Business Goals: Setting SMART Ones
There are countless articles in magazines and books written to encourage people like you to set business goals. No doubt you have specific goals set out for your business. The best goals will be SMART. That means they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time related.
Specific goals are written out clearly and have a set time frame. When you write out your goals, state what you want, and give it a deadline. A simple goal of “earning money by working from home” becomes much more motivational if you phrase it as “earning $500 per month on a regular basis within sixty days”. Once you know what your plan is, it will be easier to achieve it.
In order to stay on track with your goals, they also need to be measurable. That means that if your goals are related to how much you earn, you need to make the goal measurable by giving it a specific figure. You also need to give your goal a measurable time frame to work within.
An Attainable Goal is a goal you know you can achieve. Don’t be fooled by the word “attainable”. It can still be a challenging goal and require effort to achieve it, but it does need to be something you can do. For instance, if your goal is to learn to build websites and you have absolutely no experience, your goal shouldn’t be to build a huge, portal website in a week.
Learning how to use web design software and then developing a small website is an attainable goal related to web design. If you pressure yourself to reach goals that are not reasonably attainable you will only frustrate yourself and that will lead to the bad habit of procrastination due to being afraid of failing.
Your goals need to be realistic as well. In the first mentioned example of earning $500 a month in the next two months, this goal could be made quite unrealistic if it was changed to earning $500 within the next week.
Owning a profitable at-home business is not always an instantaneous process; it requires hard work and effort. Setting mini or stair-step goals for yourself will be more beneficial than aiming for one enormous one.
All the example goals given are time related. You will be more motivated to accomplish your goals if you have a specific time scheduled to complete them. Procrastination is far easier to fall into if your goals are not set with a time to reach them in mind. Time related goals will move you to reach them quickly.
