The Dead Simple Goal-Setting Method That Changed My Life

Do you want to be more strategic, beat overwhelm, and skyrocket your productivity? Learn what SMART goals are and how to set them effectively. This article was originally published in The Side Hustle Club.

You want to make money from your writing.

You constantly see people sharing their success stories: they have thousands of followers and huge email lists. They make six figures.

You keep consuming content. Learning how W did X and how Y got Z.

To make money, you need to build an audience.

To build an audience, you need to deliver value.

But there are so many ways you can do this…

Which one will work for you?

Where should you start?

It’s overwhelming — paralyzing even.

I was where you are, not that long ago. I had a vision. I knew what I wanted to build and where I wanted to get to.

Looking at that ultimate goal and realizing how much I had to do to get there was terrifying.

I’d stare at my endless to-do list and get so worked up, I’d end up doing nothing.

Until I learned about setting SMART goals.

When I say “this goal-setting method changed my life,” I f#cking mean it.

If you’re looking to be more strategic, beat overwhelm, and skyrocket your productivity, keep reading.

The Dead Simple Goal-Setting Method That Changed My Life

The goal-setting system that made me go from overwhelmed and unproductive to highly motivated and efficient was the “SMART goals” method.

“The letters in SMART stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.”

— HubSpot

Let’s look at what each letter in SMART stands for, so you get a better idea of how to implement this system.

1. Specific

Your goal should be unambiguous and clearly communicate what’s expected.

Unspecific goal: I want to grow my website — there are a million ways you could do this. It makes it hard to define a course of action.

Specific goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic — this narrows your focus.

2. Measurable

You need to be able to measure your progress when reaching your goal.

Unmeasurable goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic — by this standard, even one more visitor would be a success.

Measurable goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30% — this is a goal you can reliably measure to determine if you were successful.

3. Attainable

Obviously, your goal should be realistic.

Unattainable goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 1,000% — it’s highly unlikely you’ll 10x your organic traffic in the short term.

Attainable goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30%.

4. Relevant

Your goal needs to matter to your business and address core metrics.

Irrelevant goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30% — traffic itself isn’t a goal; it’s a means to a goal.

Relevant goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30% to increase sales by 0.6% (at a 2% conversion rate).

5. Time-Bound

A goal makes no sense without a due date.

Non-time-bound goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30% to increase sales by 0.6% — completing this goal in ten years wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment, would it?

Time-bound goal: I want to grow my website’s organic traffic by 30% to increase sales by 0.6% in the next three months.

💡👆 This is a SMART goal!

Now, you have to detail an action plan to accomplish it in the timeframe you defined.

How to Set SMART Goals for Your Business

To show you how you can apply this system to your life and business, I’ll share exactly how I set SMART goals.

I always set quarterly goals (=every three months) — that’s my timeframe. You can set any time period that makes sense for you.

Then, I choose a general goal for the quarter and break it down into several smaller SMART goals that support that bigger goal.

For example, my goal for the last quarter of 2022 was to build topical relevancy in my niche — this is a relevant goal because it’ll help me rank higher in search engines over time.

To achieve that general goal, I set thirteen SMART goals. Here are two examples:

Example 1: Write and publish twelve blog posts relevant to my niche

• Specific: the goal clearly states what I need to do and what’s the desired outcome.
• Measurable: count the posts.
• Attainable: writing and publishing one blog post per week was attainable considering my schedule at the time.
• Relevant: publishing blog posts related to my niche helps me build topical relevancy, rank for important keywords, and attract my target audience.
• Time-bound: I had three months to get it done.

This is a pretty simple and standard example of a SMART goal. The next one isn’t as clear-cut.

With the following example, I want to show you the importance of really tailoring your goals to your specific situation.

Example 2: Get 100 unique visitors to my website via social media

• Specific: the goal clearly states what the desired outcome is.
• Measurable: check Google Analytics.
• Attainable: 100 unique visitors in my first three months of blogging seemed reasonable (I ended up getting a lot more, though).
• Relevant: getting 100 unique visitors would confirm my social media marketing strategy works.
• Time-bound: again, three months.

According to the example above, this doesn’t seem like a SMART goal. But I was just starting. I had no idea what my affiliate and lead magnet conversion rates would be.

Hence, I didn’t set goals focused on growing my email list or making money. I set goals centered around testing the efficacy of:

• My blog content
• My social media strategy
• My lead magnets

And I tailored the goals for the following quarter to the results I got in the first.

👍 For example, my lead magnets got an 18% conversion rate and almost 50% of my email subscribers came from Quora — if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

In the second quarter, I doubled down on my lead magnets by creating a second landing page targeting a low KD% query related to my newsletter and lead magnets. And kept the same routine on Quora.

👎 However, Pinterest was completely stale. I grew to 8,000 views/month and stayed there. Views, followers, outbound clicks… None of these were increasing.

So, I came up with a new strategy for the second quarter. By the end, I’ll measure, analyze, and decide to keep or change it.

This brings me to my next point. How do you apply this method to your day-to-day life? And how does it improve your productivity?

Setting SMART Goals Will Improve Your Day-to-Day Life — Here’s Why

Once you set your SMART goals, it’s time to strategically divide them by the timeframe you defined.

As I said, I set thirteen goals for the first quarter. Then, I prioritized and divided them by the three months I set.

Then, I further broke them down into what I had to do each week and each day.

I used CoSchedule’s Marketing Calendar to organize my to-do list and associated each task with a project so that I could the percentual progress I was making whenever I completed a task.

That feeling of accomplishment you get when you visualize progress that way, gives your brain little shots of dopamine, making you more motivated to keep going.

If you do this, you’ll know exactly what you need to do every day to achieve the goals you set.

👉 You’ll beat overwhelm because instead of looking at an endless and aimless to-do list, you have very clear and achievable tasks to do each day.

👉 You’ll be more productive because you know you won’t achieve your goals if you don’t stick to that schedule every single day — and the time you’d spend coming up with a to-do list and stressing out is spent getting sh#t done.

👉 You’ll be more strategic because, at the end of your timeframe, you’ll measure, analyze, and keep/adjust your plan.

Setting SMART Goals — Key Takeaways

If you struggle with productivity, consistency, and being strategic, this goal-setting system will change your life.

Here are the most important things you need to remember:

• Always tailor your goals to your current situation.
• Once you lay out your plan, stick to it during your timeframe.
• The timeframe is very important — in many cases, one month or a few weeks aren’t enough to correctly measure success.
• At the end of your timeframe, take time to measure, analyze, and re-strategize.
• Double down on what worked, ruthlessly drop/change what didn’t.
• Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t achieve all your goals. Instead, commit to doing a little bit better next time.

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