I have always thought that the acronym SMART was a pretty good way to set goals. To me, it makes sense that goals are Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
However, one thing I always questioned about this acronym were the Achievable and Realistic parts of SMART. First, Achievable and Realistic basically mean the exact same thing. For something to be Achievable, it also needs to be Realistic.
But even more important, sometimes it makes sense to set a goal that is, at first glance, unachievable and unrealistic. Sometimes just the simple act of setting and thinking about this goal will cause us to achieve it.
Why should I set a huge goal?
Like many other people, I have already written about how to set a goal. Whether a goal is big or small, it needs to be written out, measureable, and celebrated when it gets met. Throughout my adult life, I have always set a lot of small goals throughout the year. I even have a pretty good track record of actually meeting these goals.
For people like me or you who already have some experience setting and achieving small goals, it may not seem to make sense to waste time worrying about huge goals. If we can easily knock off a small goal, then why should we set a bigger one?
However, perhaps setting a larger goal will help to push us out of our comfort zone. Sometimes in life we get too comfortable just going through the daily motions. With money, we set a goal of paying off $5,000 in debt next year. With fitness, we set a goal of exercising 3 times per week. In our relationship, we set a goal of going out once a month.
Every single one of these goals are worthy goals that will help to push us in our lives. But do any of these goals push us outside of our comfort zone or cause us to do some hard s***? As my oldest son would see, these goals are kind of just “meh.”
However, a huge goal is the complete opposite of “meh.” Setting a huge goal will give us something truly difficult to work towards. Would I feel good if I paid off $5,000 in debt? Ummm … kind of. At least it’s a step in the right direction.
But what if I paid off $50,000 in debt? Now that would be a goal to celebrate!
How to set (and achieve) that huge goal
The dumbest quote that I occasionally say is: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Obviously this quote is pretty silly because nobody is trying to eat an elephant, whether it’s one bite at a time or all at once.
But the meaning of this quote is pretty clear. If we want to do something difficult, then we need to break it into small, manageable chunks. I can’t just set a goal to run a 100 mile race next year (here’s the race that I’m planning to run) without first planning to run some smaller races. And I won’t be able to finish those smaller races unless I can slowly build up the number of miles that I’m running in training.
I also need to continually keep myself motivated by celebrating small wins. Maybe training for a 100 mile race leads to a personal record at a shorter distance. Or perhaps I am getting all of the motivation that I need just by running on some great trails during my training. Motivation doesn’t have to be in the form of a large prize or win. Sometimes intrinsic motivation is all that we need.
For my wife and I, writing down our huge goals and prominently posting them allows us to constantly think about completing these goals. It also helps to keep us motivated as we work to achieve these goals.
My huge money goal
Throughout my life, I have always felt like I was working to pay off debt. After college, my wife and I bought our first house, which gave us our first bit of mortgage debt. Then I went back to school and changed careers, which caused a bit more debt. Just when we were within $100,000 from paying off our mortgage, we bought a huge house and found ourselves $442,000 in debt.
Trying to get out of debt has always been a constant for us.
However, after many years of hustling to get out of debt and eventually selling our huge house, we are almost there! We will actually be debt free of everything including our mortgage in just under 4 years!
I was sitting down and thinking about this the other day wondering if we could do better. What if we were able to pay off our mortgage in 3 years? That would be a tough goal, but we could probably do it by sending a few more dollars to the mortgage company each month.
But then I thought that we could do even better.
What if we paid off our mortgage by the summer of 2021?
While thinking about it, I realized that this would take a ton of dedication and motivation. I also realized that it would be a huge goal that would be almost impossible to accomplish.
But wouldn’t it be cool to be completely debt free?
After doing a little bit of math, I realized that we would need to pay a bit less than $1,000 extra each month to accomplish this goal. Unfortunately, I don´t have this extra money just lying around. But with a bit of side hustles and being careful about what we purchase, we will hopefully be able to accomplish this huge goal.
Paying off our mortgage would free up a ton of cash each month. Even more important, paying off our mortgage would allow us to walk around our house and through our backyard knowing that every square foot of this house is completely ours. How about that for some intrinsic motivation!
Have you set a HUGE GOAL? Or should you set one? Let us know in the comments below.
And thanks for reading!
~Nathan
Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?
- You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
- You can get motivated and get out of debt.
- You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.
But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!
