Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Get SMART: 5 Steps for Setting Goals You Can Achieve
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 26th, 2011.
I saw two magazines side by side in the checkout aisle of the supermarket today with the same headline: “Organize Your Life! ” New Year’s Day is right around the corner. Six days away, to be exact. The resolutions are beckoning.
If you’re serious about organizing your life or making any other changes come January 1, you’d better get started right now. It’s time to build the foundation for success. The number one reason people fail to change unwanted behavior is not setting goals they can achieve.
Here are 5 guidelines to follow for successful change. They’re easy to remember if you think SMART. Make sure your goals are:
1) Specific. Break your goals down into observable behaviors.
2) Measurable. You should be able to determine the outcome quantitatively. Be scientific.
3) Achievable. Take small steps.
4) Realistic. Be sure your long-term goal isn’t too rigid and unsustainable.
5) Timely. Create daily and weekly changes to shoot for.
Let’s put the Organize Your Life goal to the SMART test. Is it specific? No, it’s too vague. Is it measurable? No, you can’t measure organization without first defining it. Is it achievable? No, you can’t achieve it if you haven’t defined it. Is it realistic? No, it’s too all-or-nothing. Is it timely? No, you can’t set a timeline for completing goals if you can’t measure them.
If organizing your life seems like an attractive way to wipe the slate clean and start the new year out fresh, you’ll be dooming yourself to failure before you even start unless you make the Organize Your Life goal SMARTer. Let’s take a stab at it.
1) The concept of organization has many components: managing your time efficiently, keeping track of bills, getting rid of clutter, and meeting deadlines. Decide on one or two specific aspects of organization you want to tackle. Don’t get caught in the trap of aiming for perfection. If you want to organize a messy house, say, start with a small, specific goal: I will clean out the kitchen junk drawer.
2) List all the steps you’ll need to take to accomplish the goal. Cleaning out the junk drawer may mean throwing out a collection of rubber bands and twist ties, sorting through old warrantees to file or dispose of, collecting loose change and putting it in your wallet, wiping out crumbs, and making a trip to Target for plastic bins to keep everything tidy. You can measure each step and check it off after you’ve completed it.
3) An achievable goal isn’t overly ambitious. Rein in your perfectionistic aspirations and start small. You’ll need to silence the inner voice that’s telling you, “What good will cleaning the kitchen junk drawer do when the whole house is a mess?” Set yourself up for success, not failure.
4) Deciding to clean the kitchen junk drawer is realistic. It won’t discourage you, and you’ll see results quickly enough to motivate you for the next task. You can also maintain the change by planning to spend five minutes once a month (specific, measurable, achievable and timely!) tossing out the odds and ends you’re bound to accumulate again.
5) As you can see, specific and realistic goals lend themselves to timeliness. You can decide whether to take an hour, a day, or a week to finish cleaning the drawer. But don’t drag it out any longer, or you’ll lose steam.
After you’ve accomplished a small piece of the larger goal, give yourself a pat on the back. Then move on to the next step. If you’re making sure to stay SMART, you’ll have lots of opportunities to feel good about your progress even if you haven’t yet reached the endpoint.
I’ve decided one of my goals for the new year is to write three blog posts a week. Is this SMART? Even though it’s very specific and measureable, I’m not sure if it’s achievable, realistic, or timely. So I need to revise it. I’ll plan to write one post a week for the month of January. If that works, then I can aim for two posts in February. At that point, I’ll reassess my original goal and see if I still want to produce three posts a week.
Try creating your own SMART goals, and we’ll work on them together. I’ll be posting more tips in the coming weeks. Maybe even more than once a week! Oops. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Tags: behavior change, goal-setting
Posted in Behavior Change, Goals, Techniques |
Deadlines
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 10th, 2011.
I’m setting my stopwatch. I plan to write this post in 30 minutes or less.
Why the rush? This week I’ve heard from more than a few stressed out students, my own kids included, who’ve been in the throes of end-of-semester panic. Classes ended yesterday for GW and Georgetown undergrads, and the law students are already in the middle of exams. I’ve been dispensing advice about minimizing distractions, organizing time, and setting reasonable goals to deal with overwhelming volumes of work. So I thought it only fair to test it out myself.
Of course, a blog post doesn’t come close to a 30-page academic paper or a 90-page outline for a Constitutional Law final. But I still have to focus my attention, quiet the internal critic, resist the urge to get a snack, and get the words down.
Only 15 minutes left. (It took me 15 minutes to do just this much? How will I ever finish? This isn’t very interesting. I’m not sure what else I have to say. Why did I decide to do this? What a stupid idea!) I’m noticing some tension in my neck and chest. The words aren’t flowing very quickly. My mind is going blank!
(OK, take a deep breath. Close your eyes and take three calming breaths. You can type with your eyes closed.)
That’s better. Still don’t know exactly where I’m going with this. (I should have planned it beforehand. It would have been easier with a plan.)
The urge to stop right now is getting stronger. But fair is fair. I’ll keep going until the 30 minutes are up.
I’ve learned something from this experiment. Telling yourself you have to get something done in just 30 or 60 minutes, or even two hours, isn’t the best way to approach a deadline. Better to leave yourself some leeway because the extra pressure of the clock raises your anxiety and clouds your thinking. Keep that in mind for the next time.
But if you’re already in a bind and have no choice, set the clock for a half hour and push through. Ignore the inner monologue and keep going. Then take a break. That’s what I’m going to do now. Because my 30 minutes are up.
Full disclosure: I did go back and make two-minutes’ worth of edits. (Not too bad! This may not be my most brilliant piece of writing, but I’m OK with it.)
Another important takeaway lesson: every effort doesn’t require perfection. Sometimes you just have to get the job done. So just do it.
Tags: organization, time management
Posted in Behavior Change, Techniques |
Dancing with the Dogs
By Lynne Gots, posted on October 5th, 2011.
Anyone who comes to see me for help with anxiety quickly learns The Cardinal Rule: don’t avoid the things that scare you. It’s human (and animal) nature to flee from danger. But avoidance only makes fear worse in the long run. That is, unless you find yourself in a dark alley with a knife-wielding thug on your heels, in which case—and I’m certain my professional liability insurance carrier would want me to make this perfectly clear—you should run like hell.
I wouldn’t feel right about pushing other people off the high dive, metaphorically speaking, unless I’d jumped myself. So I look for opportunities to get up close and personal with discomfort.
One activity really does the trick for me. And, as a bonus, it nudges my Australian Shepherd Freddie outside his comfort zone (which, admittedly, doesn’t take much). It’s called Canine Musical Freestyle, or doggie dancing.
Go ahead and laugh all you want. This is a legitimate sport. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. It’s amazing to watch, but also extremely silly — especially if you’re the one doing chorus line kicks alongside a dog. I decided to take a Freestyle class because I knew it would make me feel ridiculous.
Freddie and I had already tried one canine sport, Agility. Most Aussies are naturals at it. Whip-smart and agile, they navigate the timed obstacle course with ease. Not Freddie. Sure, he had no trouble learning how to dash through tunnels, prance across balance beams, and jump through hoops. But we spent most of the time huddled in a corner, trying to avoid the other dogs. After only the second lesson, Freddie mistook a miniature Schnauzer for an errant sheep and got us kicked out of class.
So with great trepidation, I signed us up for Freestyle. I was very nervous. I started sweating before I even walked in the door, knowing I’d have to keep Freddie calmly focused on me while we passed through a room full of hyped-up Border Collies and Aussies. Then there was the matter of the dancing itself. I’m spatially-challenged; I can barely tell my left foot from my right. Embarrassment was clearly in the cards.
But who knew? Freddie turned out to be a dancing fool. His enthusiasm made me forget my awkwardness. It even helped him ignore all the barking and whirling around him—except once, when he chased down a Chihuahua who was performing an intricate balancing act on his owner while she did a series of yoga poses. I suspect that Freddie, who has a highly evolved sense of right and wrong, viewed it as unseemly canine behavior and was taking it upon himself to put a stop to it.
I spent weeks searching for the perfect music, finally settling on Frank Sinatra’s, “I Won’t Dance”—a classy standard that was just the right tempo for the choreography I’d been obsessively working out in my head. I imagined Freddie looking suave in a bow tie if we ever actually performed in competition (and if I could ever actually get him to wear one). When it came time to present our routine for the class, Freddie debonairly grasped an umbrella in his paws, kicked up his legs in perfect step with mine, glided sideways across the floor with me while I tried not to trip over my own feet, pirouetted on his hind legs, and finished with an elegant bow.
Too bad nobody could see us. After the Chihauhua incident (which thankfully didn’t phase our wonderful teacher Carolynn, herself the owner of six Aussies), I decided to play it safe and work behind a screen to obscure the other dogs from Freddie’s sight line.
But by the beginning of the second session, we were able to emerge from behind our barrier. Freddie can watch quietly now, relaxing by my side while Carolynn’s retired champion Freestyler, Rafe, shows us his moves. We’ve even demonstrated a few of our own.
Facing our fears made Freddie and me much more confident. And so did having that show-off Chihauhua drop out of class.
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Tags: anxiety, desensitization
Posted in Behavior Change, Dogs, Techniques |
