With the holiday season over and just a few more college football bowl games left, it's time to stop watching others complete their goals and for you to set and then smash your goals.

If you've ever been in the corporate world, you know that goal-setting is a must-do. It's also given just lip service in most companies:

• You go through a lengthy goal-setting exercise, learning all about setting goals
• You set some goals
• Your supervisor approves them
• You go back to doing your everyday job, only revisiting your goals near quarter- or (worse yet) year-end

That's all a bunch of crap!

Don't get me wrong – I'm a firm believer in setting goals. But you gotta do more than just set arbitrary goals. You have to set goals that are SMART:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

In other words, a goal needs to be realistic and acheivable, very specific, with measurable output.

Here's an example of something some people would call a goal but that isn't:

Win the lottery

Obvious questions: which lottery? When? How realistic is it to expect to win the lottery? How do you go about acheiving this goal? How do you know you're making progress? How do you know if you're not? How do you make adjustments when you're not making progress?

No, winning the lottery is a pipe dream. First off, it's a game of chance. Poor chance. Your odds of winning the lottery are less than your odds of getting struck by lightning. And it's relatively easy to get struck by lightning if that's your goal

Just go play golf in a lightning storm. Simple. SMART, but not smart.

A goal could be:

Lose 10 pounds by February 28

This is certainly attainable, realistic, specific, measurable, and timely. The key is setting realistic goals that you can adjust for when you're not making the progress needed to acheive the goal in the specified time.

Plus, it's important to be able to be able to ascertain your progress at any time within the specified time window. That is to say, while it's certainly not necessary to weigh yourself every day (in all honesty, it's counterproductive because our weights fluctuate up and down over short periods of time), it is possible.

Another SMART goal might be:

Add 10 pounds to my MAX bench press by March 1

This is most definitely a SMART goal: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

A couple of other important things:

It's very helpful to write your goal down on paper and pin it up somewhere that you see it frequently. For example, if you're trying to lose those 10 pounds by the end of February, write down your goal on a nice big sheet of paper and tape it to your refrigerator door. Make sure it's prominent; ideally, it will be the ONLY thing on your door.

Another way to solidify the goal in your mind is to post it to a public forum (hint hint). Making your goals public makes you try a little harder because it is human nature not to fail in front of others. We want to succeed, but it's easy to rationalize why you didn't meet a goal if the goal was only known to you: I was sick, other things came up, etc.

Those serve as reasons if the goal is known only to you; they sound like excuses if the goal has been made public. And nobody likes hearing, or giving, excuses.

Head on over to the User Forum to share your goals with the group. We'll help you get there. Ask questions, commiserate, share your successes.

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