How to use the SMART 5-point principle to make your plan come true?

In the past few times, I have popularized the most basic methodologies in work and study - PDCA and 5W1H (if you haven’t seen it, you can enter: PDCA and 5W1H in WeChat to view it). In PDCA Inside, the success of the plan often ultimately determines the success of the matter. Therefore, the most important thing that determines the success of something is to make a plan, so today we will discuss how to better formulate a work plan.

Do you often encounter such a problem, making a lot of plans but never being able to complete them? You feel very tired and have done a lot of things, but in retrospect it seems that you have done nothing?

Our life is like a machine full of endless possibilities, in which time is the universal raw material, your approach to things (knowledge, communication skills, ways of thinking, working methods, etc.) and resources (Brain resources, financial resources, network resources, etc.) are machines that help you achieve final output, so the reasons that determine how much you output are only related to three factors:

The time it takes to do things, and the method of doing things. , resources owned.

And your expectations for your life: What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live? It ultimately determines what it is going to produce

So, if we don’t have a goal, we don’t even know what the universal machine of our time is going to produce, because time is ultimately limited and we can’t use it if we don’t use it. Doing what you want to do but instead producing a bunch of things you don't love is just like letting a car run empty and a waste of life.

In order to save time and energy as much as possible, we must use goal management methods to control our lives and studies. When starting our universal time machine, we must first tell ourselves: " What exactly do I need it to produce? 』

Smart Principle

From what I have seen, whether a person is happy or not when doing anything is mostly related to: "Whether doing this thing can achieve expectations or even exceed expectations" Anticipated Feedback". For example: I expected to get 90 points in this exam, but in the end I got 100 points. My efforts received positive feedback and even exceeded my expectations. This kind of thing often makes people happy and makes them feel happy. This will stimulate my enthusiasm for learning, and my final test scores may get better and better. But if I take an exam and expect to get 90 points, but in the end I only get 60 points, my efforts will not receive positive feedback. This kind of thing is often frustrating, resulting in frustration, and over time, I will lose learning. motivation, leading to worse and worse test scores.

However, there is a way to improve this situation where goals are often unachievable, and that is the Smart principle of goal management

The Smart principle was first proposed by management guru Peter Drucker , and first appeared in his book "The Practice of Management". This method not only helps employees work more clearly and efficiently, but also allows superiors to better evaluate their employees. I think this principle Most of them also apply to the requirements for your own goals. This principle mainly includes the following points:

1. The goal must be specific (Specific)

2. The goal must be achievable Measurable

3. Goals must be attainable (Attainable)

4. Goals must be relevant to other goals (Relevement)

5. The goal must have a clear deadline (Time-based)

I will explain why these five principles are in detail below

1. Why the plan needs to be Specific?

This article does not apply to individuals when arranging plans for themselves. It applies to considerations when arranging plans for others.

Because communication and exchanges between people have their own costs (communication costs), everyone is not a roundworm in another person's stomach. If you do not control it in advance when making plans, the results may often be counterproductive, leading to orders and executions. Don't tell the horse's mouth. There is a joke about this:

Ballmer said to his younger brother: "Go, buy me a Nokia"

Microsoft acquired Nokia the next day

2. Why do we say goals must be achievable?

What is the purpose of setting goals? Achieve goals. Setting goals that cannot be achieved is completely meaningless. In other words, if the goal I set is completed, then at least I will be OK today, which is called completing the task. If the goal I set is not completed, then my goal today is not Finish. From a personal point of view, achievable plans are very important, because as mentioned before, if you continue to fail to achieve your goals, you will feel frustrated, which will affect your final performance. Therefore, at the beginning, we do not need to set too many unattainable goals for ourselves. Goals are not used as slogans.

3. Why goals must be measurable

When setting goals is completed, this involves a question, how do you determine that you have completed something? It is difficult to prove whether you have completed many things. People's inherent inertia will deceive themselves unconsciously. For example, if my plan is to write a description document, then I can create a new file called new.doc, write ten words, or ten thousand words, plus various complete instructions, then I can also call it Complete the task. Therefore, if we make these clear when making plans, we can avoid this risk for ourselves.

4. Why must goals be related to other goals?

Because the accumulation of a person's career must be continuous, it will have a positive impact on a person's work ability and personal growth. Help, so there is no point in doing something unrelated before doing your job well. The same is true for growth. Once a certain goal you set is not related to your long-term goal, then you can think that there is a problem with the setting of this goal. Because after this goal is implemented, it will have no long-term use. Too many such goals are achieved, and the end result is that things are still not done well, but time has passed. Of course, I am not opposed to exploring fun things, but if it is to be implemented as a goal, it needs to be consistent and relevant.

5. Why must goals have clear deadlines?

An ancient poem says:

Tomorrow comes tomorrow, there are so many tomorrows. If I wait for tomorrow, everything will be wasted. If the world is tired of tomorrow, spring will pass and autumn will come, and old age will come. In the morning, you can see the water flowing eastward, and in the evening, you can see the sun setting in the west. What will happen in a hundred years? Please listen to my song tomorrow!

People are very, very lazy. We always like to find various reasons for ourselves to put off one thing for a long time. Can’t this thing be completed today? Come back tomorrow! Can't do it tomorrow? Then the day after tomorrow! Often after this, we will find that we don’t know what we have done for a month. But if there is a clear deadline, we will know more clearly what we have to do every day and what needs to be completed today.