If you haven't noticed @anomadsoul and @blocktrades have a new writing prompt going on asking you to talk about setting challenges during the Corona Virus quarantine. I thought this would be an excellent time to talk about how to make great actionable goals to help you come up with some of your own and make some SMART goals and challenges.

Specific

Make your action as specific as possible and avoid generalities. It's best to state exactly what you want to do and use action words.

Bad Examples

• I want to get healthier. (What are you going to do to get healthier?)
• I want to become smarter. (What are you going to do to get smarter?)
• I want to be a better parent. (What are you going to do to be a better parent?)

Good Examples

• I want to do 100 push-ups per day.
• I want to cook 10 meals from scratch and limit myself to 1 soda per week.
• I want to read 5 books this month.
• I want to spend 30 minutes everyday reading.
• I want to complete 10 lessons in XXXX coding program every day.
• I want to spend 30 minutes every day playing with my kids leaving my phone inside.
• I want to read 1 book every night with my kids before bed.

Measureable

Make sure you know exactly when your goal is accomplished by putting some number or unit of measure with your goal.

For example, I want to run every day is not a good goal. When you go run to accomplish your goal for the day how will you know if you've run far or long enough. Would it count to run to your mailbox every day to get/check your mail?

On the other hand, if you say you want to run at least 1 mile every day you know exactly when your goal is done. There is no reason you can't exceed your goals some days, but on days you don't feel like running the 1 mile, you can't cheat yourself and saying running 1 lap around your couch is accomplishing your goal.

Achievable

You need to go through all your goals and make sure they are achievable and within the scope of something you can accomplish.

Running a marathon is a great goal and something you could probably train for pretty easily depending on your scenario, but if you can't even run 1 mile currently, that goal may be a bit of a stretch.

There are plenty of good apps that can get you from couch potato to marathon extraordinaire in a certain amount of time, and completing the goal each day is something that is specific, measurable, and should be achievable.

Relevant

Always go back and make sure the goal you set for yourself is something that you want to achieve and is relevant for your end goal. While saying that you want to be healthier might now necessarily be a good goal for yourself, setting a goal to watch at least 3 movies every day isn't going to make you any healthier and isn't relevant to your ultimate goal.

This is a trap that I easily fall into when I do something like spend the day organizing my email. While I feel accomplished because I did a lot of work that day, if I didn't have a goal of organizing my email, I really didn't get anything done to accomplish my goal or objective for the day/year.

Time-Bound

One thing I forgot in my original examples was to put a time constraint on your goal, so I'll correct that now.

-I want to do 100 push-ups a day for 30 days
-I want spend the next 90 days going from couch potato to marathon runner. (Remember your first "goal" for day 1 could be as simple as finding a program that does this in 90 days)
-I want to read 1 book before bed to my kids every night for the rest of the year.

I hope this helps a few of you when trying to set your goals for the challenge and if you have any other ideas on how to create great goals let me know in the comments below!