Written in November 2025
Goal setting is part and parcel of most programmes that aim to help people with life skills, self-management of health conditions, time management and a whole lot more. A lot of us will be familiar with the SMART acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound). It’s an acronym that makes my face screw up in distaste, because for a long time I hated the whole concept of goal setting – if I wanted to do something I just did it.
When I became a volunteer tutor for the NHS Living Well Programme I started to understand why it works for people, and I managed to get over some of the ick response.
Redefining the SMART acronym helped me get over a bit more of it, and seeing coaching clients thrive through goal setting pretty much cleared it all up.
My SMART is:
Specific and/or Sensible
Mine
Aligned
Resourced
Trackable and/or Tickable
Specific and/or Sensible
When we define what we want to achieve, and specify the end result we have a target to work towards. Think about New Year’s Resolutions – lots of people decide they want to get fit, but that’s are very vague aspiration. What do you actually mean by get fit? Be able to run a mile? Be able to lift a certain weight?
Being specific gives you that target. Sensible goals are also more likely to happen (it’s my way of keeping the original Realistic part in there). Don’t set a goal to be backflipping by next week if you’re struggling with handstands this week.
Mine
If the goal is Mine, and not something someone else wants me to do, I’m much more likely to do it because it’s not an external demand. Sometimes the goal setting structure can be used for those things other people want us to do, like tidy the living room or clean the bathroom, but it’s much more likely to happen if we really want to do the Thing for ourselves.
Aligned with our long term goals
Weekly goals that are Aligned with our longer term goals and aspirations are good ones to set, and they help us keep steady progress on these goals rather than racing and burning out. We might set a goal to increase our run distance by 500m this week, or add an extra 10 lengths in the pool. This is aligned with the “getting fitter” example, but it’s really specific. Using goal setting to work towards milestones helps us pace ourselves, rather than trying to do the whole Couch to 5K thing in 4 days…
Resourced
Making sure our goals are Resourced means looking at what we need, when we need it, and whether there are any barriers we can plan around. If we need someone else’s input, when are they free? If we want to read 3 chapters of a book, do we have a copy of it? Not all goals will need resources, but it’s a chance to look at what might go wrong, and what we can do to mitigate that while we are in the goal setting mindset.
Trackable and/or Tickable
Goals also need to be Trackable (or Tickable) so we know when we have done them, or what our progress is like. This is especially important for ADHDers and AuDHDers – the executive function of self-assessment is what tells us how far we are through a task or an action. If we’re not blessed with excellent self-assessment skills we can have no idea whether we’ve achieved our goal or whether we have a lot more work to do, and that can help us a lot with motivation to finish the Thing.
What else?
One thing I added from my time in the NHS was setting a confidence level from 0 to 10. This is a little reflective aspect of goal setting that tells us instinctively whether we’ve set ourselves up for success or failure. If we set a 6 or lower, maybe we need to revisit the goal and adjust our expectations? Some neurodivergent people struggle with these scales, so a positive/neutral/negative question could be used instead.
How I use goal setting
I set goals for myself all the time, but because I don’t often share these with other people I don’t have the motivation of accountability. Accountability is a really strong motivator for achieving goals – if you’ve told someone you’re going to do something you are much more likely to do it, so you don’t have to ‘fess up that you didn’t! Yes, it’s a little bit toxic, shaming yourself into doing something, but it works for lots of people.
My flavour of neurodivergence, and my personality and background has given me strong intrinsic motivation – I don’t need external pressure to achieve goals because I can put enough on myself to get stuff done. I consider myself pretty lucky in this, because it allows me to hurdle over a barrier that is relatively high for some people.
I’m not saying I do every task without barriers – cleaning the bathroom blind in a previous house took me 3 months to work up the motivation to do, and I saw it every single day. The difference is whether the task is Mine, or not. I didn’t want to clean the blind, so I didn’t. I do want to increase the number of lengths I can do in the pool, so I do it.
Starting yoga as a daily habit was something I used accountability for – a friend and I did a 30 day challenge one January and having a buddy really helped me stick with the month. That was enough to set the habit (because I really really benefitted from it) and for it to become an intrinsic desire.
Practical goal setting in coaching
When we set goals in coaching, I use whatever framework resonates with the client. Some people like the structure of the SMART/confidence level, others prefer to keep it light and moveable.
Sometimes we change the framework to fit the goal – some things need the motivational wave of coaching to happen (so many people set goals they’re going to work on straight after coaching) and some need to happen in the right headspace (like apologising for something, setting a boundary, or asking for help).
Accountability can be part of this – either informally through the check-in at the next session or by agreeing to send evidence of the goal being achieved.
If you want to find out about coaching with me, get in touch and we’ll have a zoom introduction and take it from there. You can also follow or contact me on Instagram.