1: The year was 1975.
Psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham measured how fast forty-five of the fastest typists at a large company were able to generate text.
“The typists knew they were among the best in the company, but they had never measured how quickly they typed,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better.
On average, each typist generated ninety-five lines of output per hour, setting a clear performance baseline.
2: Next, Edwin and Gary “gave each typist a specific goal based on their previous performance—such as ninety-eight lines per hour,” Charles writes, “and showed the typists a system for easily measuring their hourly output.”
They then met each typist. First, they checked if the goal was realistic. Second, they discussed strategies and a timeline to achieve the objective.
“The conversations didn’t take long,” Charles shares, “say, fifteen minutes per person—but afterward each typist knew exactly what to do and how to measure success.”
Some working on the study were skeptical. Could these short conversations make a difference? Weren’t all the typists experienced professionals? How could fifteen minutes impact the performance of someone who types eight hours a day for decades?
A week after the brief goal-setting conversations, the researchers measured typing speeds again and found the typists, on average, were completing 103 lines per hour.
The following week, output climbed even higher: 112 lines per hour.
“Most of the typists had blown past the goals they had set,” Charles shares.
Edwin and Gary worried the typists were working extra hard to impress them. “So they came back again, three months later, and quietly measured everyone’s performance once more,” Charles writes.
Three months after the initial intervention, the typists were typing just as fast. Some had continued to improve.
“Some 400 laboratory and field studies [show] that specific, high goals lead to a higher level of task performance than do easy goals or vague, abstract goals such as the exhortation to ‘do one’s best,’ ” Edwin and Gary wrote in 2006 in a review of goal-setting studies.
3: What’s happening here?
“SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don’t even realize they possess,” Charles observes.
What is a SMART goal? It’s a goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and based on a timeline.
Why do SMART goals work?
In situations like the one described above, “goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans,” Charles notes.
Making a goal specific and proving it is achievable requires you to think through the steps to success.
“Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can’t match,” he explains.
Or, as Gary Latham says: “Making yourself break a goal into its SMART components is the difference between hoping something comes true and figuring out how to do it.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Which of my goals are still vague aspirations rather than specific plans? What would it look like to make them measurable, realistic, and time-bound?
Action: Choose one important goal and rewrite it using the SMART framework. Define exactly what success looks like, how you will measure it, and when you intend to achieve it.
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