Set unrealistic goals

I have spent a large part of my career working in the corporate world and consider myself to be a good “planner”.  I have set numerous objectives, plans and goals over the years and have been successful in achieving most of them.  I have tended to follow the SMART principle when setting objectives, which has served me well.  (for those who aren’t familiar the acronym SMART it stands for S = specific, M = measurable, A = achievable, R = realistic or relevant , T = timebound)

However I discovered that applying this approach was so limiting to what I could actually achieve and, in many instances kept me well within my comfort zone.  The reason for this is why would you want to set goals that are “achievable”?  Why would you want to aim for something that is “realistic”??  Where’s the excitement in that?  Is it really inspiring to achieve goals that are “achievable” and “realistic”?

I then looked at this and decided that I should aim for SUM goals.  S stands for specific, U for unrealistic and M for measurable.  I need to be specific about what I want because if it’s too vague then I can easily get distracted and one goal could easily end up breaking down into 2, 3 or 4 different goals.  Measure is important so I can recognize when I’ve achieved my goal and been successful.  However most importantly my goal must be unrealistic.  Why? Because if it’s unrealistic then I have to do something completely different to what I’ve done before to achieve this goal!  That could mean working much harder than I’ve ever worked before, work much smarter than I have previously, be more creative and innovative than I ever thought I could possibly be or, spread my network even further to find people who can help me.

I realised that if I continued to set goals that were SMART I was selling myself short.  My goals were generally within my current capabilities so I never really grew and developed as an individual.  And you know what the biggest issue was…achieving SMART goals was actually quite boring!  I always wondered why I got bored so quickly when working to achieve a goal or objective.  Quite simply I was not stretching myself into the scary world of being outside my comfort zone and operating beyond my current level of capability.  The adrenaline and rush I now get from having to achieve my new SUM goals has given me a new lease of life!