SMART Goals

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If you’ve heard of one framework to help with goal-setting, it could well be this one: SMART Goals.

SMART is an acronym to keep in mind a few ideas for setting better goals, ones you’re more likely to make progress on and complete. I’ve lost track of when I first learned it, and I do keep it in mind when I set goals. Running through as a little mental checklist helps me go from vague, easy-to-ignore goals to ones with more tangible progress.

What are SMART Goals

SMART stands for:

Specific
Avoid vague, fuzzy goals
Measurable
How will you see your progress, and when you’ve achieved it?
Achievable
Are you able to control and influence your progress?
Relevant
Is it really what will help you most?
Time-Bound
A timeline and deadline spur action

I’ve seen some variation in the words, in particular with Achievable, Attainable, or Actionable, Relevant or Realistic, Time-Bound and Timely. Either way, the broad intent, as I understand it, is generally the same: turning vague, passive, and imagined goals into decisions, signals, and progress.

SMART Goals help you go from something like:

Next year I will get fit

to:

I will run three times a week, aiming for a 10k personal best in July

I have found that if I do actually want to make progress and not just make the same goal next year, the second formulation here will help me.

There are many goal-setting frameworks. And there’s advice to focus on habits and systems rather than goals (see, for example, Atomic Habits ). SMART isn’t always the answer and at times other strategies might serve you better. Use what works for you.

How I use SMART Goals

I’ve definitely found SMART help me over the years. Here’s how I think about each of the aspects of SMART Goals:

Specific

Specific is better than vague. Just like breaking down a big project makes it easier to get started on, getting specific helps me focus on something I’m more likely to act on. Try more new foods, I find, is not as good as Cook one new meal a week.

Getting specific forces you to think about how you will make progress on your goal. There are many different ways, and I sometimes find that I didn’t choose the right thing. No matter, just switch it up when you find what really helps you.

See Implementation intentions.

Measurable

I have been involved in several projects at work where we made changes only to realise we had no way of knowing whether they improved things.

Sometimes we hadn’t bothered to take a measurement before we started working on it. Other times, we hadn’t included a way to measure an outcome from the change we made. These projects weren’t very satisfying.

Keeping your goals measurable helps you know if you’re making things better, and is more motivating along the way (see Flow).

For example, measurable helps you go from "Improve the onboarding experience" to "Improve the satisfaction score post-onboarding by 50%." Or ”Get healthier” to “Lose 3 kilograms”.

Sometimes changes in what you really care about may take time, and you may need to consider leading rather than lagging metrics.

Achievable

It’s miserable and demotivating working on goals you stand no chance of hitting. It’s great to think big (as in the BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and, in my experience, it also helps to set goals that are hard but that you stand a chance of getting close to.

I have spent a year or more working on company goals that no one really believed we had a chance to hit. Missing it every week is no fun.

It’s not always easy to set a specific, measurable goal that’s achievable, usually because I don’t always have a good sense for what’s possible. Fortunately, goal-setting doesn’t have to be a one-time exercise.

If you set something too high or too low because you didn’t know what was possible, readjust. And if nothing else, you’ll have made progress and be wiser.

If your goal is to run a sub-3-hour marathon but you’ve never really run before, you might be better off starting with “Complete a half-marathon,” until you know how hard running a sub-3-hour marathon is (it’s very hard).

Relevant

The idea with Relevant goals is that they are the most important ones. It can require some thinking about what you really want to achieve. You don’t want to climb the wrong mountain. A little thought to check I’m really on the right path at the beginning is helpful.

Time-Bound

This is a reminder to me that a goal without an end is very easy to ignore. Setting a timeline and end date allows me to plan and forces me to make progress even when I don’t want to.

Related Ideas to SMART Goals

Apparently, as for productivity, I think about goal-setting a lot. Here are some other concepts that might help when setting or working on your SMART goals:

The Fresh Start Effect (podcast episode )
Leading and lagging metrics
Implementation Intentions
Clear is kind
Local Optimisation
The Power of Streaks
The Doorstep Mile
Enough molehills make a mountain
The twin engines of Altruism and Ambition
What Drives Us
Everything is Aiming
Replicate then Innovate
Accuracy vs Precision
Public Commitment Pledge
Commitment Device
Goodhart’s Law—very relevant if you’re setting goals for others
What gets measured gets better
Flow
Find your why not

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What makes a resilient system? It needs to be strong, but flexible. Pace Layers, sometimes called pace layering, is a framework created by Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation that explores how different parts of civilisation change at different speeds. Fast-moving layers like fashion bring novelty and experimentation, while slower layers like culture and nature provide stability and memory. Together, the layers support, reinforce, and challenge each other—creating robust, adaptable societies. Pace layers is a model I have come back to again and again. What is the Pace Layers Framework? The pace layering model has six levels, with each deeper layer moving more slowly than the one above it. In Brand's words: Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. In short: the fast layers innovate, the slow layers stabilise. Brand argued that all durable dynamic systems have this sort of structure—it’s what makes them adaptable and resilient. According to pace layering, the six layers of pace and size in the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilisation are: Fashion/Art Commerce Infrastructure Governance Culture Nature Pace Layering Example: Electric Scooters An example brings pace layers home to me. Here, I consider electric scooters, but you can take almost any innovation and think through the layers. Fashion/Art New scooter designs, colours, marketing campaigns, and influencer hype cycles. These come and go quickly—some stick, most fade. Commerce Scooter rental startups, pricing models, venture capital funding, and competition with bikes, cars, and other transport. Commerce runs slower than fashion, but still moves quickly through experimentation. Infrastructure Charging docks, scooter lanes, designated parking areas, and integration with city planning—all these take time. Cities and transport systems have to adapt, if electric scooters persist, for them to thrive rather than die out. Governance The laws and regulations surrounding scooters often lag behind the pace of commerce, including speed limits, taxes, penalties, incentives, safety requirements, age restrictions, or bans. Governance responds as the effects of scooters unfold. Culture Culture in the deep sense of how this changes mobility and ideas around travel. It may affect socialising, where people work and live, and what we choose to do as a society. Culture evolves slowly as habits and norms change in tandem with governance and infrastructure. Nature The environmental realities of scooters vs other transport means. Batteries, natural resources, long-term sustainability, and the effect on the climate. 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He describes a coniferous forest: The needle changes within a year. The tree crown over several years. The patch over many decades. The stand over a couple of centuries. The forest over a thousand years. The biome over ten thousand years. The faster elements are constrained by the slower ones: the needle by the crown, the crown by the patch, and so on up to the biome. Yet innovation still percolates through the system via evolutionary competition. Occasionally, shocks—fire, disease, human activity—disrupt the whole structure, sometimes all the way to the biome. You can see this idea in my sketch on Time Hierarchy. Considering the Pace Layers Model I find pace layers thinking interesting as a way to differentiate between the fast and slower changes I see around me. It helps me make better sense of the world and see the age-old tussle between innovation and stability. Related Ideas to Pace Layers Also see: Time Hierarchy The Overview Effect The Overton Window: the range of politically acceptable ideas Human pace The Gartner Hype Cycle Marchetti's Constant The Destiny Instinct The S-Curve The Law of Unintended Consequences I revised my original pace layers sketch because I kept discussing it with people and thought it needed a better visual. Read more on Pace Layers at the Long NowWhat makes a resilient system? It needs to be strong, but flexible. Pace Layers, sometimes called pace layering, is a framework created by Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation that explores how different parts of civilisation change at different speeds. Fast-moving layers like fashion bring novelty and experimentation, while slower layers like culture and nature provide stability and memory. Together, the layers support, reinforce, and challenge each other—creating robust, adaptable societies. Pace layers is a model I have come back to again and again. What is the Pace Layers Framework? The pace layering model has six levels, with each deeper layer moving more slowly than the one above it. In Brand's words: Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. In short: the fast layers innovate, the slow layers stabilise. Brand argued that all durable dynamic systems have this sort of structure—it’s what makes them adaptable and resilient. According to pace layering, the six layers of pace and size in the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilisation are: Fashion/Art Commerce Infrastructure Governance Culture Nature Pace Layering Example: Electric Scooters An example brings pace layers home to me. Here, I consider electric scooters, but you can take almost any innovation and think through the layers. Fashion/Art New scooter designs, colours, marketing campaigns, and influencer hype cycles. These come and go quickly—some stick, most fade. Commerce Scooter rental startups, pricing models, venture capital funding, and competition with bikes, cars, and other transport. Commerce runs slower than fashion, but still moves quickly through experimentation. Infrastructure Charging docks, scooter lanes, designated parking areas, and integration with city planning—all these take time. Cities and transport systems have to adapt, if electric scooters persist, for them to thrive rather than die out. Governance The laws and regulations surrounding scooters often lag behind the pace of commerce, including speed limits, taxes, penalties, incentives, safety requirements, age restrictions, or bans. Governance responds as the effects of scooters unfold. Culture Culture in the deep sense of how this changes mobility and ideas around travel. It may affect socialising, where people work and live, and what we choose to do as a society. Culture evolves slowly as habits and norms change in tandem with governance and infrastructure. Nature The environmental realities of scooters vs other transport means. Batteries, natural resources, long-term sustainability, and the effect on the climate. Applying the Pace Layers Model to AI Applying pace layers to the growth and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also instructive: Fashion: AI tools and interfaces change daily. Commerce: Models and capabilities change weekly or monthly. Companies compete on quarterly and annual cycles. Infrastructure: Investment, data centres and energy generation are being approved and built slowly. Governance: The rules, ethics, court cases, and legal challenges surrounding the regulation of AI content and companies are developing on a case-by-case basis. Culture: How AI changes work, employment, where people live, and power structures are all in progress. Nature: Effects on the planet, energy and climate take longer to play out. AI can feel like it's changing every day, yet its deepest consequences will play out over decades and centuries. Pace Layers and Time Hierarchy In his book The Clock of the Long Now, Brand also discusses time hierarchy in nature. He describes a coniferous forest: The needle changes within a year. The tree crown over several years. The patch over many decades. The stand over a couple of centuries. The forest over a thousand years. The biome over ten thousand years. The faster elements are constrained by the slower ones: the needle by the crown, the crown by the patch, and so on up to the biome. Yet innovation still percolates through the system via evolutionary competition. Occasionally, shocks—fire, disease, human activity—disrupt the whole structure, sometimes all the way to the biome. You can see this idea in my sketch on Time Hierarchy. Considering the Pace Layers Model I find pace layers thinking interesting as a way to differentiate between the fast and slower changes I see around me. It helps me make better sense of the world and see the age-old tussle between innovation and stability. Related Ideas to Pace Layers Also see: Time Hierarchy The Overview Effect The Overton Window: the range of politically acceptable ideas Human pace The Gartner Hype Cycle Marchetti's Constant The Destiny Instinct The S-Curve The Law of Unintended Consequences I revised my original pace layers sketch because I kept discussing it with people and thought it needed a better visual. Read more on Pace Layers at the Long Now

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