Setting SMART Goals for Teens
The start of a new year often brings a desire to start fresh. This causes people to set new year’s resolutions, where they resolve to do something differently starting on January first. These can be particularly popular among teenagers - teen years are full of searching for identity and figuring out who they are. The new year gives us an opportunity to jump into a new version of ourselves, which is really appealing to teenagers. They can see if they can (or want to) be a runner, an honors student, a manga artist, an early riser, or maybe even try out a new fashion style. It’s a great time to try out new identities.
I’m posting this part way through January when many people’s resolutions have been broken or abandoned. There are a plethora of reasons that resolutions don’t work out, but one of the big ones is that they weren’t designed properly. One way to help combat this is to make SMART goals. SMART stands for: specific, measurable, achievable, measurable, and time-bound. I’ll go through each of them and I’ll use an example goal to help clarify. Let’s use the example of a teenager who wants to get better grades.
Specific
General goals are less likely to be successful; get specific about what exactly it is you want and what you are going to do. In this example, our teen should determine what they need to do to improve their grades: study more, do assigned readings, get tutoring, keep better track of tasks, ask for help from teachers?
Measurable
How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal? How will you know that you’re making progress towards your goal? If possible, try to set a measurable goal: this teen could consider a goal like get an 85 or above in all classes. Some goals aren’t as easily measured, so sometimes we have to be creative
Achievable
Make sure the goal is realistic. It’s easy to get overly ambitious with the start of a new year and try to take on more than you can handle. Keep limitations in mind - this includes time, energy, skillset, finances, etc. Also ensure that achieving your goal is not dependent on someone else’s action or decision. Our example teen shouldn’t be setting goals like get an A+ in every class (if grades are already low, it would be extremely difficult to get an A+ with low grades bringing down the average), and they shouldn’t set a goal to study two extra hours each day if they have after school commitments like sports or a part time job.
Relevant
This means the goal should be connected to your values and what’s truly important to you. Ensure you’re prioritizing the right things at the right time. Our example teen should make sure that they care about improving their grades not just because that’s what they’re “supposed” to do, but because it ties into what they value. Perhaps this student wants to become a veterinarian, they would need to have decent grades to get into veterinary school.
Time-bound
Set a time in which you want to accomplish this goal. This helps keep your drive going. Example teen’s time limit may be set for them by the timing of the semesters.
So our teen’s goal could look like this:
I want to get an 85 or better in all of my classes because I want to get into veterinary school. I will accomplish this by studying for 30 minutes each weekday and getting tutoring twice a week. I will achieve this goal by the end of the semester.
Setting goals can be really helpful in growing the life you want; make it more effective by going the extra step to plan it out! Therapy can also be a great place to explore values and goals - it’s a great tool for personal growth, especially for teens, to help them build the life they want. Contact me to learn more!