It is magnificent to commit to taking action now by having SMART plans.
People are always plotting and planning to move forward with one plan or another. It is interesting to witness the flurry of activity that goes into the making of plans. Then people get tired, don’t take action now and they don’t make their plans smart.
If you want to succeed at any good and wonderful thing you must move from planning to taking action now with SMART plans.The idea behind the words, “take action now” is that a person is going to do something now. The crucial idea is that action takes place now. The planning, plotting and dreaming stops. Action begins, things start getting crossed off the to-do list and accomplishment begins to take place. Actually taking action now is one of the best things you can do with a plan is to TAN it. In other words, take action now and start accomplishing things.
Once you have made the commitment to take action now to accomplish your goals, it is time to get SMART about accomplishing your plans. When plans or goals are SMART, they are:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time Bound
For the sake of illustration, let’s take the following common goal and make it SMART
I want to make more money.
This is a common plan made by people every day of the week. It is also a plan that is often not accomplished because as it stands now, this plan is not smart. When looking at it you cannot tell how much more money the planner wants to make. We have no way of knowing if any money made is more money. We don’t know if it is possible fo,r the person to make more money. We don’t know what type of time frame we are working with. Let’s work in a methodical way, in a step by step manner to make this plan SMART.
Specific
When a plan is specific, it has sufficient information to make it clear to the reader what is that is planned. It is the specifics that help make sure action is moving forward in the right direction. By adding specific details to your plan, it is easier for you to start moving towards where you want to end the journey. Using our example of wanting to make more money. More is not a specific word. Yes, it indicates an increase in amount, but what is the amount we are looking to make. Instead, let’s amend the goal as follows: I want to make an additional $500. Now we have something specific we can work with. Five hundred dollars is a specific, clear and identifiable target.
Measurable
When a plan is measurable, there are indicators that permit one to gauge whether success has been reached. In our amended example: “I want to make an additional $500” is a clearly measurable marker. It is easy to look at the target and measure success and rate of completion along the way. It is possible for one to look their historical and current income and measure if five hundred additional dollars have been made.
Attainable
When a plan is attainable, it is one that can be achieved with the hard work and determination. If a plan is attainable it can reasonably be accomplished. Attainability cannot always be determined in a vacuum. Sometimes we need to look at the other parts of the SMART plan to determine if a goal is attainable. If we amend our sample goal to: “I want to make $500 using the ideas for affiliate marketing I read in a book that my friends used in order to earn $750”. The fact that the marketing tips that will be relied upon have been successfully used before with success indicates that the tips the person wants to put into place may work.
Realistic
When a plan is realistic, it is logical that it will come to pass. When a plan is realistic, it makes sense that it will come to pass. Realistic plans give you ideas and information sufficient to make it reasonable to believe the plan will come to pass. So, let’s amend our plan again: “I want to make an additional $500 by using the ideas for affiliate marketing in the book *** that my friends used in order to earn $750 in one month and I have already started using with moderate success.”
Time Bound
When a plan is time bound, there are clear and identifiable time barriers to starting and completing the plan. SMART plans do not have indefinite or undetermined start and end dates. So our plan would be amended as follows: “Within the next three months I want to make an additional $500 by using the ideas for affiliate marketing I found in the book *** that my friends used in order to earn $750 in one month and I have already started using with moderate success.”
This amended plan is a way for a person to take action now using a SMART plan. By looking at it we know in a Specific way what the person wants to accomplish, earn an additional $500. Success is Measurable because one can look at historical data and determine if the additional income has been obtained, The plan is Attainable because there is a plan in a book that has been successfully used and the person has started using the plan with success. The plan is realistic because it makes sense that the plan can be achieved as laid out. Finally, the plan is Time Bound because there is a clear tie period from the start and to end of work on the plan. This plan that the person is taking action now to complete is SMART.
In conclusion, it is magnificent to commit to taking action now by having smart plans. So, the question for you this magnificent day is, what SMART planning are you bringing your actions today?