Why are professional sports so popular?  Aside from the enjoyment of watching top athletes perform, people enjoy watching a sporting event to see who wins.  Every competitive sport has a scoreboard to clearly show which team or person has won the game.  It makes for a clean and clear finish.

Unfortunately, our regular jobs rarely come with scoreboards.  Lacking that immediate feedback, it can be challenging to know if you daily work is making a difference.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a scoreboard of your own to measure progress?  There is a way to create one – write down SMART Goals.

SMART Goals are a tool that helps people get real with their work.  SMART is an acronym for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timeline (or Timely).  In his book, Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg shares the story about how GE adopted SMART goals to dynamically grow the company.  They succeeded so well because they gave solid guidance and measures to employees that allowed them to move forward confidently with their daily work.

A good web site to learn how to create your own SMART Goals can be found at MindTools.com.