In theory, goals should be S.M.A.R.T. For those not familiar with the acronym, that means:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
In practice, even less perfect goals help, from my own experience.
Here's one example from the business world.
The management of a factory which produces nails should know almost exactly how many nails the factory can produce in a year, starting from the number of nails it produces in an hour, day, etc., and accounting for scheduled maintenance periods.
What they can't account for is if one of their machines fails and the part to replace needs a long time to arrive, significantly slowing or stopping production for a longer period of time.
They also may not foresee a drop in the demand for nails from their main regular customers. If the demand drops, they won't keep producing nails in stock for a long while.
And yet they have a target for the year-end, and that is mostly based on the information they already knew at the beginning and what predictions they could make.
They may not meet that target if conditions are unfavorable, but they still have it. Actually, their target is for revenue, but I oversimplified things to not include price variations in the equation.
They will also adjust their target based on reality compared to predictions, either quarterly or at the half-year mark.
Where am I going with this?
On Hive, staking targets are theoretically not perfect, because in many cases at least one of the components, the incoming rewards depend only partially on the content creator and mainly on the curators.
Therefore, it is difficult to quantify, to measure, what the goal should be.
I agree with this part. It is difficult. Especially if one gains or loses regular voters over time.
But the author does have some instruments to help him alleviate this problem if rewards drop. And that is to improve the content, to post more regularly (or less often if he posts too many times a day and people start thinking it's spam), to try a different type of content for variation and see if the audience likes it, to engage more with others, etc.
If you don't have too many monetary goals, they also help to focus at least part of the resources at your disposal in the directions you have decided based on your plans instead of dispersing them or spending them at a whim on things you don't need.
Goals can benefit from this focus by rotation, when you fall behind with one, and especially when market conditions are favorable.
It's true. When a goal is set based on fluctuating rewards, if you really want to achieve that goal, you have to be prepared to use additional resources to help with it, if rewards aren't enough. Otherwise, the goal may work against you. Instead of being motivated by the possibility of reaching a higher target, you get demotivated by falling further and further behind.
Here's another example. One of my main goals for 2023 will be land.
But what kind of goal is land? That's not specific at all! What exactly does it mean? Do I want more of it? Like 10 more plots? That would be measurable. Or what?
Well, no. I don't want more of it. This goal is more like a category. It isn't a goal in itself. But it will include, hopefully, a series of smaller goals, which will be better defined. But that's another goal that I don't control very well. Because it depends a lot on what Splinterlands will do regarding land. The good thing is full land gameplay isn't necessary before I can have land-related goals. I'm quite sure my first land-related goal will be at the beggining of the year.