SMART Goals vs. HARD Goals

  • 1 min read

You probably have a lot of goals that you would like to achieve, whether they relate to your business, your brand, your health, or something else in your life. Obviously, the desire to achieve a goal is usually not enough, and many of us need a clear plan to get there.

Here are two different ways to map out your goals:

SMART Goals

I’ve gone into detail about SMART goals before in this post, but here’s a reminder of what SMART goals are:

  • Specific: Clearly define your target or end result. Avoid being vague and instead think about the who, what, where, when, why and how of your goal.
  • Measurable: Think about the numbers associated with your goal. How will you measure success?
  • Action-oriented: Develop a plan of action in order to achieve your goal. Make it as specific as possible.
  • Realistic: Make sure your goal is possible and reachable. You can always make additional goals once you’ve reached your initial result.
  • Time-bound: Set a deadline to motivate yourself towards change.

HARD Goals

SMART goals can help you on your path to success—and so can HARD goals. This tactic, coined by Mark Murphy in HARD GOALS: The Secrets to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (McGraw-Hill), taps into an individual’s emotional, visual, survival, and learning systems – enabling you to visualize what you need to achieve.

  • Heartfelt: Develop deep-seated and heartfelt attachments to your goals on levels that are intrinsic, personal and extrinsic. Use these connections to naturally increase the motivational power you put behind making your goals happen.
  • Animated: Create goals that are so vividly alive in your mind that to not reach them would leave you wanting. Use visualization and imagery techniques to sear your goal firmly into your brain including perspective, size, color, shape, distinct parts, setting, background, lighting, emotions and movement.
  • Required:Give procrastination (which kills far too many goals) the boot. Convince yourself and others of the absolute necessity of your goals and make the future payoffs of your goals appear far more satisfying than what you can get today. This will make your HARD Goals look a whole lot more attractive and amp up your urgency to get going on them right now.
  • Difficult: Construct goals that are optimally challenging to tap into your own personal sweet spot of difficulty. Access past experiences to use them to position you for extraordinary performance. Identify your goal setting comfort zone and push past it in order to attain the stellar results you want.

Murphy discovered that goal success isn’t determined by daily habits, raw intellect, or writing numbers on a worksheet, and that it actually depends on the engagement of your brain. HARD goals can help you do that.

Picture of Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder & president ​of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of#ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist forExaminer.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

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