new good habit, or making a slight adjustment that’s aligned with your longer-term goals. 

Ask yourself these questions to determine whether your goal is realistic:

*Can I do it?  Am I setting myself up to take action in a realistic way?

*How will I get started?  How will I stay consistent?  Do I need to schedule time on my calendar or set up reminders?

*Am I able to see myself continuing to do things in this way?  Is it a sustainable change in my routine?

Time-bound

Setting a specific amount of time for reaching your goal helps with creating both short- and long-term goals.   A helpful short-term time frame might be as short as one day, a work week or seven days because you’re likely to have an idea of what to expect from your routine over that short time and then set yourself up to take action.  Depending on what you’re working toward, you might consider a long-term goal that’s 6 months to 12 months in the future.  By creating a goal for the short-term which contributes to gradual incremental progress toward your long-term goal, you can make it easier and more likely that you’ll stay consistent and develop habits which support your goals.

Set yourself up to periodically evaluate your progress, but not to harshly judge the outcome as success or failure or good or bad.  Consider these check-ins as an opportunity to evaluate your SMART goal and whether it’s the right time to continue doing things as you have been or to adjust the approach you’re taking to reach your goal.

In the example we’re working with, a long-term goal might be to include one fruit and two servings of veggies with dinner five nights per week by three months from now. A short-term goal which serves as a starting point for gradually working toward that might be one fruit and one serving of vegetables with dinner three nights per week.  Once that has been achieved, it will be valuable to assess whether it’s the right time to 1) stay consistent with that new routine or to 2) make a change that gradually contributes to the long-term goal.  That might be accomplished by increasing the amount of vegetables at dinner on three days per week or by increasing the number of days per week where fruit and vegetables are added to dinner.

Questions to consider while creating your SMART goal:

*How much time do I need in order to reach my long-term goal?

*How much time do I need in order to reach my short-term goal?

*What action(s) can I take over the next week that will help me progress toward my goal?

The SMART acronym can help with setting up an actionable goal and then evaluating where adjustments can be made which are likely to contribute to ongoing progress. For more information check out this video that uses examples related to ways students might use SMART goals.

Keep in mind that you’ll likely experiment with a few different strategies before landing on a routine that fits your schedule and preferences.  There will be times when life’s challenges interfere with your progress, but by finding solutions that allow for continued progress despite those challenges you’ll practice being persistent and building resilience. Those skills ultimately set you up to continue taking action toward your goal, making it more likely that you’ll practice and maintain good habits. 

Stock photo credits: Light Bulb Photo by Anete Lusina from Pexels. Clipboard Photo by Poan studio from Pexels. Chalkboard Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.