DUMB Goals

Having a goal, possessing a sense of direction, gives us meaning in our lives. This meaning validates our existence and gives us a sense of worth. It gives us hope for the future and a belief that we can achieve our goals.

But what about the practice of setting goals? What methods should we apply? What is the most effective way of accomplishing our goals? Systems people tell us that goals need to be SMART. That is the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. There are variations on this theme, but SMART goals are what Career Development Practitioners (CDPs) are taught in school in order to assist people in returning to work. CDPs often work for employment programs with measurable outcomes, so they need to be realistic about the goals of their clients.

“If the goal is uninteresting to you, why would you follow it? Surely it needs to motivate you every day. There must be a reason to follow this direction. It has to drive you onward.”

Goals, we are taught, should be specific. They need to be clearly defined with concrete terms associated with them. A goal needs to be an accurate picture. We should be able to measure that goal. It is important to develop a quantitative measurement. “We are what we measure,” is the battle cry of evaluators everywhere. The goal must be achievable. Is it within my grasp? Do I possess the resources to achieve it? That means the goal needs to be realistic. Realistic means that it should be pragmatic, within my scope and not detached from reality in any way. Finally, the goal needs a timeline and be organized through a series of specific time measurements.

As a student I reflected on these SMART goals thinking about how structured it all felt. I worried about specificity. What is the goal? When will it be accomplished? When would it take place? I was also really uncomfortable with this idea of realistic. It comes down to whose reality we are talking about. Over my 28 years of working as a CDP I have met many people who tell me that their friends, parents, teachers have told them they need to be realistic about their futures. I ask them what that means. They usually describe a job that is local, low paid and easy to get. These jobs are realistic. But so are jobs in every field of work on the planet. How do people get jobs collecting bugs in rainforests or steering rafts down great rivers? Or for that matter how do people find their bliss, their raison d’etre. They dared to dream. They are people who have followed their vision and is a reality for millions of workers engaged in work that brings them joy and satisfaction.

It occurred to me that none of the goals that I had achieved in my life had followed the SMART methodology. I started to see the SMART acronym in a different light: Sensible, Mediocre, Adequate, Regular and Tedious. I couldn’t see where the imagination, dreams, excitement were involved. I was missing the sense of play and enjoyment.

I thought I need my own acronym for goals. So, I came up with Dynamic, Unlimited, Motivating and Bold, or DUMB. When we look at concepts like Krumboltz’s Planned Happenstance, we start to recognize the need for dynamism. Krumboltz said that it is important to have a goal but that it was equally important to be able to change it when better opportunities come along. It is important to determine a direction but also to be prepared to follow a new direction as we learn more information.

When we think of a goal, we start to look at it like a line from the present to the future, completing a series of objectives to achieve the outcome. This linear approach causes us to miss the many new opportunities that may arise on the journey. So it may be more useful to think of goal setting in a web-like shape, with points of connection rather than a line with a terminus. We need to develop goals that are unlimited rather than closed.

If the goal is uninteresting to you, why would you follow it? Surely it needs to motivate you every day. There must be a reason to follow this direction. It has to drive you onward.

I use the term bold to encompass an idea that is tied to goal success. The question we must ask when undertaking a new goal is: What will be different when I achieve this goal? Without this, there is little point in undertaking change. Research has shown outcomes are achieved by people who envision a different state, that the goal has improved a situation, that a new condition has been brought into being. It needs to be seen as bold and different.

I’m not sure the DUMB acronym will catch on. It is designed to rail against a nice neat methodology, rather than the messy, complex nature of existence. Maybe the truth is that we are smart when we know our limitations and weaknesses.

Maybe “Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.”

These are the words of a science-fiction character, Daniel Foreman. Foreman is characterized by writer, David Gerrold as a trainer who teaches people to achieve their potential in their fight against the alien species called the Chtorr. Foreman helps people to adapt their mode to best fight the aliens.

Could there be a metaphor in there? But I digress. Back to goals.

Back in 2003 a group of scientists determined the power of imagination is largely responsible for “human motivation and goal-directed behaviour.”

The Study by Arana, Parkinson (et al) asked a group to make decisions about food listed in menus that were based on their likes and dislikes. The researchers noticed that the parts of the brain that fired were the same in most cases. They saw that the imagination neurons were firing at the same time as the motivation neurons.

So, if the imagination is important in our motivation, then shouldn’t we be talking to our friends and family about our dreams and not what is “realistic”?

Goal setting is a messy business. We need to embrace that the complexity and variation in our existence plays a role in what we choose to engage in. Having a goal will take us to new vistas that we never knew existed. It’s in among that landscape where we will discover places that we had never envisioned.